Today I Made Peace with Raven

     Today was a good day, I made peace with the black raven. Raven and I go back a long ways, raven has always been there hawking, and cawing. He’ll slap his throat and sound like  glass tinkling in the bottom of a deep hole. He’s always watching, looking, seeing what’s going on. He doesn’t miss a trick, nothing goes unnoticed. He’ll be the first to hit on road kill, he enjoys it just fine. He’s not particular, he’s a survivor. He’s not a fine hunter, like the red tailed hawk I seen. Hawk will just swoop down. Drop down out of the sky like lightning, quiet without thunder. The cottontail rabbit knows what’s going on. It’s not life and death so much as always saying yes. “Ok you got me.’, cotton tail says. He’ll just stand still and wait his turn, giving into the moment.

       One time I asked cottontail rabbit, I said, “What’s up man?” Why don’t you run when hawk comes swooping down?” “How come you’ll freeze up, like you’re saying, ‘Go ahead. Eat me.’”? What’s up with that?” Rabbit told me. “You just don’t get it. You got to see it through my eyes. Couldn’t have hawks without rabbits. Can’t have rabbits without hawks. We’re one and the same. You think you’re different. If you’re seeing me it’s because I’m seeing you through the same eyes.”

     Well I had to think on that one for a while, what rabbit told me. Raven though, he’s an opportunist. I’m not sure if he creates opportunities or if he is the opportunity. Or if he’s just always waiting, watching. I’m not sure if Raven makes things happen, or he is what happen.

      Lot’s of times I’d prefer to see a hawk, or even a juniper jay, raven gets the job done though. He doesn’t quit. He’s the first to come back after a fire, and the last to leave. He’s like mullein, fireweed, Ambrosia, he’ll return after the hottest fires. He’ll do just fine. Raven doesn’t need beauty or pristine situations, a garbage dump is just fine.

     I had no plan on making peace with the raven today. I didn’t get up and say, “Well, today’s the day I make peace with raven. It’s the middle of winter, almost New Years, so I better make peace with raven today.” No, not like that at all. I didn’t have any plans at all to make peace with blackie. I don’t even like ravens to be honest. Ther’re kinda disturbing. They’ll keep cawing, caw, caw, caw. It’s loud too. It’s not a woodpecker bom, bom, bom, bom hammering in the morning. You know woodpecker has sense. Woodpecker has a plan. He’s eating bugs. He’s getting those pine bark beetles in the ponderosa pines. He’s doing something constructive, something that helps the forest. Saves the trees. Raven though, he just making racket, making a loud noise.

     If I had my plinker with me, and he would of  kept it up, I might  of took a  shot. Just to scare him off. I was trying to find tranquility, peace. I wasn’t wanting to hear quacking and honking, caw, caw. When you go walking in the woods it’s like that. You don’t always find what you’re looking for.

               So as I kept walking I knew I had to do something. The thing is when you’re dealing with wild creatures you have to take a different approach. There’s a different approach for the tame and the wild. Especially if you don’t have a plinker.

     Now, I could of threw a stone, or yelled. These are wild ravens, these aren’t the kind that hang out at dumpsters. They live in the woods. They hang out with turbnella oaks, emoryi, alligator junipers and ponderosa pine. Twenty five miles from the nearest town. These aren’t the kind of ravens you can scare off throwing a stone. They fly like eagles. They soar. They play in the sky. This is their playhouse. This is raven’s playhouse. You can see them playing around on the thermals along the rim rocks. They fly high. They spin and dance around in the air. They don’t fly for a purpose. They are the purpose. This was a day in the raven’s playhouse. It was annoying. I was in their spot. This is their place not mine.

    So with this type of raven, you’ll need a different approach. You need to engage with these ravens. Good thing I learned how to do that way back when I was a sheepherder for the Spratts up at Lysite, Lost Cabins, Wyoming. All the way from the gas hills near Riverton, to Alkali creek. Up to the Little Big Horns, in back a Tensleep.  Old Basque Joe Aguilar, taught me that. When I went to visit him and his dog Ponchitta.

     We were dropping lambs near the Owl creeks, just a little ways past Boyson. The weather had turned and eight inches of spring snow was turning everything into a soupy mess. So we had to stay put. I couldn’t move. We put our wagons next to each other, real close, maybe a quarter mile away. When you’re herding, your alone except when you’re with the drop bunch.

        These were Columbia Ramboulette cross, and those ewes were good lambers even with snow. We found some dry ground on the south side of Alkali creek. His bunch were on one side, mine on the other. When they came down to water they could get into a lot of trouble if they crossed the creek. Couldn’t get them mixed. So we be up on the hillside counting our blacks, watching the snow melt, eating mutton stew and drinking coffee, talking.

     Joe didn’t talk much, he’d eyeball you. There were a lot of buzzards and ravens eating the placenta and after birth. Circling and with the cow birds eating up the grain we fed the horses.  He taught me how to engage with the ravens. He said. “You gotta talk to ‘em. Tell them what you want them to do. You’re the top hand. They’ll listen to ya. Butcha gotta talk to em’.”

     Now this conversation was over two weeks, eating lot’s a mutton. Drinking coffee. Watching snow melt. So I am speeding it up so you can follow. Now the ravens and buzzards didn’t seem to bother Joe’s bunch like they did mine. They’d be all over my bunch, sqwuaking and cawing, and making an awful ruckus.  You know when you see something like that, it bothers you. “What the heck is he dong, that I’m not?”

@realEmilyYoucis @YouTube "Today I Made Peace with Raven". - my @PaulManski https://t.co/UUok6MyPHz pic.twitter.com/FB5x1jlpWG

— Paul 🐟Manski (@PaulManski) December 31, 2016

      So we’d split up around 10, send our bunches in different directions which was hard looking for grass. Joe always took the best grass, I had to give him that, he was a top hand. Doing this longer than the year’s I’d been born with. So I tried it. Talking to ravens. Felt like a fool but had to do something. I wasn’t sure what kind of voice to use. So I tried whispering. I tried just a normal voice. I sang songs to them. I tried yelling in a loud voice. I tried to talk with a Basque accent, like Joe. Nothing worked. So I was thinking maybe talk to them in Basque, whatever the heck that was. I knew a few words in Spanish and Basque sounds like Spanish, maybe that would work. Nothing worked.

     So after a few days Joe said to me, “Any luck?”, now for Joe that’s a lot of talk. Joe told me, “I’ll be back, going to Riverton,” Joe was going to get laid at a whorehouse in Riverton with some cheap Mexican hookers. One of them was a real fine piece of ass I heard. Her name was Lydia. In fact rumor was she got the clap working at a whorehouse in Pahrump Nevada, but she was clean now, but had to wait 30 days before she could go back to the Cottontail Ranch. She was waiting for a checkup. Those girls are well kept some of them were blondes. She was a Steed from Colorado City and rumor had it she had a falling out with Rulon Jeffs, the head prophet up that way. Lost her kids to the third wife and had been running ever since. Any way she was worse than a jack Mormon. She definitely had strong Neanderthal traits. She had freckles all over her body, they even said down to her back pocket, but I never got a chance to see that.

     Well if Joe was going to Riverton, he could be back Wednesday or gone till Fall, could never tell with those guys. He did say he’d show me how to talk to ravens, I took him at his word. I’d have my hands full till he got back with two bunches, no talking to ravens till then.

       Joe did come back Wednesday, I figured he probably needed to go to the bank. He never told me if he went to the whorehouse, he did have a haircut, so I figured he probably did.

     So I said to Joe, “I’ve never heard you talking to ravens.” He said a couple hours later, “you don’t talk out loud. You talk in pictures.” So I figured that was bull shit. I knew Ace was putting out cyanide for the coyotes. I figured the ravens were probably eating it, he just forgot to spread any on my side of the creek.

     Did never find out if talking to the ravens in pictures worked or not because a few days later lambing was wrapping and I left the drop bunch with 1000 Columbia ramboulette cross ewes and lambs and headed up towards Tensleep. I was ready to get out of there anyway, I kept thinking about Lydia Steed and her freckles. It was driving me nuts. Joe Aguilar had a transistor radio, and every time this duet with Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt and Emmy Lou Harris came on I kept thinking about Riverton.

     I had forgotten that story with Joe Aguilar until I was walking today in the woods looking for some decent red root. Not the kind I’ve been finding lately which has been yellow on the inside. I hate red root that’s yellow. I mean yellow red root? C’mon. I mean it still makes a decent medicine, but it you compare it to redroot that’s red all the way through it’s just not the same. It doesn’t have that wintergreen. It doesn’t have the bite.

     These ravens were really bothering me, focusing on me. I guess they hungry. It’s just that I didn’t come up here to listen to caw, caw, caw. I hadn’t thought of Joe Aguilar in years. What’s that about? So I tried it, I started talking in pictures to the raven. I saw the raven flying high in the sky. It worked the raven started riding the thermals on the rimrocks. He was dancing in the sky, real pretty to watch. I called him back down and he came back and landed in a big Ponderosa pine that was struck by lightning. Then I realized I had to make with the raven. That’s why I came up here, not for red root.

     Unfinished business. I had to remember, take serious the memories. I had been forgetting. I had been trying to escape the thoughts of my own mind. I hadn’t been paying attention. I hadn’t been listening. I was too concerned with what people would say about me. I wanted approval. I blocked access to my own thinking. I started looking out, or even looking in, but neither looking out or looking in is important- what matters is looking at whatever is there. Seeing it.

    So me and the ravens we were talking back and forth in pictures. Me sitting on the edge of the rimrocks, raven up in the lightning struck Ponderosa pine. Raven was raven, I was myself. We were both listening. I wasn’t sure if were listening to one another But I felt listening going on. I felt more sensitive. I started to notice how my body felt sitting on the edge of this cliff.

     Along time ago there was another raven A raven in a chicken coup. There was a raven bothering my chickens. I got extremely pisssed off with that raven. I would get up in the morning at sunrise, to get that raven. We both had issues with some chickens some time ago. Well not issues with the chickens, issues with the eggs. We both liked that sweet, creamy orange yolk from those little Arcana hens.

     I was living by this time just west of the Paria river. In a little bit of private land surrounded by BLM. I loved those chickens and loved those eggs. Winter was starting to freeze, the hens weren’t laying well. Then it started. This raven started cracking the eggs and eating up the yolks. I wasn’t getting any eggs at all, just broken shells. Raven would sit up in a shred bark Utah one seeded juniper. Wait for the hens to lay. Then hop step into the coup and eat them. This raven was getting the best of me, the only thing I could think of the black raven eating my blue Arcana chicken eggs.

     So raven and I got into this struggle. I’d set out there with my plinker, waiting for raven to land in the juniper. Without fail as soon as I moved, he’d fly off. I tried everything. I set up a blind, as soon as I grabbed my plinker,  the raven would fly away. This went on for some time I did get some good shots, not sure if I winged him, as he took off. I might of gotten him I don’t know.

     As things would have it, it didn’t matter. Not much later a tall leggy bobcat got in the coup. Hop stepping just like the raven. As I was still trying to get raven I had my plinker next to the coup. I ended up shooting the bobcat. Turns out he had a bum leg. Usually bob cats don’t hang around people. Not during the day. Got a decent skin from that cat, which I brain tanned, funny thing after that the raven disappeared. He never came back. Maybe I did get him, not sure.

     That was the unfinished business. So now to day on my hike, all these thoughts of ravens and unfinished business. That’s what I needed to clear up. When I walk in the woods there can’t be unfinished business. I needed to solve the past to embrace the present. The past was holding me back. Unfinished business with raven had to be addressed now.

      So I explained to raven in pictures how nice I thought he was flying. How sleek and black his feathers looked in the grey sky as he was riding the thermals. I was glad I saw him today. I gave him some more pictures. I saw the raven flying way up in the sky. I saw him with his mate, and I hoped she’d be a good one.

I wished them well to have lot’s of raven chicks, lot’s of babies.

    I can’t say the raven gave me any pictues. I did look straight down where I was sitting. I’m not sure the raven gave me a picture to look down or not. The raven took off back to the thermals. I realized I made peace with the black raven. Something changed. Algerita. Didn’t expect to see any Oregon grape up this way. When I looked down I saw two Mahonia, two Berberis repens. I had been hiking about three or four hours and hadn’t seen any. Right there at my feet were two. One was bright green, the other bright red.

     I pulled up a little piece and started chewing on the bright mustard yellow Algerita root. The peace got deeper and deeper. I knew I had been holding on to that for a long time. It was a block.  I was fighting that black raven. I couldn’t see the raven only the Arcana eggs.  I couldn’t see how beautiful he flies. I was disturbed by the ravens honking, caw, caw, caw.

     I kept eating Algerita. I knew it was the medicine I was needing. It was a good medicine. I never felt that from Oregon grape. It was bitter, with a hint of east coast sassafras, hint of wintergreen. I knew deer brought medicine, everybody knows that. Not ravens, this was something new. I was finally feeling better n this, some kind of breakthrough. Then I realized the raven was gone.

    So I sent a picture just like Joe Aguilar said. I called back the raven. I sent him a picture of Algerita. Just a tiny bit of blue sky broke through. The mountains on the other side were illuminated. I felt there was an exchange, good medicine. Finally today I made peace with the raven.