Enjoy the spectacular of the everyday moments this year

<p>Becky and I are running in the early morning.</p><p>Although the sky is sunny bright and cloudless blue, I feel the bite of cold on my face and the tears of cold in my eyes. I glance over and see Becky is feeling the cold as well.</p><p>We squint in the sunlight together and listen to the pad of our shoes on the country road where we live. Where we are alive this day.</p><p>We are on this road and the time is now and it is indescribably beautiful. It is as if on this day, the morning is offering greetings to us. We are aware of the bare trees with their variety of browns and grays, the animals grazing in the field that is not quite done being green, the well-maintained fences and the rickety fences and the dried leaves that carpet the woods.</p><p>And now our attention is aware of a slight, distant sound. It seems to be coming from behind us. Closer it becomes one sound made of many individual sounds. The din becomes louder and we think we know what we are hearing. We slow and then stop our running to shield our eyes and squint into the bright blue sky. We hear them: not honks, not squawks, but a kind of guttural purring.</p><p>This group call is sustained and repetitive. Then Becky points to a dark V of sandhill cranes slicing through the blue sky. Hearing the cranes before seeing them is the way it always goes for us. It is always amazing.</p><p>The many sounds that are one sound reverberate through the surrounding winter hills, a ringing echo that is hard to locate because it seems to be everywhere. We agree this flock, this particular V is closer to us, closer to the earth than any we have ever seen. Cranes usually fly very high and sometimes get lost in the clouds. Once I attempted to capture a flight of cranes with my camera, but even with the zoom extended and enhancement on the computer, I could make out nothing clearer than some individual bird shapes.</p><p>It seems, for the two of us anyway, sandhill cranes are a secret enchantment that nature is willing to share only for that particular moment. We enjoy it while we can.</p><p>We start running again. We are heading south, the same direction as the flying V. For a moment I imagine Becky and I and the purring cranes are moving together as one thing. All of us going somewhere. Moving into the new day.</p><p>The crane sounds gradually dim and soften away from us. And then we are aware of our breathing and the pad of our shoes.</p><p>Time is so weird. As the calendar has it, we are at the cusp of the year. Saying goodbye to 2018; offering greetings to 2019. But the calendar is just an idea, an agreement we humans have with each other. This is the point in the year when we note what has happened and guess what might be coming. Calendars are helpful for getting things done, and like a camera they can be useful to capture a memory of a little piece of time.</p><p>But on this crisp bright morning, we are in just another moment of another day. It could be anytime and any day. This one moment seemed to have lasted forever. It was nothing special and it was spectacular.</p>