Sandhill Cranes: Salutation to the Sun

Sandhill Cranes: Salutation to the Sun

Patient, elegant, Sandhill Cranes linger upon the flooded plain. Patient and austere. Here by night for the shallow safety this boundary of water provides, they stop to rest a while. For the sake of the food they found nearby they linger, and pay homage, a temporary domicile, a temporary feast. Turning toward the East they form a long and upright line, and prepare their Salutation to the Sun.
They are in shadow, below the worn down mountain that looms, and like the landscape though weathered and tread upon by boundless heat, by bottomless cold, Cranes persevere. Waiting. Then walking one by one they arrange by reference to the low steady wind. Barely ruffling they slowly bend, like stalks of wheat heavy with seed. Watching. Stillness heavy in the air, they breathe. Then comes the golden scimitar of sun. And catapult themselves into the glare – and they are gone.
Two remain. Only two. They lean as if their muscles are spring steel. The ice in bracelets crackling at their feet stepping high they break clean away, loping slow they gain ground and speed, wing beats so deep they kiss the crystal clear beneath, until at last they rise. They make the long turn down the lake, a shadow play in tandem not a meter below their elegant forms. These two, among all others, truly mated pair.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0x2cJAz7tE 580 380]

Mark Seth Lender reads Salutation to the Sun on Living on Earth

Audio MP3

Backstory

The Sandhill Cranes are extraordinary. Usually, when I travel far from home for birdlife I hope to see many kinds of birds. But this one species is more than sufficient reason for the trip. Here’s an interview which my editor Eileen Bolinsky did with me about the Sandhill Cranes of the Bosque del Apache where the birds winter over before their long spring migration to the points far north.

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