Crow's Crows

Day 272: "Where did you get your nickname? Is it a Native American name?" If I only had a nickel for every time I've been asked those questions, I'd be a rich Crow. The answer to the second is that no, it is not a Native American name, although it could be said that it was derived in much the same way that many cultures name their children at birth and then another appellation is given or chosen at adulthood as the person's "real" name. This leads into the answer for the first question: I have been associated with crows since I was very young.

My dad started it. He was a fan of the "Dick Tracy" comic strip, in which a little girl who was called Wings appeared occasionally. She had long, black hair which was worn swept back from her temples in a somewhat more flamboyant manner than the way I wore my own long, black hair. Daddy started calling me "Wings," and when we were working out in our house vegetable garden, he would recite poems to me which often contained crows. "One for the worm, one for the crow, one to die and one to grow," he would say as he placed four corn kernels in each hill, and would then tell me that the corn had an even greater chance of survival since it was covered on two accounts: one to grow, and another to grow for the crow, i.e. for his Wings.

With this initial association, a love of Edgar Allan Poe's "Raven" was a natural outgrowth. I began looking for crows in other venues and never failed to speak with them when I saw them in the wild. Their intelligence appealed to me, as did the fact that they were social pariahs for the most part, as was I. The more I observed them, the more fascinated I became with the species overall, seeing perhaps more of myself in them (both good and bad) as I came to know them better. I learned to speak a few words of their language (ever so much more complex than any human speech) and took to feeding them in my yard. They grew to accept me, many times coming down to the "crow board" before I'd walked five feet away. My studies of them deepened and then widened to include the other corvids, but by that time, I was already known as one of the flock, a Crow.

In the Native American fashion, Crow could be said to be my "spirit guide"; in the Australian Aboriginal culture, my Dreaming. Crows and I are inseparable. Raven, that much-revered benevolent trickster of the Pacific Northwest's First People, is a friend by extension, as are the family of Jays. Crow watches out for me, alerting me to unusual things in the forest, sometimes guiding me to discoveries and adventures. Crow teaches me as I observe his relationship with the natural world, and his interactions with members of his own kind and with other species. Crow is ever present in my life, and I have only to give a quick caw from the back porch to find his ready companionship. Caw! And that's how I got my name.