The wind has been up and blowing hard in the high crowns of the oaks since dawn. The crows seem to love these times, their caws to each other in the trees having only recently returned to the soundscape—a clear indication that fall is near. The crows radiate intelligence and even nobility, black shrouds of solemnity observing the change of the season.
The maple leaves are turning backwards, a prelude to dying in a burst of color in another month or two. The woods are dense with an undergrowth of seedlings and brush. Rabbits seem to occupy the corner of every glance, as does the telltale flag of the deer bounding just out of sight. The high today of 72 is welcome after the recent late-summer blast of 90 degrees.
Last Monday evening Cindy and I were both involved in the type of farming accident that is always lurking in the background. We emerged cut, bloodied, bruised, battered and clothes in tatters. Fortunately neither of us ended up in the hospital, or worse, but for a few minutes that evening, it certainly could have gone either way. The cawing of the crows to each other overhead as we made our way back into the house relayed the news the old-fashioned way.
I left the next morning and caught a flight to my homeland of south Louisiana. It’s a place where the honorific “Mr.” or “Miss” still precedes the first name of an elder when addressed by someone younger. Walking with my dad, now 87, I watched with admiration as he was greeted repeatedly with a friendly “Hello, Mr. Bill.” At a farmer’s market, children approached my sister Kathryn with a respectful “Miss Kat.” At a fast food chain, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the same salutation was used with customers: “Mr. Brian” and I was handed my breakfast.
No crows heralded my arrival or departure from my ancestral home. But none were needed to convey the shades of change coming in the not-too-distant future. Life is, as they say, terminal, and unlike the ancient Romans, we do not need to consult the entrails of a slaughtered bullock to recognize the inevitable change and cycle in life. With my family in the evening, in a house full of laughter, I watched my dad, surrounded by his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. The next morning, he was still hale and hearty as we two stood in the graveyard. The tombstones of my mother, sister, and brother and my dad’s mother, aunt, and father stood in front of us. Without sadness, my dad pointed out where he and my stepmother would be buried when their time comes.
Farming, as we do, fine tunes an appreciation of the inevitable cycles of life: butchering a rooster and hearing the peep of newly emerging chicks, delivering a ewe to the slaughterhouse and assisting in the birth of a lamb; helping our old dog as she struggles to rise from stiff slumber and savoring the first tomato of the season, grieving the death of a sister and sharing a glass of wine with her daughter.
The seasons change, the wheel moves, and the crows always return.
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Reading this weekend: Distant Neighbors: the selected letters of Wendell Berry and Gary Snyder. And, Larding The Lean Earth: soil and society in nineteenth-century America by Steven Stoll
Lovely. I appreciate your writing immensely. However, given my dark perspective on the world, which I believe you share, I would remove the word always from the final sentence.
Indeed, hard for me to refrain from the ingrained optimist.I appreciate the kind comments.
Cheers, damn, done it again.
I also appreciate your writing immensely.
Another view of that “always…” There is always, an eternity in such moments. This is felt, I think that’s what you responded to. That’s how I take it.
Another take: Our passing may take a lot of other life with us, but I’ll bet on the crows….
Tony,
Thanks for the comment: two good takes on the possibilities. I too wouldn’t count out the crows. Hopefully “acceptance” of change without acquiescence comes through as well.
My best,
Lovely indeed – that much Brutus and I can agree on! And as we’ve walked through sorting our various differences here and there (our respective perspectives on the world) I’ll not rework that ground in any detail here.
But I do want to open a philosophical question – if (perhaps that should be a capital IF) IF in fact the doomers are right and there is a near term extinction, do the crows necessarily perish at the same time? And if not, then why is it necessary to remove ‘always’ from that last sentence? In that sentence the return of the crow is a human observation (or a human prediction) – so without humans the sentence no longer has meaning. So if the crows do manage to outlast us, they will have always returned; any further activities on their part would then be theirs without reference to us.
I suppose one can argue its a trivial thing – whether to include or exclude a particular word. How much difference can it make? But I think perspective is very important. The notion of self fulfilling prophecy points to exactly that.
So, one of the loveliest aspects of Brian’s piece here (to me) is the comfortable way he deals with life and death in its natural flow. Life is a wonderful gift – but any individual life is not a permanent endowment – each individual passes in time. How we live our life is up to us. We get to celebrate it, share it with others, and hopefully enhance the experience for those around us.
It should ‘always’ be so.
Clem,
Thanks for the response. I’m glad to have three thoughtful and different approaches to this piece. I’m sure you saw that Chris is back in the saddle on his Small Farm Future blog?
Cheers,
I was trying to say a lot with only a sentence. Seems I succeeded in opening Clem’s can of worms. I’ll respond, since I started it.
My take on extinction is that our own passing is notable for a variety of reasons (e.g., we did it to ourselves), but the aftereffects will be even worse in the form of global irradiation from unattended nuclear power plants. Crows may be hardier than humans, I dunno, but a lot of other species are not. Can crows survive everything else dying out?
The exclusion zones around Chernobyl and Fukushima are instructive: an immediate wildlife explosion in the wake of human evacuation followed by mutations that affect reproductive fitness and zeroed-out microorganisms that no longer assist in the process of decay and regrowth. Even though it’s been 28 years since Chernobyl, that’s not really long enough to observe this unintended experiment with effects lasting centuries and millennia. Results are not yet all in. Multiply this (more than likely) several hundreds of times over to account for all the nuclear firecrackers and the survivability of crows or anything else is in serious question.
The more poetic interpretations of “always” are fine with me, but we need no human observers to validate life on Earth. If other life continues after we’re gone or takes millions of years to restart, well, that’s a silver lining I suppose.
“Always” glad you can find the silver lining, Brutus.
Love you, Cousin Brian…Talked to Aunt Jo yesterday, she is so amazing…
She would be pretty impressive at any age. But still sharp and engaged at 94, amazing. She is busy reading the Richard Harris trilogy on Cicero. The final installment comes out next year. I am under orders to get it to her when it does.
I am not as deep a thinker as the regular visitors here, but I really like that many of the images woven through this post are so vivid and the structure of the piece appealingly poem-like — with the different parts all pointing back to each other. Thank you sharing the beautiful writing!
I don’t usually think of crows as noble or solemn, though. In my yard, they are intelligent, yes, and at the same time they are into a lot of mischief, all loud and yanking seedlings out of the ground. Is that just me?
Yep, they do have a mischievous side to their existence. I get the solemnity from their watchfulness. But honestly if a crow was a person they would be who I’d want to hang out with. They have a full range of emotions, engaged with their surroundings and able to hold up their end of the conversation.
Thanks for the comments and glad you did. I really enjoy your blog; so nice to have someone writing in a practical vein about the challenges of gardening in our hot humid South.
My best,