The horn section has arrived.
They came in while I wasn’t looking. Maybe yesterday, maybe the day before, but there they are. Look very closely and you’ll see them. Two ultra-white specs at the far end of the channel. Magnificent trumpeter swans setting up housekeeping and trying to pretend they are nothing special.
“The swan, like the soul of a poet, By the dull world is ill understood."
Heinrich Heine
Last year I was standing in this exact spot when they came in—blaring their French horns from such low altitude my ears reverberated. I felt the downdraft of their mighty wings and could have reached up and touched their firm bellies as they did their final approach to landing. These giant beauties, not just back from their winter homes in Arkansas (or the warm waters around the nuclear power plant in Monticello) but back from the brink of extinction, will carry on their lifelong love affair, touching foreheads in the rich habitat of this wetland and optimistically hatching a few cygnets to enlarge their tribe.
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