Peace, happiness found in countryside sunrise

I’ve never had a problem getting out and into the field before sunrise. Something about watching a sunrise in the countryside helps you find your reset button.

When I was a teen and preteen just getting started hunting mule deer with my family, I always slipped out of the little homemade camper first in the morning while the stars were bright and the air crisp and clean. With my pockets stuffed full of snacks and a canteen on my belt, I would set out for a good place to watch for deer as the sun came up.

It was a bit of a silent badge of honor to be the first one out in the morning and the last one back.

In my 20s I took up duck hunting and found out I could get in a hunt before work if I did everything right. I did it a lot and got pretty good at figuring out where the birds would be and getting there at sunrise with a shotgun.

I got to thinking about how much I had missed those early mornings on a duck pond. The sights, sounds and chilly morning air biting right through two pairs of socks have a way of making you feel alive.

So I decided during my vacation time over the holidays I would take the new binoculars I got for Christmas and hit the Muleshoe National Wildlife Refuge before the sun came up.

I had been over on parts of the refuge but hadn’t seen the whole thing and hadn’t been there at the right time for the waterfowl to be there, especially the sandhill cranes.

The refuge reportedly has more sandhill cranes than anywhere. Most years the birds can number in the tens of thousands. One year in the 1980s the place played host to an estimated 250,000. This I wanted to see.

I figured I needed to leave by 4:15 a.m. or so to get there well before sunrise. I was there an hour before it got light enough to see the water. But it was wonderful. When I arrived I could hear sandhill cranes, lots of sandhill cranes, calling to each other in the lower lake. In the upper lake, Wigeon whistled and Mallards cackled.

Listening to the birds make all that racket in the dark was as fun as it ever was, even without a shotgun across my lap.

A pack of coyotes set up a racket behind me somewhere and I only had to wonder for a couple minutes what their beef with the world was. A silvery sliver of moon edged over the ridgeline across the lake and began to climb the sky. A short while later the sun made its appearance right in that little moon’s tracks.

The sun began to rise and fade out that weak moon and as soon as the coyote chorus quieted the cranes began to get restless. Slowly the dark shadows I assumed where stands of reeds on the lake became cranes.

I watched them fly out for well over an hour. Finally, when I could no longer feel my thighs or feet from the cold I loaded up in the car and set out to explore the rest of the park by warm vehicle while sipping hot coffee.

I hadn’t even driven 200 feet before I had the moment of the morning.

As I watched cranes steadily cruising out to feed I suddenly picked up a coyote headed to the lake to look for his own breakfast. He stopped when I stopped and our eyes locked through my binocular eyepieces. Then in my field of view to the right of the coyote was a hawk sitting on a mesquite. Then to his right I pick out the outline of two female mule deer.

It’s hard to get more than that into one viewfinder and it’s hard to pack that much peace and happiness into one morning.

Karl Terry writes for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at: [email protected]