“In August we frequently saw them about the Klamath Lakes, and early in September, while in the Cascade Mountains, in Oregon, the cranes were a constant feature of the scenery of the beautiful but lonely mountain meadows in which we camped.  We found them always exceedingly shy and difficult to approach, but not infrequently the files of their tall forms stretching above the tall grass, or their discordant and far-sounding screams, suggested the presence of the human inhabitants of the region, whose territopry was now, for the first time, invaded by the white man.  The cranes nest in these alpine meadows, and retreat to the milder climate of the valleys of California in winter.”   –Dr. Newberry, Report of the Pacific Railroad Surveys, 1852.

“Cranes are the stuff of magic, whose voices penetrate the atmosphere of the world’s wilderness areas, from arctic tundra to the South African veld, and whose footprints have been left on the wetlands of the world for the past sixty million years or more. They have served as models for human tribal dance in places as remote as the Aegean, Australia, and Siberia.”

–Paul Johnsgard, CRANE MUSIC, 1991

It’s 2009, but the cranes of today are like the cranes of millenia past.  Each year each adult pa9ir tries to raise one young. Just yesterday Steve Runnels and I saw one adult crane and the pint-sized, or gallon-sized, youngster feeding alongside at Hward Prairie.  Hope that the huanting  bugle call of the flying Sandhill Crane will echo over these mountains and those prairies for millenia to come.