Happy Sunday!

It is absolutely essential, on every trip to the Festival of the Cranes at  Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico, to get out at least one morning for the dawn fly-out. For one thing November dawns under the mountains along the Rio Grande in New Mexico are spectacular, and for another, the spectacle of the geese rising in streams and leaving the ponds where they spend the night can be breath-taking, awe inspiring, thrilling. It makes the alarm clock and being out before breakfast worth it. It makes  numb fingers and icy feet worth it. It makes, dare I say, life worth it.

It can be, for many people, a true life-changing experience…and opening of the eyes to unsuspected beauty and unexpected possibility…which fundamentally changes the way we see the world.

You can spot the first-timers by the light in their eyes, by the grins, by the voluble and visible delight as they troop back to cars and heaters and cooling coffee. But at least half the crowd (and we are talking several hundred, sometimes 500 or more,  people gathered each dawn during the festival) are returnees…people who by their manner have seen this all before, and have come back one more time to feed something in their souls that responds in the Bosque dawn. Many of these folks, like me, have been coming to Bosque in November for 20 years or more, and still we are out at least one morning before sunup to catch the fly-out and the dawn. It is essential to our souls.

Church should only be so good!

Canon SX20IS at 560mm equivalent, f5.7 @ 1/640 @ ISO 160.

Processed in Lightroom.

And here is the video.