Birds of Omen I.

A brief, personal mythology of Raven

Two ravens near Truckee, CA // photo: Emma Liles

This morning I woke in the deep indigo light of pre-dawn, thinking about ravens.

In the wild medicine mandala of my life, Raven is one of the first teachers to appear. When I want to remember the golden threads that weave themselves not just through days or months, I think about ravens, who weave through my years becoming decades. Yes, the crows have been constant since the day I was born, along with the blue jays, and cardinals, robins, chickadees, finches - and these are all perfectly important. But Raven is the first bird to ever teach me that the book of the world could be read.

I didn’t know or care, or know to care about ravens until I lived in Alaska during my twenty-third summer. Thirty miles upriver from the Bearing Sea, I was the only girl at the fishing lodge, besides the wife side of the proprietorship. That suited me, since growing up I usually preferred the company of boys anyway. I cleaned the nine cabins and served meals with the chef in the main lodge. The guides took the weekly guests out on the river flowing down from the mountain Old Woman. The river is named unalakleet, Inupik for where the east wind blows. The waters branch into rivulets and fingers, curling through the tundra, before melding into two main forks - the north and south - eventually pouring out into Norton Sound. The sea. Where the east wind blows, and how.

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6/10/10 
From our cruising altitude the landscape appeared as a form of communication the intellect cannot understand, yet something that is written in the heart. Rivers spiraled and snaked along like cursive lines of an ancient tongue long-forgotten except by those who can still understand the calls of the birds, traces of the herds, and other lonely sounds communicating themselves across the tundras and wide-open expanses of space. Vast patterns, combinations and modulations of the four great elements, wind, fire, water, and earth, unfolding in an abundant display – demonstrating the limitless potential of space as the great stage for all the world, and indeed, the entire universe. My wireless status reads “not connected, no connections are available;” landing in Unalakleet has been the great unhooking. 
- Author's Journal

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It was a specific kind of heaven for me. The vastness, so utterly and completely wild. The tundra stretching visually in every direction. The tempest of the wind, the pounding of the sea. The unforgivable terrain. Something long-dormant woke within me during the flight from Anchorage out to the rocky, storm-bent edge of the continent. Alaska just gets into your blood was one of the many iconic (and true) one-liners I would hear from my boss, along with bad news doesn’t get better with time and if you can’t take the time to do it right the first time, how the hell do you think you’ll do it right the second time? (I still reflexively default to that thinking when I catch myself rushing through something.)

Ravens. At first I bulked them in with crows, meaning no disrespect. The big black bird archetype. There is always some kind of big black bird. And I didn’t think too much of them. Until one day when I was doing the guest laundry in the tiny shed built right on the side of the river. I could fold the sheets and look out over my left shoulder and watch the water rush by. I happened to have stepped outside, and happened to have leaned over the railing, and happened to see: a raven flying downriver, low over the water. Right in front of me, at eye level, they klook klooked while doing a half barrel roll. Between two flaps they flipped completely upside down and then right-side up, not making a full rotation, but turning back the way they came. The moment pressed itself into my psyche. I see it still. The swift gray waters, dull beneath the heavy blanket of clouds. The muted tones of the opposite river bank. The black feathers beating to a rhythm, the wild pulse of my own body landing in time with the oracular downbeat. Klook klook. The convergence was undeniably specific.

I mentioned this happenstance to the chef, who told me that the natives considered it special. A good omen. I tucked this neatly into my file of Most Important Things to Know About the World.

…

It’s autumn 2021: a new moon and we are at Lost Lake. In the evening we have plans for an essence cocreation, and sending out an invitation to those who want to play with us feels like the proper thing to do. So I have the rattles - the maracas that were given to us on a Winter Solstice - and we are gathered on a mound of earth looking over the lake from its southern shore. I put the call out. Anyone who wants to join us in making new moon medicine magic is summoned. Then I close my eyes and enter into the trance of the rattles, which scrub my nervous system of the ordinary present moment, entraining brain waves into alpha and theta. Time drops away, and above the steady sizzle-drone of the rattle trance, a distinctive whoosh whoosh whoosh whoosh grows louder and louder, wending its way through the treetops, passing directly over our heads. I keep my eyes closed, but I know who it is. Klook klook.

How many times now have I heard the raven fly overhead? The air ringing in the wake of flapping feathers. The sound slicing through the still desert air, cutting through the pines on the mountain.

…

It’s the spring of 2022. Victor and I are in the Red Rock Secret Wilderness in Sedona, Arizona. Raven has already visited and approved of our camp. We receive regular morning fly-overs. A few days in, we are summoned by a feeling two miles into the desert, to the base of the red sandstone cliffs. There’s no doubt it is a very cool spot. Then we realize we have been drawn to where the ravens are roosting, and it becomes something sacred. Blissful. A teacher of the holy wild has invited us into their home. Yes I will bow on the threshold in thanks and praise. Yes I will stand in awe.

Victor captures a few minutes on film of me trading calls with one of the ravens, a guttural croaking I have only recently accomplished.

…

If Raven is speaking, I am listening.

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Deep in the lost sands of time aka my Google Drive, I found a video log I made for my parents while I was in Alaska on that trip. It was 2010, long before talking to yourself on a screen was normal. The video is lengthy, awkward, and I go into detail about things I had forgotten over the years - like the weasels who lived in the walls of my cabin, and who would drag smelly things into their nest. My speech cadence is odd because I had been spending six months out of each year in India. I had learned to speak a version of broken English to make me more intelligible to Hindi speakers. When I would come back to the States, people would ask me if I was European - French was a common guess. I almost didn’t watch the whole fifteen minutes because of how cringey I felt. But Victor wanted to see it, and I figured I could deal with my embarrassment. Nine minutes in, I am reading aloud some writing I had done about a solo excursion out on the tundra:

"Actually, it was neither the berries nor the absent moose that lured me into this lovely adventure, but the sound of a raven klook klooking, like the sound of dropping water from someplace tucked in the far away in the firs."

I pause my recitation to claim: I can’t do it very well, but I’m telling you guys, one day I’m going to be able to talk to the ravens! No kidding!

"For time on end I traded calls with the mysterious bird wishing my klooking would draw him from his lofty perch over to my direction where perhaps he would share a bit of forest lore and mountain wisdom with this wayfaring wanderer." 

I forgot I had laid claim to the experience. The universe never forgets. The winds of change blow across the face of the earth, but the source of what ignites us never goes out. For the record, I still can’t make the sound like dropping water.

…

When Raven comes around I have learned to pay attention. To open my senses to the vision of meaning that is the present moment.

…

I resonate well within my soul when I abide within Raven territory. I breathe a sigh of relief when I see my first one after months in other realms. Maybe it’s because they are creatures of the North, kindred to the Land of Winter and higher altitudes. Drawn out of the same matrix as the cold, thin air, the endless firs and pines. Maybe it’s because they are creatures of the desert, a living expression tearing a rip in space-time amidst infinite silence and unyielding patience. Maybe it’s because they remind me of the continuum between who I am in this moment and the liminal fount of untouched potential. Maybe it’s because they irreverently moves between worlds. Between dimensions. In more than one culture Raven is associated with magic, with shapeshifting, dancing in and out of the void. Whenever there’s a blizzard in the mountains, I predictably find the ravens cajoling on the storm’s edge. Out playing where and when no one else dares.

The dance of Raven is the glossy blackness of inner space. The place where inner and outer blend and move as one. With the drum, one time those feathers became me. And in my body I felt the seam of the world tremble asunder.

If Crow is Law, the laws of the universe which precede anything conjured by the intellect, Raven is the Shapeshifting we do when that law is applied.

One evening last year, I was sitting outside our winter abode at the feet of the Sierra Nevada. I saw waves upon waves of ravens flying up into the mountains. An unkindness. Quorum was being held. I have requested an invitation to that gathering.

(Good listening below)