Sky Road This morning I heard the unmistakable calls of Whooping Cranes plaintive and creating echoes within echoes There were two flying high against the impossibly blue November sky the rarest and tallest birds in North America here finally to spend the winter on the South Texas coastal marshes With seven-foot wing spans they flew swiftly over my house and in less than two minutes they were gone just long enough to take six photos They were among the first of the annual migration to arrive from summer breeding grounds in northern Alberta’s Wood Buffalo National Park to our Aransas National Wildlife Refuge a distance of twenty-five hundred miles now living just seventy miles from my house the five-hundred of them left slowly returning from the brink of extinction What caused me to be in my yard at precisely the moment they flew over humbled to see the vision to hear their victory cry to witness them reach the end of their long sky road to sanctuary? [Photo by Ray Huffman]
