[Mnbird] Stearns County

[Allen Batt]

  I walked the trails rimming Lake Sagatagan at the St. John’s Abbey Arboretum. My candles were lit by listening blissfully to sandhill cranes calling and wood thrush singing. Aldo Leopold described the songs of a crane as, “High horns, low horns, silence, and finally pandemonium of trumpets, rattles, croaks, and cries that almost shakes the bog with its nearness, but without yet disclosing whence it comes.” Thoreau described the sound of the wood thrush this way, “It lifts and exhilarates me. It is inspiring. It changes all hours to an eternal morning." 
  It was impossible for my eternal morning to last long enough.

Al Batt