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?”
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.
leaves coming
osprey mates for life
not just good times
as long as river flows
-paul manski
