We live in layers of language

Being touched by light and the migration of sandhill cranes

March 30, 2025

I haven't seen them for a few days now, the sandhill cranes. Their flight is to the boreal forests far north of here. There may be a pair or quad passing by. The stragglers. Or the scouts. I’ve never seen one flying alone. For three consecutive days there have been large flocks of cranes steadily moving northward. The migration is underway. I know because we are under their pathway. Each day a different flock swished and swirled right above me. There could have easily been over 100, maybe even 200 each day. It’s quite a site. They’re squawks are loud—a particular rolling trill. I can hear them well before I see them. And sometimes depending on how the sunlight catches their wings they simply glide on, invisible.

Thousands and thousands come and go each year, harbingers of change, and luckily one of their trails takes them directly over this house. From mid-late February to early March you will see them making their journey north. In groups, either in swarms or skeins, they fly. Not all at once. I can only imagine if they moved en masse…the sky would be swallowed by sound. They move slower but not that different from large schools of sardines. Silver prisms—shards of mirrors moving as one. Half of their bodies catching the sun and sparkling while the other half for just a moment remains in the shadow. Never a hard turn, their movements following the current, and faster if being chased. Do humpback whales swirl and play in the same way, as though ascending on a thermal rise? Albeit water is more thick and viscous than air but I’m sure it is similar.

On these three days, the cranes looped one, twice, a sixth time until they reconfigured and moved on. There were a few outliers, but eventually they reorganized. Their wingspan easily six feet across, their legs stretching out behind them making them easy to spot and pleasant to watch. Are they a mile in the sky? Spinning and spinning as natural as I am, here, planted on the earth.

I tell myself they are saying hello. Or goodbye. Why else would they be circling right overhead. I smile and send off my greeting. I will not see them until November when they fly south again. I talk to them. I assume that, somehow, as my words travel on the waves of sound, mine up, theirs down that somewhere in between a translation happens. I see you, I say. We see you too. Isn’t that what matters: being seen. We live in layers—layers of language. The inhabitants of the coral reef look up and see schools passing overhead. In turn they see swimmers or boats on the surface and so on until all we see are the stars. The crane's flight is the epitome of grace—layer upon layer.

Esther Perel recently wrote in her newsletter, Letters from Esther: “Connection is not just about longevity, however; it is also about aliveness. The act of relating—to a lover, a friend, a stranger—awakens something in us that we cannot experience alone. It is in these moments of exchange, of friction, of discovery, that we remember who we are.”

photo© Richard Lee The Nature Conservancy

If I may, let’s expand that circle of influence and correlation even further. It is the act of relating to sentient and non. (Though I do believe everything has consciousness.) My relationship to the spirits, the wind, the cranes, the plants…indeed awakens something within me akin to my dearest friendships. Being touched by light is just as potent as something physical like a hand or hug.

There is no way of knowing how something may move us, how the wise mind and heart hum. Even still, depending on how deep its dormancy, like unfired clay only needs to be submerged in water for some time to once again be malleable for one’s hands, all it takes is the presence of time, and the gesture to connect.

Yours, Erin