The Returning of the Swans.

(This is a improved addition used in the Community spirit)
Last night, or was it early morning, in the distance, we could hear what sounded like a band of angry Southern Cheyenne moving in our direction. In my half sleep, half dream state, I  recalled sleeping out on the Republican River, snug in our tepee back in '75. It was a place where only 150 years earlier the Kiowa and Cheyenne ran wild chasing buffalo, and rummaging the river bottoms for wood and food. It was also not far from Julesburg, a town on the frontier, the Natives burned down three times and ran off the weary settlers who were trying to make a home Indian land.

Laying in a soft bed very early in yesterday’s morning, we heard the sound, the yelping to the south. I flashed on the smell of the Cottonwood fires in the prairie shelter, and of the clattering of the brittled, frozen Cottonwood leaves still clinging, but fluttering in the nighttime breeze.  There were brief little visions of our kids screaming about all covered with the days food and the evenings sooty fires. That was almost forty years ago on the Republican River, not far from the mighty Platte, not far from what is now Kansas.

Here in Wisconsin, only a few days before, we were struggling with our day-to-day lives trying to hold off the penetrating cold, the incessant polar vortexes, dumped on us by human’s desire to consume the fossil energy with reckless abandon . We did not cry out loud but grumbled and growled about the house, wishing spring would show her face.

When our minds unfogged there in bed, it became apparent this yelping was actually the majestic Swans moving northward, returning. They came from the southeast and passed over the house, headed to the northwest, not high, just steady and intent. The entire flock was jabbering among themselves, maybe trying to get a read on a place to settle, maybe the Mead Reserve. There was a moon out, not full, but still bright, and it would seem there was plenty of light to lead them to a moon-lit lake---if there was one unfrozen.

In the morning, the mighty swans poured over the quiet town, necks straight out and wings barely moving. They still talked, probably commenting on the  various possibilities but appeared not to fancy our ice-free village pond. It was impossible not to notice the discipline, the thousands of years of  a pattern that had worked for them, the rigidity of their movements, the tactic of riding a slip stream from the leading birds. There was a certain efficiency in it, a sense of power, a sense of time spanning thousands of years of habit, of genetics.

 There were hundreds of them today. Some we saw flying a half mile high driving into the wind. It is a sound we knew from the west but out there the calling was more commonly the Snow geese, the Canadians. Last night they were night flying as if they were behind schedule. Today about town, the word was out they were moving through and were flooding onto fields to refuel and dropping into lakes to rest. It is a long flight to the north. What grace and beauty in their flight.

Later in the day another flight passed over but appeared rather dysfunctional, almost as if they were fighting amongst themselves. A small group would break away, talking loudly as if to say, “Lets go to Spring Lake you idiots. Give me a wing tip if you think it’s a good idea.” The other batch, even louder, would respond, “Get lost dude. The Mead has more action. A little crowded, but has a nice algae platter.” A few would leave the south-bound group and rush back to the westerners. Both groups would falter, stutter in an undecided way, then, maybe from  a terse command from the head goose, I heard, “ Straighten up, you jackasses. Your looking like a bunch of fools. Look at this flight line.” In an instant, they reformed and headed northwest. There were some rules to follow, apparently. 

For us, they brought spring, and the western memories, as we laid half asleep. Spring is much needed now, and today felt better. The yard is starting to look like spring, the remaining snow consists of a few piled lumps. More swans came over so high the telephoto lens could barley reach out to the formations. A few Snow geese joined in as the weather warmed. A walk on the old rail berm was accompanied by the frantic calling of love struck geese and there in the low ground, the first distant call of the peepers.

But tonight the forecast was for more snow. We can take it for we are not weaklings, and we know the swans are surely dragging in the warmth.