 |
| A liquor store parking lot, and a journey back through time. |
I've noticed this lot ever since I moved back up to Rockland County, after many years away. Last winter, I began walking to town, first from my mother's place, then closer to town on my own. It's a little cemetery squeezed in between two shopping lots, a place of history that pops out in contrast to the bland surroundings. But the headstones weren't the only thing that attracted my notice. A lot of loud-mouthed, raucous crows squawked at me whenever I walked to the grocery store, cutting across one parking lot to the next.
 |
| Who are they? |
I'm no stranger to the bird of my Corvus line, an ancestry of Norman, French Swiss, and Irish, who take their heraldic symbol from the large black crow. Whenever I cawed back at them, they answered me every single time, being the excellent and highly intelligent mimics that they are. The names on the stones read Bogert (http://books.google.com/books?id=WdwNExWb7_QC&pg=PA42&lpg=PA42&dq=Jan+Bogert+New+York&source=bl&ots=aNFCMqTdtM&sig=5YRC7DNAO9ON14cu-meztwUv8nw&hl=en&sa=X&ei=6FNBVMi-LajlsATNs4Eo&ved=0CEYQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=Jan%20Bogert%20New%20York&f=fals), a family that I thought could be remnants of the old French Huguenots who sailed down the Hudson from Canada, looking for lumber and good farming, which is something this river valley has always had in abundance.
 |
| A historical marker: hidden, but also in plain sight. |
Since then, I've read excerpts about the Bogerts (www.mytrees.com/ancestry/New-York/Died-1707/Bo/Bogert-family/Jan-Bogert-an001161-302.html), a prominent New York Dutch family who changed their name immediately upon arrival in New Amsterdam, when they began buying land in large parcels.
 |
| A noisy family of crows circled overhead, whenever I came near. |
And just like so much in my life, a seemingly random gaggle of circling, noisy black birds led me back in time to a place of big mythological significance to me, because not only am I heir to the oldest Métis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%A9tis) and Acadian roots of this New World, but I am also a descendant of the very first Dutch and British families, too.
 |
| Cemetery in wintertime. |
Such is the nature of inheritance, in this Autumn time when the old spirits and the new mingle in the air over cemeteries from times long past, beckoning to me again and again, by no mere accident or quirk of chance. That's the power of fate.
Ah, yes. This is no accident or random event.
When our local historian, who is also one of our librarians, told me that the old Bogert farm was near a large well and the encampments of two Indian tribes, I had to smile because deep down, I already knew it. I felt it in my bones, just as the crows called it out to me showily, heralding aloud that I had arrived safely home, from travels near and far, surviving adventures both small and frightful, big and powerful, dangerous and heady, just like my ancestors had. I'm back, and I'm ready to share my story with all of you.
 |
| Marker I. |
 |
| Marker II. |
