Ditch Crow Courage

You might need it for 2025

One of the benefits of driving a Jeep with the doors off is that you see things that others trapped in their doored boxes don’t see. Mainly, the road whizzing by (not so thrilling), but other things too.

In my later 20’s, coming home from a night bartending, I was driving home doorless to let that smoke and floor-water stink waft off me with post-summer air. When I pulled up to a stoplight, something to my left caught my eye.

There, in the grassy ditch between roads, was a crow. Staring at me.

It didn’t move.

I said: hey ditch crow.

It could have cared less.

On the other side of the road, cars were whizzing by at tremendous speeds. It turned its head to the side, surveyed the field of play, and looked back at me.

My light turned green, I did that 20-something thing of throwing the ditch crow a head nod, and drove off. But I watched it in the rearview mirror. As the lanes of traffic sped by now in both directions, it took three step-hops and pecked at the ground.

Unruffled. Unafraid. Not unaware of the danger, but measured in its place among the fray.

Ditch Crow Courage.

This bird has had a little house in my soul for 30 years. Every once in a while it pops out and reminds me how things that often carve the sky can also hold court on the ground.

It showed up as a totem for this coming year of 2025, and it makes total sense to me.

These birds, if you didn’t know, are wicked smart. In the animal world, tools are made by humans, chimpanzees, orangutans … and crows. This means they are problem solvers. They do not give up. Even without hands, they find or make a way. Crows in Japan have been known to put walnuts on roads and wait for cars to drive over them and crush the shells, then waiting for the light to safely collect the nuts. Work smarter, not harder.

Cheeky scientists like to say that crows hold grudges and gossip, but that seems a bit reductive. There was a well-known study at the University of Washington where the researchers wore caveman masks when netting and tagging crows. When the researchers wore the masks later while walking through campus, the crows swooped and scolded them. The birds called out and identified who had caused them trauma. And not just as a flash panic. The caveman mask wearers were attacked for some 10 years after that initial netting, and the numbers of mobbing birds grew with each year. Long after those first tagged crows had died, information was passed down through the generations. Crows teach. And learn from the past.

They are social birds, with the best classification, if we’re honest: a murder of crows is a family with pairs that mate for life, and young birds who stick around to help raise the next generations. When a crow dies, the group gathers around the fallen in what’s been called a crow funeral. Whether they are mourning the bird or passing information about dangers on to the rest of the murder, no one can be sure. But the moment is recognized, and judged.

As far as their reputation for liking shiny things, I say: yes please, please do run to things that amplify the light.

We could do worse this year than gathering a murder of friends and using our brains to pass information and learn what can kill us and what can not. As cargo trucks, fast cars, viral posts, bad bosses, and rumors whizz past at breakneck speeds, we could stand in the ditch and decide, with courage, whether to step-hop or fly.

Should I make us some ditch crow stickers? As a tool?

Have you burned?

How to Burn the Year Clear

We had our Burn Party last night. It was a spectacularly clear and cold night and the fire circle was just as large as it needed to be. Thought I’d share some of the good words if you’re still looking to light it up as you head into the year. It’s never too late to burn.

Opening Benediction:

In my biology class, we'd talked about the definition of life: to be classified as a living creature, a thing needs to eat, breathe, reproduce, and grow. Dogs do, rocks don't, trees do, plastic doesn't. Fire, by that definition, is vibrantly alive. It eats everything from wood to flesh, excreting the waste as ash, and it breathes air just like a human, taking in oxygen and emitting carbon. Fire grows, and as it spreads, it creates new fires that spread out and make new fires of their own. Fire drinks gasoline and excretes cinders, it fights for territory, it loves and hates. Sometimes when I watch people trudging through their daily routines, I think that fire is more alive than we are–brighter, hotter, more sure of itself and where it wants to go.

Fire doesn't settle; fire doesn't tolerate; fire doesn't 'get by.'
Fire does.
Fire is.

—Dan Wells, I Am Not a Serial Killer

Closing Vespers:

“Destruction is essential to construction. If we want to build the new, we must be willing to let the old burn. We must be committed to holding on to nothing but the truth. We must decide that if the truth inside us can burn a belief, a family structure, a business, a religion, an industry—it should have become ashes yesterday. … The building of the true and beautiful means the destruction of the good enough. Once a truer, more beautiful vision is born inside us, life is in the direction of that vision. Holding on to what is no longer true enough is not safe, it’s the riskiest move because it is the certain death of everything that was meant to be. Our next life will always cost us this one.”

—Glennon Doyle

So let it burn.

And finally as you go off into what, for some, is the first full week of 2025, here’s a little burn playlist from the Giant Baby. Listen in order.