Hank Lentfer - Faith of Cranes: Finding Hope and Family in Alaska

Faith of Cranes

Faith of Cranes

Title Page

Finding Hope
and Family in Alaska

By Hank Lentfer

Copyright Page

1001 SW Klickitat Way, Suite 201, Seattle, WA 98134

2011 by Hank Lentfer

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form,
or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

First edition, 2011

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Distributed in the United Kingdom by Cordee, www.cordee.co.uk

Manufactured in the United States of America

Copy Editor: Kim Runciman

Cover, Book Design, and Layout: Karen Schober

Cover photograph (top) courtesy of Sean Neilson 2011

Cover photograph (bottom) courtesy of Kim Heacox 2011

Frontispiece courtesy of Kim Heacox 2011

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lentfer, Hank.

Faith of cranes : finding hope and family in Alaska / Hank Lentfer.

1st ed.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-59485-639-6 (pbk.)ISBN 978-1-59485-640-2 (ebook)

1. Lentfer, Hank. 2. Lentfer, HankFamily. 3. Gustavus

(Alaska)Biography. 4. FathersAlaskaGustavusBiography. 5.

ConservationistsAlaskaGustavusBiography. 6. Sandhill

craneAlaskaGustavus Region. 7. Gustavus Region

(Alaska) Environmental conditions. 8. FatherhoodPsychological

aspectsCase studies. 9. HopeCase studies. I. Title.

F914.G87L46 2011

979.82dc23

2011019149

for
Linnea Rain

The opposite of faith is not doubt; it is certainty.
Anne Lamott

Table of Contents

Prologue
Cranes and Cottonwoods

Cranes flew into my life one evening in late September. I was nailing the last board onto the roof of my house. Cottonwood leaves, yellow and dry, dropped onto the wood while I worked. The flock poured in from the northwest and passed so close that the whistle of wind through feathers mixed with their throaty calls. I teetered on the steep roof, hammer dangling from my hand, staring at the birds. Id heard cranes before but not from the top of my own home, not from the place I intended to spend the rest of my life.

I was twenty-five when I sank that last nail, gathered my tools, and climbed down the ladder. Every year since, without fail, when the cottonwood leaves color and curl, those ancient birds flood the sky over our home. They drift in waves, tired after a long days flight, gray wings set against the sunset. Touching down, they flap hard to slow the pull of gravity, their stick-thin legs outstretched to meet the earth. From the porch, if the winds are still, I can hear the birds chattering through the night.

They might stay for a day, a week, waiting for fair winds and rising thermals. When the time is right, a single crane crouches and leaps to the air, followed by another, and another, and then a thousand more. They flap and glide in a growing spiral, calling as if lifted by their own sound. Lying on my back alongside our garden, I stare into a whirlpool of wings. At the thermals top, the cranes spill out in a long, fluid skein, the current of a collective compass. Not until the birds slip from view, pulling the last voice with them, do I get up, brush the grass from my shirt, and try to remember what I was doing with my day.

Our home sits at the forested edge of a wide meadow about halfway between the cranes Arctic nests and their California wintering grounds. Having built our little house ourselves, my wife and I view the crude construction with great affection. We carry our water in buckets and get the morning weather report on the way to the outhouse. Anya and I hammered our house together with nails and the naive belief that by staying put we could avoid the urbanization of Americacould live, somehow, in peaceful isolation. When I fell in love with cranes, I had no idea they would lead me to the very thing I was trying to escape.