The Raven

It was one of those days that duck hunters dread, a quiet, drowsy sort of day, the horizon blue with haze, not a cloud in the sky or a ripple on the water and the rice golden as a field of ripe wheat. Behind the blind, I could hear the soft chirrupings of wrens and chickadees, the lazy drones of insects, for the day was warm and summery as August.

I stood watching the horizon in a doze, a vague golden horizon bejewelled with clumps of yellowing aspen and flaming maple, marvelling how all the colors seemed to fuse one into the other, wondering what would happen should I actually see a flutter of wings.

Gradually I became conscious of a movement far overhead, saw with a corner of my vision the broad black wingspread of a raven, watched it for a time with no apparent consciousness, its lazy, graceful drifting flight.

Though there was not a breath of wind below, the bird seemed to coast unseen air currents, taking advantage of high breezes that did not reach the surface of the earth. Hundreds of feet in long, clean sweeps and interminable spirals up and down, head turning, watching the blue-gold surface of the bay.

Then I knew that it was watching me, that in the back of its mind, it must be hoping that something might happen to the creature far below on the shoreline, hoping that it might have the opportunity of ridding the shore of the resulting offal should fate suddenly strike me low.

Closer and closer came the great bird, watching intently to see if I moved. Suddenly, it spiralled downward, and with a swift circling glide lit in a small pine tree just behind and proceeded to vent its disgust in the most raucous language imaginable, for I was, he found out, very much alive and perhaps exceedingly dangerous.

For a moment it sat there in glistening black, eyeing me deperately. Then, with a great beating of pinions, he took again to the air and disappeared to the south. I thought of the story of Elijah and the ravens and how they appeared to him in the wilderness, and I thought of the time a flock of them followed me down a lake when the ice was softening in the spring and how I saw them circling and went to shore just in time to escape skiing into a treacherous narrows. I thought of Poe and his raven, of the place it has made for itself in our literature. I thought too of the fascination it has to all men who know it, the beauty of its flight, grace itself when soaring high in the heavens, its voice that for sheer ugliness and discord had perhaps no equal on earth.

But I knew that nature always balances perfection of one kind with ugliness of another, that she never quite makes the error of achieving perfection.

I saw the raven once more far over the horizon, just a flash of wings as it turned against the sun. Then he was gone in the haze and I was alone once more.