this is your brain on sunlight.

You've been warned.

Locus of change (or: Da crane, da crane)

McBeth.

This morning I sat outside on the front steps of my house, trying to carefully yank the crusted muck from the inside corners of my eyes while navigating some complicated early-morning emotions which followed an earlier-morning phone call from one of my sisters.

After my 227th game of PDA Solitaire I slowly contemplated moving indoors... maybe to the bathtub, maybe to a dusty window with a towel and a bottle of Windex, maybe back to the coffee pot for a refill, maybe to a long slow stare down with the broom and dustpan (no, two against one. They'd most definitely win). Maybe I should grab a pen and a notebook to extrapolate the wordless frustration, or find something to physically break -ruin- to help shake loose my tension.

It was while trying to unravel this 'which way do I go?' conundrum when I heard a soft chuffling sound indirectly above me. Not cooing exactly; not squawking, but more of a high baritone or perhaps a very low tenor's throat clearing.

Grus canadensis

Sand Hill Cranes

Likely immature, given the brown color of their bodies (though I have read that even the mature birds, which are blue-gray can also be a brownish-red color due to the waters which they hang out in). The two distinct 'V' formations flew over my head, one containing four birds and the other, six. Marvelous huge creatures these birds are, putting the local geese and ducks to weight (at roughly ten pounds) and height (at five foot stature) shame.

They were too far away (and the two flocks located too close together) to designate who was calling out which way, but I could clearly make out both their 'unison call'', which they vocalize as male/female pairs to reinforce their bond and to threaten other cranes or predators (and which, incidentally, sounds very much to me like nature's own little wind chimes) and their 'guard call', which they vocalize to either warn cranes of danger or to warn away other cranes. Such beautiful noise, those guttural ku-rluuuu-uuing.

This time of year reveals the return of life to the seemingly lifeless rolling hills of end-of-winter Wisconsin. I am no closer to understanding how to settle my heart around a satisfactory solution WRT family issues that aren't mine to solve, but the ka-ro-o-oooing of the migrating cranes placed me slightly closer to center. That helps. It opens me to gratitude. It reminds me that I am in control of very little, that I could consider making more of a concerted effort in letting the world flow over and past me, because the world does that anyway, regardless.