Ponderings December 2025

photo credit: Josh More/Flickr

Wintry Migration

settling into the late december eve

reflecting on the convergence within

whooping cranes arrive to sanctuaries

near here for their winter stay

many raised, just like me, in the midwest

a continuum of journeys and generations

from great lakes prairies to great smoky mountains

who know home is a migratory route

I've never seen the Whooping Cranes in our skies until this year. They appeared, so so high in the sky at first, against a backdrop of dark mottled storm clouds, the sun glinting off of them in waves across the spanning flock. In my heart I heard, "could it be?" My birder brain started going through confirmation of size, shape, identifying features, ruling out what else they might be. I heard myself say out loud, with hopeful conviction, "it's whooping cranes!" No one, including me, believed me right away. How rare a thing it would be to happen upon, now or ever really.

Just before they were directly overhead, they began to descend so that I could see them enough to notice they were all white with black-rimmed wings, the shape of a heron but so much bigger. "it has to be them..." As we crossed each others' paths, me below, in a car on a paved road following the direction of lanes and byways south to north, they above, navigating with arial view of rivers, topography, and ancient geographical knowing west to east, I felt my knowing of them as soulkin.

All these decades later, now this convergence. Their story of survival beyond the greatest odds. What, like at one time they were down to 20 birds? Could that be right? Could that be possible? Now all these years later, all these volunteers, all these humans who've coordinated programs and funding and land reserves and calculated the millions and millions of variables of flight windows and weather and flock health and integration...it's staggering and astonishing. The crane's story speaks to all of us, and specifically now they have appeared to awaken the messengers in us. Ours is a story of survival too, against the many odds. May we imprint on their message that serves to guide us back to ourselves, our true nature, and the ancient wisdom that has lead us here.

May we become the storytellers, the messengers, the bards...we are who saves us. We remember, and we live on to tell the tales. We hermit away for hours, days, months writing, rolling the words in our minds and mouths, preparing for the spaces filled with soulkin where we express it out, where we converge with other flocks of travelers. Gathered among us, we who listen and share and resonate and steal away morsels for the burgeoning cycle to begin again and then again.

All we beings, finding our wintry homes with each other. Soon, very soon we will cross these cyclical thresholds together. May 2026 hold us well as we go.