Of vultures and the aesthetic of July

A rattle-sound from my bike is about all that seems to ground me as I travel the rugged quiet of Closson Road. Red-winged blackbirds and four cranky crows tell of news—something maybe I oughta know? Something in the back-fields? Deer maybe, a fox? The man on the bike with the noisy fender?

The sky at this moment is the stuff of mythology and art throughout history: Turner, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Edward Hopper reached into the surface of canvas to pull this very same sky near to them, grabbing at the emotion of the thing in all its moods and seasons.

Over there, a clothesline threads a clapboard house to an outbuilding; a parade of bed sheets and work-socks march to the wind; Tibetan prayer flags strung over borderlands of mustard and lavender and faraway woods.

There is also a certain feel to this moment. Summer in its youth; land scattered with precise rows of new corn combing the fields like shiny hair; trees sprout gangly over loud and eager landscapes. Missus Jones’ hollyhocks, tangerine in her garden: grape rows and pear orchards and lilies.

And now I lie here in thought; here in tall grass and birdsong on a rise of hill, bike lying beside me; north light over the Consecon watershed. Air rhythmic in its music; I lie here and pursue vultures in flight on high; hope they are not pursuing me. Vulture soar and vulture glide mimicking the very clouds. High the birds ride, then higher, wings holding to the updraft of sun on the quieted earth of 11a.m.

Its not that I’d take to a diet of carrion and road-kill, or that I fancy their less-than-delicate manners as they dine with their splash-guard face on fresh racoon or squirrel carcass found on every road. But I do admit to wanting to be a turkey vulture if I could easily soar above the land just like them: Especially on a day like today.

Imagine the tapestry below; the corn broom stretches of new-cut hay; the creeks catching light as they penetrate the woods, veins over earth; dusty crossroads framed by rambling seas; Wetlands and savannah grasses, prairie and mounds. The old shoreline at Ameliasburgh; the marshes of BigIsland, limestone and gravel pits torn from the earth. Dunes of the lake, rooftops and barren lands; Waupoos and Marysburgh, safe harbours running deep, lighthouses holding firm to the peaks, now stripped of meaning, crumbling onto land and time.

Willing to bet that my flight companion buzzard friends would tire of my descriptive; business-like as they seem to be, they’d likely bark at me as in; “hey you, be on the lookout for lunch; like that skunk spread below the hill:” Takes the poetry out of flight-fantasy sure as hell fast.

But about these birds. While turkey vultures migrate in flocks of thousands, and only one per cent breed in Canada and are of ‘least concern’ on the conservation list, the turkey vulture and their kin reduce the spread of disease, as do the wolves that cull only the weakest of their prey or the maggots and carrion beetles that transform decaying flesh into earth. It is a living cycle we are witness to in the flight of the vulture. With a sometimes rap as harbingers of death vultures prefer the scientific name of cathartes aura; means ‘golden purifier’ or ‘purifying breeze’.

There are many cultures, Tibetan Buddhists included, that see turkey vultures and their cousins as being sacred for their clean-up role. Some cultures practice sky burials where animals, usually the vulture, consume the dead; precious animals that release the soul from the body.

You see, these vultures and kin are made for the job. Watch them when they roost on a barn silo or a ridge of rock and hold their wings up as if airing their armpits. It regulates body heat and releases ticks and such. Also dries feathers to allow them to gain altitude riding the thermals. The part of their brain that looks after smells is bigger than in other birds; as is a nose capable of deciphering scents of a few parts per trillion, giving them the wherewithal to catch a drift of carrion below a forest canopy. Now that’s a nose.

Watch as they fly low to the ground. They hold their wings in v-shape and veer side-to-side to maintain stability. And when it comes time for the feast, there is simple dining protocol: everyone waits a turn or receives a slap in the head if they don’t: straightforward table rules. Also vultures have powerful immune systems and almost never attack living prey. It’s at this point I wave to them from my prone vantage here in the field, assuring them that I am with the living.

And so lying here on the slope of the watershed I buy into cathartes aura. Not just for the role they play, but especially for the chance-fantasy of soaring the thermals with them. My advice is not to be shy to give them a wave or a thumbs up the next time you see them roaming the heavens. It lets them know that you know that they know sorta thing. Then try ‘vulture flight’ while lying on your back in a corn field the next time you’re around the side roads. Attempt to ignore the intensified nose that would make any wine-taster weep with envy and just enjoy the view from up here. Works for me.