Ode to Turkey Vultures

This is another essay I wrote for Literature on a philosophical subject. The inspiration for it came from The Trip after seeing so many close up views of Vultures. Surprisingly for many people, this essay is about beauty.

I used to hate Turkey Vultures. When I was little, sitting in the bottom of a canoe, only one bird held my attention—the Eagle. All the rest were middling, not worthy of consideration. The Turkey Vultures absorbed all of my parent’s attention. When they should have been scanning the skies for my precious eagles, they would instead exclaim, “Look! a TV!” Not only did the birds fly too high for me to distinguish any details, but they also had an obtuse nickname. If the bird was as great as people seemed to think, why call it after an electronic device? I never heard anyone call a Bald Eagle a “BE”. In my mind, Turkey Vultures shouldn’t have been allowed to grace the azure skies. It never occurred to me that there were many valid opinions about beauty, and that those opinions could be transformed by experience.
“No object is so beautiful that, under certain conditions, it will not look ugly,” said Oscar Wilde. However the reverse is also true. Nothing is so ugly, that under certain conditions, it can’t be beautiful. Beauty can be found anywhere, in the harshest and most repulsive conditions on earth. The pattern of light flashing off the reflective windows in a forest of skyscrapers is elegant. The ocean of lights from a city at night is one persons dream and another’s nightmare. A person helping in a soup kitchen is grace to some, but repugnant to others. Beauty can be found anywhere—even in the oil that floats on the surface of the ocean.
I often have different ideas of beauty than my family. I enjoy different music, different styles of art, and find different cultural and physical landscapes alluring. The Grand Canyon with its classic screensaver-beauty does not sing to me. Don't get me wrong, canyons are breathtaking, but they don’t anchor my soul. Instead, BC’s wild crags and densely forested islands in the raging ocean croon to me. Towering mountains with clouds snagged on the peaks, and sharp trees poking at the sky, resonate within me. Also, the jagged edges of the Polynesian Islands that slide dramatically into the endless ocean ensnare my imagination.
Compare this with my family. My grandfather enjoys realistic paintings of rolling pastureland and gardens, grain elevators and prairie landscapes. My mother finds the pale rouges and pinks of the American Southwest enthralling. My twelve-year old brother thinks the Millennium Falcon Star Wars LEGO ship is the epitome of beauty. Beauty and magic appear in alternate forms to different minds.
This past year, my family and I went on a road trip that transformed my ideas of beauty. There were very few constants, but one was the Turkey Vulture. No matter where we were, desert, beach, or small town, we would see Turkey Vultures soaring high above the land looking for carrion. In Arizona, we were privy to undulating gyres of buzzards. Driving though Mexico, we observed Turkey Vultures who perched on cacti. While camping on beaches on the Baja Peninsula, we would wake up to find three or four large buzzards surveying their domain. Nothing missed their little black eyes. I could see the infinite detail of their wrinkled red heads. Looking up when a Turkey Vulture flew above, I would be rewarded with a view of the light and dark shadows playing on their wings. I discovered these birds were a living collage of colour, texture, and motion. I also discovered that “Turkey Vulture” was too long to say—so, I shortened their name to T.V. Beautiful, eh?