view from above

neighbor from another realm.

the front of our house was a barren lawn and unused pavement.

now, it's life.

the crow first came near us when we took a decades-old tarp from the ground and exposed worms...

now, he has a favorite spot on the fence we built.

every evening, most of the year, he joins hundreds of crows flying overhead to gather. every morning, the crow and his companion come back to this block.

I think about how they recognize it from above.

*our block, in pavement (light gray), buildings (dark gray), and land (tan).*

walking around, I see patterns of pavement, buildings, and barren land where more could be living.

but the crows have many areas of life to visit here, and many humans who toss them peanuts:

it feels like the beginning of a local gift economy¹.

*even the smallest barren strips could be filled with abundant life.*

"In a gift economy, wealth is understood as having enough to share, and the practice for dealing with abundance is to give it away...the natural world is understood as a gift instead of private property." Kimmerer, Robin Wall. The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World Scribner, 2024.