raven 2

Shell-shocked, I had shoveled another snowstorm off our sidewalk. This was a tardy April fool’s joke; winter’s nasty way of grinding its frozen heel into our tender spring hopes.

Overhead, I heard the guttural greeting of a raven. I took it as an uplifting message of Poe’s often quoted line:”Nevermore.”

Twenty four hours later, the sun has claimed the sky and is bearing down with a vengeance. Water is dripping and settling everywhere. I stepped outside to see if this was a cruel mirage. There were no raven calls today. Instead I grew a smile when I heard a pair of clamoring sandhill cranes to the south, back by the slough.

Muskrat houses there still resemble small  white igloos locked in the pond’s winter ice. I wonder if the quarantined muskrats rejoice in the rhythm of “drip, drip, drip.” And I hope from inside their walls of mud and plant stems they hear the ancient clarion calls of the cranes.

The first cranes heard in the spring stop me with greater power than the first slurry notes of a bluebird. It’s not the crane’s melody but their bold raucousness.  Hearing a single crane carries more hope than a grade school valentine. The prehistoric sounding outburst is the Taps of winters demise.

I am heartened that the promise of spring flows in the hormones of these birds. Blending their bugling with their pair bonding, high-stepping dance, males and females forge their connection.  They never miss the annual April dance.

According to biologists, these east-central Minnesota cranes winter in northern and central Florida. I would dance too knowing I am escaping not only the made-up vision of Disneyworld but also the insipid humidity of a spring and summer in Florida.

Over the past fifteen or so years cranes have established themselves firmly in our neighborhood. In August we get to watch the gangly crane colts walk stiffly with their parents over the rye stubble looking for food.

I’m getting ahead of myself with this summer talk. General Winter is taking severe losses today and I need to be in the present and celebrate.

Was the raven’s prophecy of “nevermore,” an assurance that there will be no more snow shoveling?  While I have put away the big snow scoop today, I am not hedging any bets. One snow shovel remains basking nearby in the sunlit wood shed.

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