The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year

by Margaret Renkl

To follow politics these days is to court bewilderment, denial, complete despair. Too often I feel I am living in a country I no longer recognize, a country determined to imperil every principle I hold dear and many of the people I love, too.

There are good reasons not to make a habit of feeding wildlife—creatures who lose their fear of humans too often come to a bad end at the hands of fearful humans—

Take your cue from the bluebirds, who have no faith in the future but who build the future nevertheless, leaf by leaf and straw by straw, shaping them into the roundness of the world.

Every year it reminds me of Alice Walker’s words: “I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.”

But just because we can’t see something doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. We hear birds singing in springtime, and we assume that all is well. We are wrong. Our songbirds are dying, and the news is even worse for insects and amphibians: apocalypse is the word scientists most often use to describe what’s happening to these species.

monarchs raised indoors, it turns out, are weaker than their wild sisters and brothers and therefore less likely to survive the migration. They are also more likely to pass along weaker genes,

Reading those verses again made me wonder: What if resting, all by itself, is the real act of holiness? What if honoring the gift of our only life in this gorgeous world means taking time every week to slow down? To sleep? To breathe?

One has to respect the preferences of another creature, no matter its size.

This is the world as it is. This is what we’ve made of it, and there is no going back.