Why Cranes

A few years ago, I thought about putting all of my poems and prose about Sandhill Cranes into a booklet, along with a few photographs taken at Hiwassee Wildlife Refuge near Birchwood Tennessee. I picked up the project this year and one of my readers suggested I expand it to include more of my nature adventures and create a book-length project. This post is the start of that project.

Contents

Introduction
Poem: Cranes
Essay: Postcard from Hiwassee Refuge
Poem: Spirit Bird
Essay: An Address to Cranes 
Poem: The Zen of Cranes

Introduction

This memoir is a statement of my love for all things wild, including sandhill cranes, and a recounting of my experiences viewing them. Barry Lopez, the great naturalist/writer of the Pacific Northwest, said that nature writing is a form of memoir, and you will fail if you try to accomplish your goal only with scientific information. The comment appears in the video, Barry Lopez on Dialogue, Part One from Idaho Public Television, available on YouTube.

Exuberant joy is my response to seeing the Sandhill Cranes return each year. Since I first saw them fly through Chattanooga more than 25 years ago, I have searched the skies above the Tennessee River and the Lookout Mountain ridgeline for their presence each December and February.

Each year, I return to Hiwassee Refuge near Dayton, Tennessee, for another view of cranes, a view only available in winter here in Tennessee. The number of birds seems fewer than in the first year, and the sightings are less dramatic each year. This is often the case with repeated experiences, so I cannot say if it is an accurate evaluation or simply an impression.

I live in a world where seeing is believing, and any day I see cranes is a good day. If I hear that they have returned, I feel compelled to go and see. My excitement grows because they have returned. Their noisy calls awaken my primal state of mind.

The cranes have come far since the days of Aldo Leopold, Wisconsin naturalist and author of A Sand County Almanac. In his “Marshland Elegy,” he decried the silence of marshes without cranes and the diminishing numbers of Sandhill Cranes. As they dwindled, he anticipated their demise, like their vanishing cousins, the Whooping Cranes.

Today, the Sandhill Cranes have rebounded and are plentiful compared to the Whooping Cranes and many other crane species. Aldo Leopold celebrated cranes in his essay “Marshland Elegy.” In another essay, he called them “Pearls in the Sky” Peter Matthiessen traveled worldwide and observed all fifteen species of cranes. A brief review of his book, The Birds of Heaven, also appears here.

Cranes

Their voices call to my ears, 
pull my eyes skyward, 
heard before sighted, 
Sandhills from Michigan.

Cranes overhead wing southward, 
call my thoughts to fly with them 
to Okefenokee or the Gulf Coast of Florida.

The cranes arrive, 
bring their news of winter, 
their voice compared to barking geese, 
to the bugling of wild elks.

These are no geese, 
their words no honk, 
no barnyard bark for them. 
It is a rattling coo, 
doves amplified one thousand times.

Arrows shot from a bow, 
they neither swoop nor slow, 
they rocket southward, 
abandon me here 
rooted to the ground

Previously published in Southern Light: Twelve Contemporary Southern Poets and The Southern Poetry Anthology: Volume 6, Tennessee. 

Postcard from Hiwassee Refuge

If you come, come in winter. January is best. And bring warm clothing—the hills of southeast Tennessee receive occasional snow, ice, and frost. Bring a telescope if you have one, or a friend with a telescope.

Past, present, and future intersect in this place. You will see geography scarred by time. In the distance, Hiwassee Island is visible, at the confluence of the Hiwassee and Tennessee Rivers. The island has a long archaeological history from the Mississippian Era and earlier. Today, the nearby refuge is a haven for birdwatchers, goose hunters, and other nature enthusiasts. It stands as a witness at the crossroads of possible futures What are we choosing through our actions today?

Scholars believe the Mississippian people were ancestors of the Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole tribes. The Muskogean-speaking Creeks inhabited this area until the Cherokees, who speak an Iroquoian language arrived. The Cherokee and Creek were historic rivals. The US Government removed the Muskogean-speaking tribes to Oklahoma, just as the Cherokee suffered removal on the Trail of Tears.

Perhaps as many as two-thirds of those Cherokee travelers on the Trail of Tears passed through here, removed by a growing nation whose ways they had emulated. They had printing presses, the Phoenix newspaper, log cabins, a constitution, and treaties. Some owned enslaved people. Their assimilation did not save them.

Near the point where some of the Cherokees boarded boats for a western trip, the Tennessee River cuts across Highway 60. Until recently, a ferry carried people and automobiles across the river for years, and I was lucky enough to ride the ferry before a bridge put it out of business. Blythe Ferry Road still runs right up to the water’s edge on both sides.

Near one of the historic ferry launching points sits the Cherokee Removal Memorial. The memorial includes a series of walls that bear the travelers' names. Replicas of implements common to Cherokee life are also part of the wall, and a small museum in a log structure holds displays illustrating local wildlife and Cherokee culture.

When the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency planted corn on the nearby Hiwassee Wildlife Refuge to attract Canada geese and goose hunters, they may not have foreseen the arrival of cranes, a bird sacred to some tribes. As many as 20,000 sandhill cranes now pass through each winter.

Some Sandhill Cranes spend the winter at the refuge, but for others, it is a stopover, a place to rest before they fly on to Florida, the Gulf Coast, and Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge. You may see 5,000 sandhill cranes and even an endangered whooping crane or two on any given day. Only about six hundred stately whooping cranes remain in the wild today. They are pure white, except for their black-tipped wings, and they stand over five feet tall.

On a foggy day, you may hear the rattling call of the sandhill cranes and imagine thousands passing through. The mystic call of a whooping crane may make you imagine an ancient village on Hiwassee Island or a line of Cherokee people boarding boats for a long westward trip. The great Wisconsin naturalist Aldo Leopold said he could imagine the Pleistocene Era when he heard the Sandhill Cranes call.

Lately, pelicans have begun overwintering here. They are the large white River Pelican, not the smaller brown ones. I have seen as many as three hundred. They always passed close by en route to Yellowstone in the spring and the Gulf Coast in the fall, but warmer winters now encourage them to stay.

Wear boots to enjoy the refuge. Muddy trails offset the area’s grandeur.

A slightly different version appeared under the title “Postcard from Hiwassee Island,” in the online publication, Cagibi, A Literary Space.

The rest of this edition, with another poem and essay about cranes, is for paid subscribers.