Subject: Conversations with a raven
Date: Jul 31 15:16:55 2003
From: Rob Sandelin - floriferous at msn.com


Had an interesting encounter with a raven this morning at Ohanapecosh
campground. I had slept on a sandbar next to the river and woke up early
to the call of Ravens. After awhile, it was clear I was not going back to
sleep I got up and, just for the heck of it, made some raven call type
sounds back for a few minutes. The birds were out of sight up river
somewhere. We went back a forth for a bit, then I got up and walked through
the campground heading for the bathroom. A raven flew over my head fairly
low that I could hear the whoosh of its wings, then pulled up quite low,
maybe 10 feet from the ground and slightly ahead of me. I stopped kind of
surprised, the raven walked up and down the branch and sort of chortled,
tipping its head in very engaging sort of way. I tried to mimic its sounds
back at it. We did this, back and forth for about 5 minutes. Finally the
Raven sort of shrugged its wings, sort of like, well I tried but you just
don't have the accent, then it flew off. I was so engrossed with this
"conversation" that I did not notice that a small crowd of campers were
behind me, staring, apparently not sure if I was a nut case or what. Rather
embarrassed I walked past them, and took a round about way back to our camp.
I am assuming the same Raven was watching me, for when I arrived back at
camp, a Raven flew in quite low again. This time it seemed content just to
watch me as I packed up my gear. I was afraid when I started breakfast it
might actually scrounge food, you know how campground animals are, which
would have felt very, uh undignified, I guess. To my relief it did not, but
it did stick around perching very low in trees until we left. On the way
out of the Grove of the patriarchs parking area a raven again landed quite
low to the ground and of course I fantasized that the bird had followed us
all the way there, in fact, every raven I saw for the rest of the day became
sort of a guardian or something in my mind. An interesting effect from a
morning conversation.

Rob Sandelin
South Snohomish County at the headwaters of Ricci Creek
Sky Valley Environments <http://www.nonprofitpages.com/nica/SVE.htm>
Field skills training for student naturalists
Floriferous at msn.com



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