It had been two years since I last saw the sandhill cranes, after visiting them for some 30 years every March during their annual migration through southern Colorado. But last spring the pandemic intervened, with its restrictions of not traveling more than 10 miles from home. I was bereft at not being able to meet up with them last year and promised myself, no matter what happened, I would see them this March.
So despite only getting the first Covid vaccine and living in a still restricted and uncertain world (would restaurants be open? the hotel properly sanitized? crowds at the wildlife refuge?), and the threat of a massive snowstorm on the horizon, a friend and I made our own migration more than 200 miles south to meet up with the cranes.
When we first arrived, the cranes weren’t in their usual fields where they feed during the day, and I had to counsel myself to not feel disappointed if I only saw a few. It was enough to be close to these elegant birds with their long necks and legs, watching them peck at the ground for food, or even better, craning my head to watch them fly, their huge wings beating the air, combining strength and grace in what looked like effortless movements. I especially love to watch them descend from the sky, as they spread their wings out, and float like parachutes down to the earth.
As the day got later, we finally found thousands of cranes on the west side of the wildlife refuge, a place where I had never seen them before and that I thought was good only for the rabbitbrush spread across the flat land. As it got darker I could sense the restlessness in the flock—more honking and chirruping, and more anxious behavior as individual cranes hopped straight up, like they might take off, but then changed their mind. It wasn’t quite time.
But then, at a signal known only to them, they started running into the wind, beating their wings and lifting off in huge flocks, and soon hundreds were criss-crossing the sky, their long silhouettes stretched across the mountains and the darkening sky. Although different flocks were going in different directions, and it seemed surely they must run into each other, there were no collisions, only a sky filled with moving black patterns and their almost unearthly sounds.
We spent the next day with the cranes, and I could start to see the simple rhythm of their lives: waking up as soon as the sun pokes its head over the Sangre de Cristos, scattering orange light over the fields and ponds. After heading to the surrounding fields for the first meal of the day, it’s time for a good nap—bodies curled up, heads tucked under—before needing to stretch their wings and take to the sky. The cycle is repeated throughout the day until darkness starts to descend, the sun dropping below the foothills of the San Juans to the west, and they head back to the ponds for the night.
I envy them. No agonizing over what to do every day: should I go for a walk? What should I make for lunch? Should I get my hair cut? Should I clean out my closet? Or the garage? For the cranes, it’s simple survival. They carry an integrity and purpose to their lives that I crave for my own. Our human lives have gotten too complicated, even in this pandemic. I want to learn from these cranes how to exist in harmony with the world. Teach me how to fly, teach me how to live with such dignity and joy.