It’s another beautiful day at the canyon. Blue sky. Green trees. Feeling good to be alive. As I walk along immersed in the beauty of the day I notice some ravens cawing over across the way, so I turn to look for them as I continue walking on. I can’t see them, of course, but I can tell that there are several of them up inside the scraggly branches of two tall pine trees across the railroad tracks just beneath the village road that loops a complete circle around where I am in this moment palpably pulled into these enlivened trees as the ravens continue to caw.
How many times have I walked past these trees, tall and silent on my way to work in the wee darkness of the eerie walk to my graveyarded shift? Yet now they openly speak to me in the full brightness of day in a way that makes me suddenly very aware of the sun’s heat rising up off the dry brown dirt puffing up around my tennis shoes as I walk along, now fully immersed in the inescapable cawing of the ravens.
The dry path slopes downward now, about to cross a small creek. I don’t even stop to wonder where this tiny flow of water sources itself, I just step across making sure to land squarely upon the large single rock bridge that gaps the two dry sides. My crossing disturbs a lone raven just up the other side hopping like a three legged dog, its mouth full of something dead and fleshy. It’s amazing to me how large the raven is, and I remark to myself the irony of crossing paths with this dark harbinger whose mouth is filled with dead carcass like a symbolic piece of a long ago me, long since dead, perhaps, but not very long forgotten.
I am in love with this moment that has opened up the flow of spirit through what would have otherwise been nothing more than a mundane walk to lunch as I consider the urging of a friend to write down my dark stories and publish them for others like me to read. It’s an interesting and enticing thought, yet something that would most certainly change my life forever. And as I begin the last trudge to the top of this short craggy climb, the invisible ravens continue to caw out to me as if to warn of the dangers that lurk just beyond. . ..yet, I continue on. . . .I continue on.