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A Morning of Crows

© Thomas James Martin

Though the chill is severe sometimes, I love clear winter mornings. Here in western Oregon, cold, clear mornings are rare during February, as often the rains begin in November and do not cease until April. But this morning I marvel at the small, red star rising in the cloudless dawn.

On this winter morning, I hear no bird song in the small orchard meadow that is our backyard, though I have seen a few robins and blue jays in the past month. All is quiet except for the staccato caws of ever-present crows that seem to feed in our area in the morning, especially in late fall and winter.

Crows and their larger Corvid family cousins, the ravens, are among the most complex beings in legend and mythology. The crow is often thought of as a trickster and "shapeshifter." In the lore of some Northwest Indians, a raven is depicted holding a disk of the sun in its beak, for the raven placed the stars, moon and sun in the sky.

On the other hand, ravens and crows are sometimes found around battlefields, execution sites, cemeteries, and other places of the dead where they scavenge human as well as animal flesh. This observation has fed the dark tales of the Corvid family. Even today, I understand, a gravestone in the British Isles is sometimes called a "ravenstone." I am sure that their black color and rather shrill cry has contributed to this identification.

Seeing numerous crows in suburbia is a fairly recent phenomenon. Ornithologists speculate that they are attracted by the lights to roost in urban areas because they offer protection against their main predator, the Great Horned Owl.

Watching the crows on a winter morning, I make a note to myself to ask a favorite uncle about the family legend of his pet crow. I remember hearing this tale in childhood, but in the throes of growing up never quite learned all the details. Now that I am in middle age, such things assume more urgent importance than before. Many friends and relatives have died the past few years: I find that with each passing I lose a connection in the living fabric of my life, as that person passes into what I now call My Personal Mythology.

It occurs to me that my mythologies--like more elaborate mythologies from ancient or modern cultures--are usually black and white, like bleached bones in an earthen grave. Rather like a historian or cultural anthropologist restoring an ancient city from a few remains of foundations, bones and pottery, I am only able to reconstruct what was living and breathing with a pitifully few remembered words and gestures.

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