Perhaps you didn’t realize it, but March 12 was Crane Watch Day – the day Nebraska celebrates the arrival of the Sandhill cranes along the Platte River. According to the Nebraska Games and Parks Commission:

Cranes are among the oldest living birds on the planet. Fossil records place Sandhill Cranes in Nebraska more than nine million years ago, long before there was a Platte River, which, by comparison, is only a youthful 10,000 years of age. The landscape then was savanna-like and its inhabitants were more like that of modern East Africa; varieties of rhinos, camels, and elephants long since extinct. Yet cranes survived and watched as American bison, pronghorn, and wapiti evolved on the prairies. Humans now dominate the landscape having replaced the bison with cattle and the prairie with corn and concrete. (http://www.ngpc.state.ne.us/wildlife/guides/migration/sandhill.asp)

Not all change is good, I suppose. Concrete must certainly be a blight on the landscape, compared to all that has gone before. Still, the business of flying north every spring for 9 million years – 9 million years and counting! – is nothing short of stunning.

Some of the cold March days here in Maine can feel a bit discouraging. The more promising, milder days with their drippy warmth can feel tantalizing. Now that we have “sprung forward,” and the days are longer than the nights, I want spring to emerge. I want crocuses, daffodils, warm sun, and snow completely melted!  

When I get to feeling like that, I gain some perspective by remembering a 9-million- year sojourn, a 9-million year courtship with the seasons. For 9 million years, something has made the birds take to flight. For 9 million years, something has allowed the birds to find their way home despite changing landscapes, despite radically new neighbors over the course of time…from rhinos to bison to humans.

Year after year for 9 million years flying north, covering 170-450 miles per day, surging through the skies, then landing like clouds on the Platte River, a half a million birds gather annually for rebirth, renewal, regeneration.

Imagine: yielding to the restless itching to move onward, plying up the roots of winter’s home, taking to the skies, flying, flying, flying… then landing once again. The whole journey involves faith: faith that they will know the way, faith that their springtime home will be there to greet them, faith that the spinning patterns of sun and seasons will always set them right eventually.

Marveling at the birds, we might ask ourselves what propels us forward? What restlessness might cause us to stir towards a springtime of our souls? What are we leaving? And where might our journey take us?What gets in our way? What helps us to lift our wings and fly?