One Is For Bad Luck, Two Is For Mirth. . .

Contributed by Carol Herwig, TWiG Committee Chair

Most years I look forward to snow and brisk (not chilling) temperatures to be outside with dog walks, but this winter has forced me to the couch with a broken ankle. So it’s been a time to devour new books. In a bit of good fortune, I found The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year by Margaret Renkl at Left Bank Books right before I took that tumble. A columnist with The New York Times, Renkl often writes about trees (my passion), birds and related topics.

She gives us thirteen weeks of essays for each season, plus brief commentaries. Lovely
collages and prints by her brother Billy Renkl accompany each week. The words and pictures turned out to be the right antidote for a mind made hazy by acetaminophen and forced inactivity.

Writing about discovering a rare pileated woodpecker on a walk, she writes she was angry for not capturing a picture “of something wild and beautiful and rare …. I walked out of the woods with not a single image to commemorate the encounter. I was angry with myself, trudging back to the cabin, but it wasn’t long before I began to reconsider. Even when it is pointed in the right direction, a camera has a way of stunting sight. How truly valuable is a device that makes you take your eyes off an experience so momentary that you might miss it altogether?”

I love that. The book grabbed me because of its title: I was inspired by the murder of crows that sleep in the woods in the wooded hills above me, fly in great groups over the house during the day to sun and feast in the evergreens I can see out my picture window, then return to the woods each night. There is something to learn about the crows in these pages, and also about the bluebirds and chickadees. But this is more a meditation, set out in small servings, than an informational book. Enjoy it now, or as a week by week treat