It was a cloudy, chilly fall day, one perfect for a drive through the fall colored mountain forest in the area. Being in a melancholy, well, a downright depressed and weepy mood, a drive to see the wonderful trees as they prepared for their wintering seemed like a good idea, except for something nagging at my heart. Being so downhearted, I ignored this gloominess, or tried to anyway, thinking it must be from the deep sadness in me. My husband was busy working to clear the garden for a coming killing frost before we would go for the ride while the dog and I worked on the porch overlooking the mountain. Of course, the dog listened to my sniffling back tears in silence as we worked. She was a wise dog and very sympathetic.
After the garden was as ready as possible for the frost, my husband went inside to shower before the ride. The dog and I continued to work when I began to notice a crow, a forest friend of mine who often came right up to me demanding his share of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, acting a bit peculiar. I watched him as he seemed to be trying to talk to me through some crow version of the Vulcan mind meld. He made me smile. But somehow this time he also alarmed my heart. I had no idea why because everything seemed as it always had been, and my crow friend seemed very healthy.
Then he let out an eery but loud "caw!"
Hundreds of crows began cawing and swooping down onto the field beside the house and just above the garden. Hundreds. Never had I seen so many crow in one place before. Never thought there could be that many in our part of the forest either. But there they were. Cawing. Laughing in a crow way. But it was a serious kind of laughter it seemed. Very orderly too. What was going on?
Then the crow began what I can only describe as some kind of circle dance or maybe a stomp. All those crows dancing and cawing fairly quietly and in order could not be real, could it? It must be some dream time something or other. And as I watched, my crow friend came back to the porch banister beside me. The dog, the crow, and this woman just watched. And, tears began to flow down my cheeks. I felt as if my heart would break asunder forever. And, we three watched.
Then it was over. The many crows began a shuffling hop and jump then flying off in all directions, and it was again just the three of us - crow, dog, and woman. My crow friend watched me intently for many minutes in silence. Then he flew away too.
I gathered up what I had been working on and returned inside the house, washed up, and went to bed. My husband came to find me a few hours later to tell me I had a phone call.
What I heard was a woman that I had befriended when I first came to the area and who worked at my son's school had been killed in a car accident at the time and place we would have been also had we taken that ride instead of my watching the crows dance. My skin felt like goose flesh. I knew deep inside that the crows had somehow saved my life.
I wondered for years if that woman had died in my place. I would cry over this thought off and on until another friend years later suggested that it was not so much that the woman had died instead of me but that she had died instead of us both meeting our deaths at that time. With that, my heart finally was peaceful. This I now felt was the truth, if truth in such things can be had.
The crows still watch and guard our mountain. The dog member of our family has since passed away. And, my hair is a lot whiter and my heart more grateful and tender.
© 2012, Daphne Yvonne Bradshaw. All rights
reserved.
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