the place where birds move slower

There’s a place where the birds move slower. Start at any place that the birds move at the usual speed, which is everywhere other than this place, and then walk towards the place where they move slower. The deeper you go into this place, the slower they move.

The people who have been to this place know not to tell anyone else about it. Nobody has to tell them this, it’s just understood.

It’s not the song birds or game birds mind you. It’s just the crows.

It’s a wooded area but there are no paths. Everything else about this place is similar to any number of other wooded areas. The only difference is that the deeper you go into these particular woods, the slower the birds move.

They defy physics when they fly.

Imagine a crow flying in slow motion and you have an idea of what’s going on in this place.

Walk deep enough into these woods and you can walk up and pluck them right out of the air.

On a related note, or maybe not related at all, a group of crows is called a murder. The term comes from folklore: flocks of crows that held trials to judge and punish members of the flock that had transgressed. If found guilty, the “defendant” was executed.

Christians believe the crow to be bad luck and associate them with death. The Celtics saw the crow as a symbol of individuality, prophetic knowledge, and a complete disregard for what others think. Native American mythology emphasizes the intelligence of crows. Some tribes believe them to be tricksters, recounting many tales of their mischief. Whereas other tribes believed them to be a good omen, thinking that it was the wisdom of crows that brought down fire from heaven.

Maybe they’re all right. Maybe it’s all of the above.

Ornithologists are quick to point out that in addition to being highly intelligent, crows possess a kind of consciousness, something once thought to be the exclusive domain of humans and some primates. Like humans, they also have ‘funerals’ for their dead. They mark the passing of the departed by scolding, a harsh ‘kaw’ accompanied by agitated wing and tail flicking, and with mobbing. Mobbing being when multiple crows hear an alarm call, gather around the dead crow and also begin to scold. It usually lasts around 15 to 20 minutes. Funny enough, this behavior has less to do with grief and eulogies and more to do with identifying the cause of death in the hopes of learning something from it.

It’s a shame that an ornithologist couldn’t be invited to this place but being a scientist they couldn’t be trusted not to wall off the entire area for further study. They simply couldn’t help themselves.

So it’s a secret that is shared only by the locals and wandering birdbrains such as myself.

Of course, you don’t have to be scientist to wonder if there’s a spot where the birds are frozen in time. Is there a basepoint, one particular spot within a topological space, where this phenomenon reaches its zenith? And what happens beyond that point?

Exactly the kind of annoying question that mathematicians are likely to ask and all the justification needed to hope that none of these tiresome people ever stumble upon the place where the birds move slower.

And exactly why I had to find out for myself.

So I walked and walked and stumbled and fell and picked myself up and walked until I found it. A clearing in this particular forest where at the center hung a single larger-than-average crow. Blacker and shinier than most. Suspended in the air. Motionless.

Signifying perfect order. The tyranny of complete wisdom.

And then I walked past it and back out into the uncertainty of life and slowly the birds began to move again. Really slow then slightly less slow and so forth and then finally at normal speed.

And then finally the long walk home under their watchful gaze.

And we don’t know

Just where our bones will rest

To dust I guess

Forgotten and absorbed

Into the earth below

–1979  Smashing Pumpkins

rip John