The raven materialized out of nothing. The denim blue skies, empty save for a few wispy clouds produced this shadowy, feathered apparition as suddenly as a magician pulls a rabbit from his hat. He glided in on a gust of chilly wind, landing noiselessly on the snow-encrusted summit of our now shared mountaintop. Just a few yards apart, we regarded each other I think with mutual curiosity. He was quite beautiful. Wrapped in an unblemished uniform of the darkest black, it shone occasionally when reflecting the light of the sun. Shifting left and right he watched me, the irises of his eyes so dark they merged seamlessly with the pupils to form deep, inky pools. He uttered a soft, deep croak, causing his long neck feathers to ruffle out delicately, urging me to share my well-earned sandwich. Other than my own breathing, it was the only sound to penetrate the silence in our isolated retreat.
Today was a day when I’d needed to turn down the volume. A year's worth of news and opinion concerning economic turmoil, wars and deportations was building into a cacophony loud enough to trigger sensory overload and disorientation. I threw my backpack into the car and bolted into the mountains. With my phone set to “do not disturb”, I set out on one of my favorite hikes: to the summit of Tom Dick and Harry Mountain. While its name might imply a very ordinary nature, dwarfed as it is by its larger and rather more famous neighbor, on this day it was nothing short of spectacular–a tonic for mind and body.
My solitary walk through the Salmon-Huckleberry Wilderness yielded nothing but the soft crunch of boots on firmly packed snow and the occasional bird song. Climbing slowly through classically dense, Pacific Northwest forest, criss-crossing streams filled with icy melt water tumbling lazily from the as-yet unseen peak was the ecological equivalent of a pressure-relief valve. Here and there the spring-like sunshine filtered through to my chilly, darkly wooded world, creating odd fractal lasers as it pierced the heavy cloak of old man's beard, draping every available bough on the thousands of fir and hemlock trees. An hour had ticked by before I encountered my first humans. I exchanged a friendly “Hello!” with a couple paused on the trail, briefly interrupting a furious two-thumbed attack on his phone screen. “I thought it was supposed to be my day off, so sorry,” he complained to his friend. “I just have to reply to this.” A handy reminder if ever there was one about why I was here in the first place.
Another hour of steady walking put me onto the tabletop-flat summit of this modest little peak. The view was absolutely grand, and I was delighted to find that I had it all to myself. Barely seven miles away yet almost in reach, Mount Hood dominated the skyline, its brilliantly illuminated alpine slopes standing in stark relief against the clear afternoon sky. Looking north, its siblings Mount Adams, St. Helens and Rainier vied for attention, protruding like jagged vertebrae from the volcanic backbone of the Cascade Range. Until now, the shelter of the trees had hidden the strong wind and cold air blowing across the summit. And this was how I came to be sheltering in the snow behind a large rock, admiring the majesty of my panoramic view and eating a deli sandwich when my avian companion dropped in for lunch.
Intelligent and highly adaptable, the raven is called káaš (KAH-ahsh) by the Warm Springs indigenous people, one of many tribes who historically used this area for seasonal hunting and gathering. They consider the káaš to be a messenger between worlds, and one who brings light and resources to people. So far I seemed to be the only one bringing the resources, at least of the edible variety. But in the time we spent together I felt perhaps that there was a message being communicated, and it took being here in the outside world, embedded in nature rather than on the periphery to grasp what was important. It wasn’t a new message at all, but one that I’m sure is unknown to many. I was still two months shy of gracing the world with my presence when Timothy Leary told thirty thousand hippies in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco to “Turn on, tune in, drop out.” I didn’t need LSD to turn on, a drop of Irish whiskey from my emergency flask at five thousand feet was enough. I was perched on a mountain chatting amiably with a large, black bird, so my ability to tune in was beyond doubt. And I had exerted the power of “do not disturb” over my phone–essentially dropping out, even if only for a few hours.
Lunch concluded, the cold seeping into my bones dictated that it was time to go. As I shouldered my pack, káaš also took his leave; a couple of short hops and a flap of his huge wings were enough to catch the updraft and send him sailing skyward. My return required more effort, but the smile on my face, the quiet in my mind, and the lightness in my step, were evidence enough that it had been a truly wonderful day.