hooded crows, ancestors, and paint sketches

Hooded Crow, altered book art journal and sketches, HaliKarla.com

There are crows that live all around our home. They've been here with us since we moved in 5 years ago. They frequent our front and back yards, our trees - and they like to finish up the food that the ducks spill on the ground. I watch them, listening, learning, honoring. They are my daily companions, reminding me to see the mystery and transformation, all around.

I didn't know much about the Hooded Crow, though, until a few weeks ago - right about the time I began a little genealogy research into my family. I had attended a weekend on ancestral work that has brought the most interesting awareness and shifts into my perspective, re~awakening a sense of connection to my lineage that goes beyond fact and proof into rivers of healing that have been waiting generations to be acknowledged. Perhaps someday I'll write more about that.

There have been interesting factoids I've learned along the way, too, though. For instance, I may have more Cherokee in me than I ever thought - and closer in the lineage than I realized. Further back, are some documented tensions between the Cherokee and my family - with a manuscript written about a kidnapping that lasted twelve years - the manuscript is at a library just a few hours away. I also learned that there are many of my ancestors buried just a few hours from where I live here in Western North Carolina (I had no idea about this when we moved here - just that I was so drawn to this landscape).

I also knew before that we are quite Irish - but it ends up there's a great deal of Scottish in there, too. Both of those places are also the land of the Hooded Crow - so I've become even more intrigued in this particular member of the corvidae family.

I feel a little bit like she's helping me, across all the distance, to honor the remembered and forgotten parts of who I am.

796px-Hooded_Crow