A Drive on the Wild Side: New Mexico’s Bosque del Apache

The heavens swirl in a tornado of shrill cries and powerful gray wings. Thousands of sandhill cranes rise into the sky and the pale light of evening. Their long skinny legs tucking up and stretching out behind them. The cottonwoods and soupy marshes appear blurred and otherworldly in the dim light at day’s end. Every ray of sunshine might allow you one more glimpse of a herd of deer grazing quietly in a soft green meadow, or a tom turkey strutting about in the soft grass, his copper-colored tail feathers fanned out in full display.