March 3, 2014 Buzzards, Angels of Death

Out in the country, on highway 56 between Spartanburg and Clinton, I pass two groups of buzzards feasting on roadkill on the shoulder of the road.  In South Carolina, there are two types of vulture, the black and the turkey. The turkey has a bald red head.  We call them buzzards here.  There are nearly always these large dark birds of 5 to 6 feet wing span circling in the sky.  Before the advent of cars and roadkill, their diet must have been much more limited.

Up close, these birds are not pretty.  Once one flew up from the roadside only inches away from my windshield and filled the car with the dark, loathsome smell of rotting carcass.  It is interesting to me that they are dressed in black like the  undertakers they are instead of decorated in colorful plumage with a little feather crown on their heads like the peacock.  They are protected by the government because we need them to do their job.

At Musgrove Mill State Historic site, I walk the loop trail along the flooded Enoree.  The tan clay banks and the muted green water remind me of caramel today.  Many large trees have fallen during the long winter and litter the ground of the forest.  Brian Robson, the park manager, tells me that rangers were out off the public trails cutting down a dead tree and found an arrow head.  These weapons of the early people are difficult to find now even where once this was their hunting ground.

Still over the many years, the river flows, the turtles bask on the logs, the deer roam the forest and the buzzards come and do their work.

In the final days of my mother's life, I used to come here and walk, when she was in the Presbyterian Home in Clinton.  She was 98 years old on the day of her death.  In the hours just before dawn I drove this road to the hospital in Laurens.  As the sun came up, I saw an old barn with many black buzzards roosting on its roof.  It seemed an omen.

And still today, the ancient river flows on. The birds are silent.  I see the tracks of the deer and the platter shaped turtles on the logs.  There is a light rain.