Morning. Coffee. Sometimes I wonder if my primary motivation for back country exploration is the morning joe. Coffee tastes better out here. It is my meditation. Sitting in camp and sipping, present to the all-encompassing darkness while the rest of the world dreams their anxious pre-work dreams, my mind is renewed, unburdened and clear, a canvas swept clean with sleep upon which the sun will soon paint radiant hues of fresh inspiration.
First light slices through the crisp pre-dawn air. A sliver of brilliance cracks the canopy of gray-blue over an eastern mesa, the sun’s warming rays shattering the few remaining vestiges of darkness, highlighting the desert’s starkness and reminding me of my own mortality. Light and dark, night and day, life and death. Our time is all too short, my days are numbered. I hardly ever miss a sunrise anymore; there are far too few in any man’s lifetime to let even one pass willingly unnoticed.
This morning is no different save for location and the slightly metallic tinge imparted from my ultra-lightweight titanium coffee mug, a loyal companion in countless backwoods jaunts. I sip and ponder, sporadically shivering inside a wool blanket, not quite ready to face the crisp near-freezing chill of morning desert air head-on. Where do I want to travel today? South. We’ll go south. Just me and the dogs, a couple of hyperactive Labs who take after dad in their passion for exploration.
I pack my usual backwoods basics and some extras: biscuits for the ladies and a small Leatherman tool to extract the never-ending stream of cactus spines which seem to lunge forth from the soil and attack their paws at all-too-frequent intervals. Perhaps cacti aren’t nearly as vicious as I’ve portrayed them. More likely, the thrill of new discoveries blinds my dogs to care and caution as they tumble headlong through unfamiliar and endlessly fascinating terrain.
We hike with only general direction in mind, open to whatever the desert might serve up on this perfect, cloudless autumn morning. Stark yes, but the desert is also a land of infinitely varying textures. Boulders and scree pried loose from towering mesas by wind, water and gravity create an endless sea of natural sculptures in the valleys and canyons below. Blue-green junipers twisted by hot and cold, drought and downpours, wind and sun, speak the history of desert extremes to those who care to learn the language of their shapes and textures. Even flat patches of what appear as dirty, monotonous sand at a distance thrill the eyes with shape and texture up close. Cryptobiotic soil, the happy, patient marriage of dirt, sun and bacteria riddles the landscape, it’s knobby black riffles and bumps teeming with life at the microscopic level.
Hours later we come to an arroyo and stop in the shade of a boulder the size of a small bus. Beneath me, a slab of red slickrock worn smooth by millennia of spring run-off and summer rain. I peel off my shirt and stretch out on the cool mass, inviting the sun to caress my flesh with its long, hot fingers. Dry, craggy mesas riddled with juniper and pinon pine to either side of me, there’s nothing particularly spectacular about this area. Yet once again I’m mesmerized, thrilled, elated. It’s the awesome privilege of finding my tiny self cradled within millions of centuries of painstaking artistry, millennia upon millennia of Nature tirelessly working her craft, carving stone with hands of wind and water. It’s the being here, now, with no thought for yesterday or tomorrow, fully in the moment, present to the unceasing, tireless miracle of Nature.
I ease back onto the cool rock and stare hypnotically into the cloudless blue sky. Blue is different here in the desert. Not the defiled smog-filtered blue of civilization, criss-crossed by foggy contrails from busy jets ferrying busy people from one busy place to another so they can engage in still more busy-ness. This is real blue, rich, luxurious sky blue, the blue Nature left here when she put away her palette, content that she’d cloaked the sky in just the perfect shade.
A tiny, fleeting dot captures my attention. Did I see something or didn’t I? I flutter my eyelids a few times to sweep away the mental haze of sun-drenched tranquility and focus more intently. There it is: a miniscule, circling black speck, nearly invisible. I hear the raspy, guttural caw of a raven issuing forth from somewhere over the mesa and realize that this tiny fleeting phantom of my perception is in fact another raven. But what business has it, alone, at such extreme elevation? No food, no mate, seemingly no purpose. What’s the point of soaring so high?
Ah! And what is the point of sunning one’s self on a rock in the middle of nowhere? There isn’t one, other than the sheer joy of it, indulging the ecstatic stroke of Nature upon one’s flesh. Could I but fly I’d be up there as well. The raven is coasting over dizzying heights simply because he can. For the sheer joy of it.
As we put archaic, anthropocentric philosophies behind us, naturalists are discovering impressive similarities between the emotional lives of humans and animals. While too many inhabitants of this planet still cling to the ignorant belief that man holds exclusive dominion over the Earth, that its flora and fauna are merely commodities created simply for humans to tame, mow over, feed upon and destroy for his own selfish purposes, others are waking up to the fact that we’re not the only sentient, intelligent beings on the globe.
Animals do have emotions. They play. They seek pleasure. Perhaps they haven’t our capacity for reason and intelligence, but anyone who’s ever cared for a pet knows that animals experience joy, elation, love, sadness and a myriad of other emotions in their own way. If you’ve ever had the good fortune to observe falcons riding the thermals on a warm summer day, you know what I mean. They’ll soar for hours, for the sheer joy of it, dozens of them floating effortlessly.
Had you wings, would you not propel yourself as high as possible? Why would a raven be any less drawn to the vistas, the panoramas, the beauty of the world below as viewed from lofty heights? Why else would he be up there?
Anthropomorphism my ass. We’re animals, made of the same animal-stuff. Inside a bird you’ll find lungs, heart, liver, kidneys, intestines, blood and brains. A rotary engine is different from a piston engine but a Mazda is just as much an automobile as a Ford. Details define the surface, appearance and even function, but don’t alter the essence. Life is life, its essence unvarying, its myriad physical forms merely details, projections of the unwavering eternity within. Ravens play. Just like people.
Raven hints at something deeply meaningful to me but suffers a rather inconsistent and often morbid reputation in global culture and folklore. Native American cultures perceived Raven as a bringer of magic, good and evil, as a symbol of change, metamorphosis, transformation. Raven was a shape-shifter, a trickster. He could also be mischievous, a thief and even creator of the world. European cultures, ever fearful of anything dark, saw the raven as a harbinger of evil, even satanic. Psychologist Carl Jung considered it a symbol of the shadow self, our dark, hidden side. So prevalent is our superstition that a group of ravens is called a “murder.” In reality they’re remarkably expressive and intelligent birds, infinitely more fascinating than cultural mythologies might belie.
To my left, over the mesa, more raven merrymaking. A pair chase one another in first wide then narrow loops, ducking and diving, perhaps engaged in a game of tag. Suddenly roles reverse, the pursuer now the chased. “Tag, you’re it. Now you chase me.” This isn’t hunting, this isn’t food-gathering, this isn’t some “biological imperative to boost survivability and pass on adaptive genetic material blah blah blah.” This is play. For the sheer joy of it. (Arguably this is typical courtship behavior, but ravens mate in the spring, still half a year away. These boys and girls are just plain having fun.)
I’m riveted to this display of aerial ballet, my own emotions swooping, diving, soaring in rhythm with their play. Raven is the southwestern desert. The two are inextricably linked, like a mother cradling her infant, the child as much a part of her as its own independent spark of creation, the promise of something so much more.
Throughout my backcountry sojourns I’ve observed ravens in all sorts of environment. I’ve come upon what might well have been a hundred of them all at once, cawing, pecking, soaring, cackling, scratching, doing their raven thing at over 14,000 feet above sea level. I’ve watched a mating pair from my window chasing off red-tailed hawks, pecking and attacking mercilessly, presumably protecting a nearby nest. Inevitably I’m struck with a visceral sensation at these times, a lump in my gut, as though something deep inside is saying “Pay attention. Listen. Don’t you get it? There’s meaning for you here. Your encounter with Raven isn’t random.”
Watching them play overhead, I sense it again. It is a knowing; I feel it deep inside, as yet unsurfaced. Perhaps I’m thick. Maybe I’m just not ready. Perhaps Raven is speaking but my ears, debauched by the world of man, uncivilization, can no longer hear.
Good. I like it this way. I don’t want to know. Part of me, the better part of me, doesn’t want to understand. The child who believes in magic, the boy who is infatuated with the infinite mystery and primeval, raw beauty of Life doesn’t want it defiled with explanations and facts and logic.
Sheer black. Black feathers. Black eyes. Black everything. Raven is the essence, the embodiment and the bringer of mystery. Pure black is the absence of light and color. Nothingness. And in the vacant canvas of nothingness one can find everything. But I’m not ready to find everything. I don’t want to cut the mystery short. I want Raven to soar overhead always, flaunting mystery, understanding just out of reach, an undecipherable totem of the beauty of never knowing. I want to know that I can never know, that Life will always remain a profound mystery, never revealing all of her secrets.
It dawns on me that this in fact is what Raven means to me. From the not-knowing, from deep within the eternal mystery Life generates and regenerates the beauty of creation. Unfathomable, unpredictable, forever. Raven is the embodiment of that which can’t be named, the earthly ambassador of Lao Tzu’s “ten thousand things.” Deep, abiding Blackness, the absence of anything, harboring the potential for Everything. The big bang. Infinite nothingness weary of fucking itself, impregnated by the spark of Life, dazzling firmament exploding into brilliance, sowing the seeds of All.
Raven is the answer to questions I don’t know nor want to ask. Raven reminds me that I am the mystery, as are all the ten thousand things.
I may have to use this concept in a song.
“What’s the point of soaring so high? …. because he can”
hope you don’t mind.
as long as you thank me FIRST when accepting your grammy.