The cranes are the greatest of the flying birds and, to my mind, the most stirring, not less so because the horn notes of their voices, like clarion calls out of the farthest skies, summon our attention to our own swift passage on this precious earth. The larger cranes, over five feet tall, with broad strong wings eight feet in span, appear well capable of bearing aloft a wispy old-time sage. Heaven-bound ancients are commonly depicted riding on a crane, or assuming the crane's majestic form for their arrival in the clouds of immortality. Every land where they appear has tales and myths about the cranes, which since ancient times have represented longevity and good fortune, harmony and fidelity. Aesop extols the crane's singular ability "to rise above the clouds into endless space, and survey the wonders of the heavens, as well as of the earth beneath, with its seas, lakes, and rivers, as far as the eye can reach," and Homer and Aristotle comment on great crane migrations. In Cree Indian legend, Crane carries Rabbit to the moon. That cranes may journey at such altitudes, disappearing from the sight of earthbound mortals, may account for their near-sacred place in the earliest legends of the world as messengers and harbingers of highest heaven. The sandhill commonly travels a mile above the earth and can soar higher, to at least twenty thousand feet-not astonishing when one considers that the Eurasian and demoiselle cranes ascend to three miles above sea level traversing the Himalaya in their north and south migrations between Siberia and the Indian subcontinent. On a rare clear morning-the first day of summer 1992-flying across the Bering Strait from the Yukon delta toward the Diomede islands and the Chukotskiy Peninsula of Siberia, I imagine the gray sun-silvered strait as seen from on high by a migrating crane, more particularly, by the golden eye of the Crane from the East, as the lesser sandhill crane of North America is known to traditional peoples on its westernmost breeding territory in Siberia.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |