By Outdoor Afro Leader Clay Anderson
Last weekend, ten Outdoor Afros felt the tug to expand their horizons, enhance their awareness, and find inspiration.
Thousands of Sandhill cranes, ducks, geese, and wading birds felt the urge to avoid the cold, find something to eat, and educate their progeny.

The Cosumnes River Preserve consists of 46,000 acres of river bottom, floodplain forest, oak woodland, annual grassland, rare freshwater marshes and vernal pools. Cosumnes  is a Miwok (native-american) word meaning “people of the salmon’. All the little seeps, creeks and rivulets dovetail into the great Cosumnes river, which is in turn part of an even larger drainage system: the California delta.

And just like all the creeks and rivers, the Outdoor Afros and hundreds of other birdwatchers coalesced at Cosumnes and Woodbridge Preserves to experience the cranes coming in to roost. As the sun set and blazed the darkening blue sky with fire red clouds, the silhouette of cranes trumpeted their graceful landings, long legs touching down on flooded fields to make their stand for the evening.

Outdoor Afros and fellow nature-loving-friends’ pupils pierced prisms with cameras-a-clicking. Together we stood in a developing awareness that all of our fellow animals need a safe place to rest, live, and prosper.