It took me four years to settle on the name for my property. I wanted something that related to the place and had personal significance. Eventually, the name Sparrow & Crow Farm found me.

Evoking balance

I have an abundance of crows and a plentitude of California Towhees, a member of the sparrow family. One bird is small, gentle, and seemingly insignificant. Yet it is ubiquitous, filling the ground, the bush, and the air with its numbers. The other is large, bold, and stubborn, making her presence known in such a fierce and raucous way that one must stop and take note.

I desire to hold both of these spirits together — a sort of yin and yang balance.

Both of these birds are also used in my religious tradition as a reminder to let go of fear, worry, and anxiety. God notices even the tiny sparrow. Do not fear. The ravens do not farm, they have no barn, and yet God feeds them. Do not worry.

I have found peace in this imagery for many years. Even as a young child, those passages captured my attention. 

Confronting worry and fear

It was through my health journey with Psoriatic Arthritis and later Dysautonomia (Long Covid) , both driven by a hyper-reactive nervous system, that I came to realize that my struggles with stress, fear, and anxiety were greater than I realized. 

Even though I didn’t understand the depth of my nervous system dysregulation for years after naming my farm, nor how to free myself from it, I knew finding a release from worry was something I desired.

A great trial of anxiety and fear exploded into my life the year I named my farm. In 2017, my area was ravaged by devastating firestorms. Thousands of homes were burned in just a few hours.

I woke one October night to the sounds and smells of the Tubbs Fire raging only miles from me. Within an hour, what was far away appeared to be just upon us. The entire skyline glowed a terrible bright red; the traffic of thousands fleeing blocked one of our two means of escape.

Filled with terror of being trapped, I too fled.

When I returned to my land the next day, I found my home still standing. The air was a yellow brown. There was no sky.

There was a deafening quiet to the place. No cars, no planes, no wind, no sounds of animals — the still deadness of a land abandoned. The eerie silence around me was punctuated by the loud sounds of my breath in a plastic gas mask.

Choosing love

My beliefs did not save my house from the fires. To try to find some reasoning behind its destructive path is futile; to say God spared one, but not another, is heresy. But my faith did support me as I attempted to recover from the anxiety that consumed me that week and which lingered in my system for many years to come.

A few days after the fire, as the air began to slowly shed its acrid haze, I noticed for the first time that the silence had been broken: bird song, the first sounds to return to the land.

It seemed to me, though chosen months before, this was the real christening of my farm's name. 

It was not that I thought then, "This place will survive. This bird song is a sign of permanence for your farm. Do not worry." I knew then that it all could be gone in a very instant. The worry, the fear, and the anxiety were not worth my energy.  

Living in a new awareness of impermanence, with the gentle persistence of a sparrow, and the fierce boldness of a crow, I strive to teach my mind and body to choose love over fear.