Roaming & Reading & a New Book Club!  December 4th 2022

Bewitched by Bhutan's Black-Necked Cranes

Spindly legs thrust forward, delicate toes spread wide, two Black-necked cranes touch down so gingerly on the marshy plains of the Phobjikha Valley that they remind me of parachutists dropping into unfamiliar territory.
When the birds land, they greet their compadres with a quartet of low-pitched calls and a subtle shake of their ruffled ebony tail feathers.

It's November 11th, 2022, the fourth King of Bhutan's birthday (His Highness can still be seen riding his bicycle through the streets of Thimphu) and I'm watching this wondrous migration with a cadre of intrepid, book-loving travelers. We're among the first western travelers to return to Bhutan after its borders were sealed against the pandemic in March of 2020.

We've arrived just as the cranes have begun their winter migration, flying south from the high Tibetan plateaus to the warmer valleys of eastern Bhutan, where they'll rest and mate. Bhutanese lore has it that the birds, which are considered sacred, circle the Gangtey Monastery three times before making for their winter nesting grounds.

To celebrate, citizens throw a huge party in the courtyard of the monastery. The National Anthem and the lighting of a yak butter lamp kicks off the festivities and then schoolchildren in vivid robes sing and dance. One of the highlights of the day is the recitation of a poem written by a young man who imagines what it's like to be a migrating crane.

The students are followed by adults in masks and glittering costumes who circle the courtyard for the dance of the animals, a thrilling and majestic performance done to the haunting tones of two long horns played by Buddhist monks.

The Crane Festival was launched twenty-four years ago by an American, Dr. George Archibald, who co-founded the International Crane Foundation in Baraboo, Wisconsin.

Dr. Archibald, who was in Bhutan for the festival, told me later that although the Black-necked cranes are threatened by climate change, their numbers are improving. He credits China's commitment to conserving habitat for the cranes and applauds the Bhutanese for cherishing the gift of the annual migration.

"We humans like to celebrate things and when you have a valley as beautiful as this one that holds a treasure as precious as these birds, it's magic."

Read to Roam Book for December

The Discoverer newsletter, of which I am a new subscriber (thanks to a friend's recommendation) recently published a list of places that few travelers will ever see.

I was gratified to spot Bhutan's Tiger's Nest monastery on the list. My thighs are still quivering from the steep ascent we intrepid Siren book-lovers made on the last day of our November trip.

And I was surprised to see Wisconsin's Apostle Islands on the list. But maybe it's okay that the rest of the world hasn't cottoned to the sublime pleasure of skimming over the Big Lake's deep blue water in a kayak or hiking in the fragrant forests that surround the lake shore.

By the way, if you haven't been to the Apostles, join me for my Fall Colors Reading Retreat in Bayfield, Sept 2023! Details to come. Feel free to email me at SirenSojourns@gmail.com.

But Discoverer put a destination on their list that I have longed to experience since I read Julia Phillips' remarkable "Disappearing Earth."

The novel is set in the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia's Far East. It's a land of open tundra, bubbling geysers and active volcanoes and it feels so bleak and other worldly it could be the landscape of a distant planet.

The novel opens in summer as two sisters are playing at the edge of a bay. When they disappear, the crime will resound through the women in the community: the girls' mother, a reindeer herder's daughter, a policeman's wife, and Oksana, the woman who witnesses the abduction.

The prose is both suspenseful and elegant and the story, unexpected. And it lit a fire in me to see this remote and beautiful place.

"The sisters had never left the Kamchatka Peninsula. One day, their mother said, they would visit Moscow, but that was a nine-hour flight away, a whole continent's distance, and would require them to cross above the mountains and seas and fault lines that isolated Kamchatka."

"Disappearing Earth" by Julia Phillips.

Buy Indie!

Hey, I love Amazon Prime as much as the next gal (where would I be without those Finn Calming Dog Chews for Cookie!) but Amazon is to indie bookstores as Lord Voldemort is to young Master Potter. You get my drift.

So, in 2023, when I recommend books, you'll find them on my Bookshop.org page. https://bookshop.org/shop/KerriMiller

That means that if/when you purchase a book that I'm recommending, it will be sent to you from an indie bookstore not a sprawling, soulless Amazon warehouse. And I'll make a donation to a public library. Reading love all around! Spread the word, won't you?

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