I was thinking about buzzards the other day. It’s funny, a lot of people see them as a bad omen, something grim circling overhead. But for me, they’ve always felt different. It started to click back during the Gulf oil spill, when I was part of a volunteer cleanup crew. There was so much mess, so much damage, and all we were trying to do was clean it up, to help the land and water heal. It felt thankless and heavy at times.
Then I remembered the buzzards. They’re nature’s cleanup crew, you know? They don’t create death; they transform it. They take what’s been left behind and, in a way, make room for new life. It’s a pretty noble job when you think about it. I read that some ancient cultures really got this. The Egyptians saw them as mothers, symbols of life coming from what was over. Some Native traditions view them as purifiers. There’s even old alchemical thought about turning the base into something sacred—it’s all about that cycle.
It got me wondering about the messes we clean up in our own lives. Have you ever had a period where you felt like you were just sorting through old wreckage, emotional or otherwise? Maybe it felt ugly at the time, but later you saw how it made space for something new to grow. I’ve been noticing fewer birds around my place lately, which feels like its own kind of signal. Makes me pay more attention to the small signs.
If you’re curious about this kind of thing, I found a really interesting read on vulture symbolism that ties a lot of these thoughts together. It’s wild how nature holds up a mirror to our own experiences. Have you ever had a moment where an animal or a sign in nature seemed to reflect something you were going through?
