The ranger handed me a cardboard “Jungle John” and issued my instructions. “No radios, no flashlights, no loud conversation. And don’t come out until an hour after dawn tomorrow,” he said, closing the plywood door of the photo blind. I heard his truck rumble to a start and drive away.

My photo blind partner, Michael, and I eyed each other and the “Jungle John” nervously. The floor was sand, the box only as large as a small bed, and too shallow to stand up in. Two small hatches on the far side of the blind overlooked Nebraska’s Platte River. The early March sun hung low in on the western horizon. We quickly set up our cameras and waited for our prey.

For a three-week period every spring, approximately 500,000 sandhill cranes pause along the Platte River in their migratory flight north. A fully-grown sandhill crane stands 3–4 feet, and has a 6' wingspan. They feed in the fields along the river during the day, and at dusk they protect themselves from predators by roosting in abundance in the shallow waters of the Platte.

The cranes began to descend in small flocks upon the river before us, their long twiggy legs thrust forward in descent to find exposed sandbars and shallow river bottom. Soon their numbers filled the river bank-to-bank, and as far up- and downriver as we could see.

We snapped away, wishing for clearer sky or a more vibrant sunset; wishing for faster film or more light, and certainly a longer lens. We drank and ate little, vowing to return the Jungle John unused the next morning. When the light failed us, we put our cameras away and wrapped ourselves tight to endure the below-freezing temperatures of night. We were bundled nearly to the point of paralysis.

I snugged down my winter hat, put on a Walkman, laid back in the blackness, and willed the heat of a Savannah summer to envelop me as I listened to The Garden of Good and Evil. Sentries among the flock chattered a constant milky warble in the background. At some point in the night a stowaway discovered my bag of salted peanuts. It eluded discovery by my red-lensed flashlight, and I had to lay back and close my ears to the peanut invasion.

Time passed without markers—no alarm clock, no “thump” of the morning paper. Eventually the cranes became more active, letting us know the sun was soon to rise. We opened the camera hatches and watched them in the starlit darkness, the pink hue of dawn pouring over them. They became increasingly restless, chattering madly. Small groups would rise in flight and circle their river roost, landing again in the river. More would rise, and some would leave for outlying fields. Within the hour, the thousands that had been my companions were gone, and a distant rumble indicated the approach of a ranger’s truck.

The door opened. I proudly handed the ranger my dry and empty “Jungle John” and hopped in the truck, thinking only of a shower and hot cup of coffee.

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