PHOTO: Lisa Durkee According to James Liptons book An Exaltation of Larks, a group of turkeys is called a raft, as in a large, often motley collection of things: a raft of books. (p 47). I do not intend to challenge the term found in the 1486 book by Dame Juliana, “The Boke of Saint Albans,” or the earlier “Egerton Manuscript,” 1450, but rather to add to it my own term of venery for a gathering of these birds based on personal experience.
One evening last week, all of us attending the writing workshop at Collegeville, ate dinner at the Episcopal House of Prayer just down the road from the Institute. After wine and lentil stuffed peppers, we walked to see the Oratory that sits next door. Chairs circled the diameter of the prayer room, pillows and mats dotting the space between the edge and the center circle that was filled with sand and held an ornate brass cross on a tall standard. The space above the center telescoped out in softly lit layers that drew the eye to the evening sky.
A small rectangular space sat at the four direction points, a window looking out at the nearby woods. Four women were gathered in one of these, looking outside and discussing a bird in their view.
I heard snatches of their conversation:
Do you think its a wild turkey?
No. I dont think they can fly that high.
Maybe its a turkey buzzard.
As one who had made a list of birds I might see while in Minnesota, I walked over and looked out the window to see the mysterious creature. in my youth, tired from hiking, I rested under a tree that soon filled with turkey buzzards. They were huge. I moved around enough to let them know I was alive but not enough to draw attention to myself, breathing easier after they decided to check out another tree. The bird outside the Oratory did not look like a turkey buzzard to me.
I think it is a wild turkey, I said, noting visible stripes on the tail feathers. I saw some roosting in trees when I drove from the Cities to Collegeville a couple of years ago.
I volunteered to walk around the outside of the building the woods and make noise to startle the bird into flight for easier identification. The monks of Saint Johns Abbey are good stewards of their few thousand acres, and keep most of it as a nature preserve, including the area around the House of Prayer. The tree was a few steps away.
At the boundary between lawn and woods, I purposely tromped on every dry branch in my path. The bird did not move. Keeping a lookout for poison ivy, I inched my way closer to the tree, stooped to pick up a stick, and hurled it into the woods. The bird did not move. Branch after branch hit trunks and leaves. Still, the bird did not move.
I looked behind me. Four faces pressed against the Oratory window. Someone was taking photos. Probably Lisa. She had just finished documenting Renee striking the singing bowl with its wooden mallet, sending a reverberating gong out into the round prayer room like ripples from a stone fallen into water.
A gnarly branch, thick as two thumbs, caught my eye. I picked it up. Bleached and riddled with bug holes, it broke easily over my knee. Craaaack! The bird shifted, partially lifting a wing before settling down again. Holding half the branch in my right hand, I swung my arm back like someone preparing for a long cast.
Whoosh! I let it fly. Its wobbly spin took it through a veil of leaves and then thunked it against a limb. That did it.
I caught my breath as the huge bird exploded before my eyes becoming four birds, awkwardly flying in different directions, but staying close to the tree. I had disturbed a mother and three young wild turkeys from their evening rest. They retuned and clucked their alarm as they walked along another branch. A mother myself, I felt remorse. I know the difficultly of quieting three children and putting them to bed.
Sorry, I whispered, and bowed slightly, like the monks do in the Abbey Church as they enter in a double line, turn just before the altar, and reverence the Divine Presence in the other as they peel off and walk toward their choir stalls at either side of the sanctuary.
Surely I was on holy ground.
© 2012 Mary van Balen
Speak Your Mind