This is an excellent time of year for studying crow calligraphy.

Their inky brush strokes are never more distinct than when scrawled across the blank parchment of a pale grey Vancouver winter sky.

The bulletin can be simple — “yup, it’s grey and boring down there in the human world, but every day is an adventure for us crows!”

Often though, the fleeting sight of a crow in an urban setting seems like a cypher — a key to de-coding a much bigger message.

As we dash around in the city it’s sometimes possible to forget that nature even exists.

Even if I try my hardest to feel connected, so many things can seem to stand in the way; the constant metropolitan hum-m-m of sound; getting from A to B;  worrying about paying bills, meeting deadlines, not getting run over; the latest news …

I know there’s another storyline beyond it all — one that I really need to pay more attention to.

I know I’d feel better if I could tune into it, but can’t for life of me quite remember how it all fits together.

It’s like a neglected language.

One I’ve never been fluent in.

I’m sure I once knew how to hold a rudimentary conversation, but now the grammar eludes me.

 

Then, one random day, I look up and see four crows rolling and tumbling in the sky and then snapping  back into a purposeful formation.

For reasons I can’t understand it brings to mind just one key bit of the syntax.

Like stumbling across part of a cypher to that complicated secret message — never quite enough information to crack it entirely, but offering a glimpse.

Everything does not suddenly make sense — but I am at least reminded that the other language exists.

I still don’t see the answers, but there’s a certain joy now in the not knowing.

I hope to spend more time in 2023 paying attention to, and working with, crow calligraphy.

 

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