Recently I was sitting on my back porch on a warm July evening, watching the clouds shift and shape with the dance of the sun as their leader. They began the descent of sunset. The sky was painted with the colors of nightly splendor. A hint of pink and purple with the rays of light bending towards slumber with wide swaths of bright blue, white fluffy clouds, and trailing puffs of gray and slate.

It was one of those sights that change before your eyes without your eyes perceiving a change has happened. All of a sudden the sky was different, a variation of beauty next as the clouds drifted across its heavenly path.

A sudden change in the air pulled me out of the scene. A sound. A ruffle of wings. The pure speed of the flight. Usually, a fast-moving shape in the sky means a single goose or a group of Canadian Geese. You can hear them from their honking call. This was silent aside from the wings as they flapped in stride.

It was a pair of red-crowned cranes flying low across my yard onward back to their home, the open-air aviary of Keystone Safari in the next town over. These cranes are native to the Korean peninsula. I recognized them firstly, from viewing them at the wildlife park, but from the cover of the ‘ATE’ album.

I learned that they are a popular motif in Korean art, symbolizing longevity, purity, and peace. In Korean, they are called durumi or hak. Interestingly, they are found often in the DMZ between North and South Korea’s borders. They are a stunningly elegant bird to watch in flight, and fast! In an instant, they were a few yards from me and then they were gone.

The red-crowned cranes are native to Korea but that is not the only place they are found, their range continues into East Russia, into China, and has been found in Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido. I certainly wasn’t expecting to see them in my little corner of the world on that peaceful night but what an honor it was to see such a beautiful animal so close.

That’s becoming one of my favorite features of my house, the backyard is so quiet and peaceful. I can sit there throughout the day and depending on what time of day I see rabbits, birds, chipmunks, squirrels, bats, etc just doing their thing. I feel such peace and contentment. It’s like a reset of my mind.