For some reason, driving always puts me in melancholy mood. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s from driving on those long stretches of desolate road out west, thinking about the twists and turns my life had taken up to that point. I remember one day in particular, stopping at the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, getting out of the car, and walking across the sunny windswept landscape where so many souls had been dispatched to their creator’s judgment.
I walked away from the small group of tourists, who were listening to the park ranger’s monotone narrative about the swirling confusion of the clash, and examined the artifacts marking the positions of the fallen. As I separated more and more from my fellow visitors, I became keenly aware of a flock of crows that were noisily circling the site in an aerial brannigan, letting out caws and cries of admonishment as they jockeyed for position in their social hierarchy. I turned behind me to watch the display and noticed that the sky was darkening.
Suddenly, I realized that I was alone and that the crows were circling me, increasing the volume of their cacophony and tightening the radius of their formation directly above me. By then the sky was completely dark. I turned to my front again and found that one of the crows–a raven sized giant–had landed on a marker directly in front of me.
The bird jutted its head toward me and slowly opened its huge beak. Caw! Caw! It cried, looking directly at me as if to warn with its cry and posture that I was crossing a forbidden spiritual threshold. My sense of what I was experiencing heightened as the wind turned frigid and seemed to push me toward the crow.
I stood transfixed for a moment, attempting to fathom the significance of the encounter, looking for a hint in coal-black coldness of the giant crow’s eyes. Caw! It warned again menacingly. An icy blast of air buffeted the crow and ruffled the tiny feathers that strayed from the tight cohesiveness of the native sheen of its pelt.
Then abruptly, the giant crow righted itself, extended its wings, and looked around. The crows circling above stopped their chatter and scattered out of site. Faintly, then louder and louder, the ranger’s voice could be heard approaching. I turned toward the sound of the ranger’s voice and saw that the sky was clearing.
To my rear I heard the powerful downward flap of the giant crow’s wings as it thrust into hastened flight. Turning back toward where the crow was, I saw a sleek mass of black hurtling toward me with shiny claws extended. Instinctively, I ducked, covering my face with my arm just as the crow reached me, brushing me as it shot past, climbing and circling back toward where the sky’s darkness remained but was rapidly fading. In a few moments the giant crow was gone from sight.
I returned to my car a little shaken by my encounter convinced that I had crossed paths with an ancient spirit, who wanted an outlet to the present through a solitary traveler. I drove south as the day faded and pondered the depth of my solitude. The sun set on the vast road ahead of me and the object of my journey and the blackness enveloped me.
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