“I know it’s only a small group, but can we please please start!” Kaia bursting through the door to Atticus and I on the porch broke our silence in watching where the small group of cranes had disappeared over the mouth of the good river. It was a similar sized group to the ones we’d been watching for the last week – maybe 50 parents and babies chortling with their drop-everything-and-look-up-call. 
   “So are we calling it?” 
   “I guess so”
   We dispersed. Atticus rinsed the coho eggs he’d been brining and put them on racks, Ari dug through the freezer for smoked salmon, Kaia ran to Kathy’s to put the stock she’d been picking in the fridge, I sprinted back to pass of fish fileting duties to Hank and our friend Hollin and took one last swig of coffee from my cup on the porch. Back in the kitchen out of breath thirty minutes we grabbed a tote bag and bikes and dashed to the potato patch. Bare feet gripping the peddles, arms outstretched above the handlebars, Kaia and my hands found each other over the pot-hole laden road and squeezed. 
   Potatoes dug and piled in the pantry, we tramped across the good river and down to the beach armed with a bucket of nagoonberries, carrots, jerky, smoked fish, smoked eggs and zucchini chips. We spread our picnic blanket at the river mouth and ate quietly next to some geese watching the grey of icy straight and then stripped and chased each other into the ocean squealing through the bubbling mudflats on the incoming tide. 
  It started to rain softly as we walked back up the river. I remembered a Brian Doyle quote about awful moments being pregnant with normalcy. I think maybe the same is true for the sacred.
  There wasn’t another crane in the sky.