Looking for Someplace New

“Where are you going, again?”

Kearney, Nebraska hardly inspires the curiosity of travelers in the United States.

Smack dab in the center of the country, Kearney is a town surrounded by cornfields, with few local landmarks of interest for the wandering traveler. And yet, every March and April, my father and I will dream of, once again, taking a break from our grueling jobs to join the thousands of people from around the world that flock to Kearney, flooding its main street and cramming our cars into the parking lots of parks along the Platte River.

It is a well-kept secret, and needs to be in order to preserve the magnificence of the event that is about to unfold. Unfailingly, Sandhill cranes in the hundreds of thousands--eighty percent of the worlds crane population--descend upon the sleepy town on the Platte River.

The Platte River provides the cranes a perfect, and unique, staging area in order to continue their migration. Like a funnel in the center of the country, cranes from across the southern United States flock into the short stretch of river in Kearney. And my father and I funnel into this short stretch of river, as well, at first to justify our long drive from Maryland, but ultimately, to make sense of our own insignificance.

Known for being a mile wide and a foot deep, it as almost as if the Platte River has been ordained specifically for the cranes. With their long legs, the ever-alert Sandhill cranes are able to find refuge from predators in the center of the river. The Platte is where we find refuge, too. To get away from our homes and escape the friends who know us too well. We can lose ourselves to the call of the cranes, and find ourselves in the anonymity of the crowd.

The sound that comes from just one of these birds, let alone a thousand, is nothing short of spectacular. During the day, the rattle-like call of a Sandhill crane can be heard anywhere along the Platte. And in the mornings and the evenings, when the cranes are flying out to the fields and back to the river, the sound is overwhelmingly beautiful. It fills your ears with the chaotic noise of a thousand cranes all trying to be heard at once.

How similar it is to our own lives, calling out into the crowd, all trying to be heard at once. To be made to feel insignificant. Knowing that, with or without us, these cranes will continue to come to Kearney. Long before it was Kearney, and long after it is no longer Kearney.