You hear them first. Then you spot them, and you hold your breath as the crisp winter air fills with the sounds of trumpet blasts and trills. You watch the birds as they approach, gliding gracefully on thermals, then beating their wings as they slice through the darkening sky like the majestic prehistoric creatures they are.
They are the Sandhill Cranes. Standing four feet tall with a wingspan of six feet, they return by memory year after year to the same place, either to winter or to pass through as they migrate. They retrace a journey that was established thousands of years before their parents revealed it to them. The cranes I get to see each winter in the Pacific Northwest arrive from as far north as Alaska and Siberia, and some will travel all the way to northern Mexico. Their flight speed is about 30 mph, and they can cover 200-300 miles in a day. Each one flies near their partner, with whom they mate for life. And their life span can be 20 to 30 years.
I first observed these giant beauties a few years ago on Sauvie Island, a place I’ve grown to love and visit often since I moved to Portland. It’s just a 15–20 minute drive from my apartment, and there have been many winter afternoons when I’ve hopped in the car just before the sun sets to make that drive and get a fix of the cranes’ haunting calls, their elegance and power. During these wobbly, off-kilter times, when it’s easy to lose footing… and hope, the cranes have a way of providing a sense of order and steadiness. A sense of comfort.
After all, they’ve been flying the same routes and performing the same rituals for millions of years. (They are among the oldest species of bird, with fossils going back at least two million years - some scientists suggesting as many as six million years.) Standing in the presence of the cranes conjures up the same feeling I get while lingering at the edge of the ocean, witnessing something so much bigger and so much older and so much more significant than I am. Knowing they’ve done this for so long and will continue to do so long after I’m gone somehow makes me feel like everything’s going to be alright. That the rhythm of the universe will carry on.
I was pleased when I got to the end of psychologist Mary Pipher’s new book, A Life in Light: Meditations on Impermanence, that she talks about her much anticipated annual tradition of going to see the Sandhill Cranes as they stop to feed and roost in Nebraska’s Platte River valley (one of these days I’ll go there, too, as half a million cranes – four fifths of all the Sandhill Cranes on earth - make an appearance there!). For her, the sights and sounds of cranes are “wild and comforting.” I feel exactly the same way.
finding comfort in cranes
1/8/2024
You hear them first. Then you spot them, and you hold your breath as the crisp winter air fills with the sounds of trumpet blasts and trills. You watch the birds as they approach, gliding gracefully on thermals, then beating their wings as they slice through the darkening sky like the majestic prehistoric creatures they are.
They are the Sandhill Cranes. Standing four feet tall with a wingspan of six feet, they return by memory year after year to the same place, either to winter or to pass through as they migrate. They retrace a journey that was established thousands of years before their parents revealed it to them. The cranes I get to see each winter in the Pacific Northwest arrive from as far north as Alaska and Siberia, and some will travel all the way to northern Mexico. Their flight speed is about 30 mph, and they can cover 200-300 miles in a day. Each one flies near their partner, with whom they mate for life. And their life span can be 20 to 30 years.
I first observed these giant beauties a few years ago on Sauvie Island, a place I’ve grown to love and visit often since I moved to Portland. It’s just a 15–20 minute drive from my apartment, and there have been many winter afternoons when I’ve hopped in the car just before the sun sets to make that drive and get a fix of the cranes’ haunting calls, their elegance and power. During these wobbly, off-kilter times, when it’s easy to lose footing… and hope, the cranes have a way of providing a sense of order and steadiness. A sense of comfort.
After all, they’ve been flying the same routes and performing the same rituals for millions of years. (They are among the oldest species of bird, with fossils going back at least two million years - some scientists suggesting as many as six million years.) Standing in the presence of the cranes conjures up the same feeling I get while lingering at the edge of the ocean, witnessing something so much bigger and so much older and so much more significant than I am. Knowing they’ve done this for so long and will continue to do so long after I’m gone somehow makes me feel like everything’s going to be alright. That the rhythm of the universe will carry on.
I was pleased when I got to the end of psychologist Mary Pipher’s new book, A Life in Light: Meditations on Impermanence, that she talks about her much anticipated annual tradition of going to see the Sandhill Cranes as they stop to feed and roost in Nebraska’s Platte River valley (one of these days I’ll go there, too, as half a million cranes – four fifths of all the Sandhill Cranes on earth - make an appearance there!). For her, the sights and sounds of cranes are “wild and comforting.” I feel exactly the same way.
