Driving over the pass through the Rio Grande Valley to Bosque Del Apache Wildlife Refuge is thick with fall. In the distance there is a honking white cloud swirling above, thousands of snow geese.

They arrive in waves, formation after formation and not a bird bumps into another as they draw nearer to the wetland pond and disperse, land feet first scattering over the pond. The size of the gathering of geese does not seem to grow in circumference as each group seems to fit itself into the existing arrangement of birds. In nearly four hours of wave after wave birds come and fall like white parachutes. They finally fill the whole pond area as the overlap begins to move into another section.

Now and then the whole pond lifts up, circles and then lands again maybe to relocate the families into more of their own spaces. The sound is a vibration of the birds. This Escher like drawing keeps revealing new angles at they turn and land.

Speechless at the force and abundance of these birds and standing at the end of their landing strip under their wings changes life forever.

We move around the loop of the refuge and find a wide field of green and another with straw colored stubbles of grasses. The skies fill with a strand of twenty to thirty Sand hill Cranes landing alternately in the open field or like pewter in gold move in and out of the tawny grasses. They mindfully walk over the rise and watch us and lift their wings and make their music. In the midst of one of the fields is a single snow goose that seems to be nesting. The cranes walk on past it and continue their promenade up and down the field.

They are large birds with a wingspan of six to seven feet and they are graceful and elegant strutting onto land. Some of the birds have soft rust feathers from nesting time still on their sides but soon they will look like the grasses that they are standing in, their young the same. I love to see them fill the skies with their long flapping and how they soar to a landing.