John Crow

Six foot signs are hard to miss

We do it all the time

Here lies the body of John Crow

by Thomas Paine

Here lies the body of John Crow,

Who once was high, but now is low;

Ye brother Crows take warning all,

For as you rise, so must you fall.

The other name that came to me was John Crow.  This is an alternate name for turkey vultures in parts of the world.  Specifically there is a ridge in Jamaica where this name comes.  The poem Thomas Paine wrote at eight years old was about a pet crow.  An actual crow in that case.  I find the association our buzzards and John Crow not surprising.  There is this similar intelligence.  A large group of turkey vultures is called a kettle when they are flying.  I think that is amazing.  You see them mostly alone, but they live and roost in large groups and are quite social in their kettles.

When you see a flock of vultures in flight, you're witnessing a kettle of vultures. When you see vultures at rest in a tree or on a fence post, that's a committee of vultures. And since vultures feed mainly on dead animals, when you see a group feeding, you're in the presence of a wake of vultures.

You could almost imagine them Methodist.  Nottingham does have something in common with them: as much as the neighborhood has changed over the years we still belong.  You might wonder why I am talking about turkey vultures.  I on the other hand have so many reasons.  Sure they leave every year, but they always come back.  As different as this place we call Nottingham becomes they continue to call it home.

If your in tune with the wilderness around us you might notice they are back.  Maybe the best reason to write about them: they fit so well into this world.  For the most part they do their thing.  For the most part when you see a six foot wing span in Collinwood it is them; as I saw the other day driving out of the church parking lot.  Six feet wing span and the real world so real it shocked me for that first second.  I know enough about science to doubt everything I see to some degree.  Six feet of wing swooping low to the ground is one of the things that is hard to mistake.  Clear sign.  Another reason you might think I am talking about buzzards: a sure sign of spring.

You night already know this or you might have been in my art class then you would know for sure: the buzzards always return here on the ides of march.  People have been gathering in the Metroparks in Hinkley for the last sixty plus years watching for their return.  If you ask them they say they always arrive on the fifteenth, but I can tell you they don't look before the fifteenth.  

They travel far and always in familiar places.  They are at home wherever they go.  Everyone welcomes them.  Even my first graders understand why they are welcome everywhere.  They provide a service.  We spoke last year of this mysterious connection we and Jesus had to the wilderness.  These fifty years of witness in the park at Hinkley ridge is a whisper of this connection we had.  When we knew things directly from nature.  Our buzzards are remnants of this knowledge that isn't completely lost.  As it swooped by I felt spring in the air.