The Ravens and the Moccasin

In the summer of 2013, I was done with the world for a while. Having been a seasonal worker all my life, I had just spent the past year living and working "in town" which had me yearning for the solitude I had become accustomed to for several months a year in the form of remote bushwork. Nevermind that "town" was a small village of 1200 people on a remote island in Canada's Pacific Northwest. When the opportunity to retreat from the hustle and bustle of daily life presented itself as a Lighthouse Keeping assignment, I took it.

My first assignment was a 3 month gig, during which time I would fill in for the Assistant Lightkeeper at Langara Lightstation, who was away on summer vacation. Of the 27 manned lightstations along British Columbia's Coast, Langara is the nortwesternmost station. It is "northwestern" in every sense of the word. It is at the northwesternmost corner, of the northwesternmost island, of Canada's northwesternmost archipelago - Haida Gwaii.

The islands here are covered in a mossy blanket, smothered in green, tickled by mist, teeming with life, of which Homo Sapiens only accounts for a small demographic. Ravens, eagles, killer whales, otters, bears - all call these islands home. Their importance and prominence in daily life and local culture make them seem more like a distant relative than anything else.

This is a place where for thousands of years "people" and "nature" were one and the same. The Haida were the first peoples here, their ancestors walked the mossy open woods through stands of giant cedar and along the sandy beaches, long before westerners came. Their spirits are almost palpable in the landscape itself, and in some places the feeling is stronger than in others.

With my bags packed, groceries shopped, my dog Reggie and I waited in the small airport for our ride to arrive. As the big red Canadian Coastguard helicopter approached the helipad, one of the community leaders came up and asked: "Is that your ride?". I said yes, and he asked where I was going. "Langara Island", I said. "Oh.", he replied, "Lots of spirits over there. It's a very special place. A lot of history. A lot of energy there. You'll see."

Indeed, once I spied from the sky the red roof contrasting the crisp white exterior of my new island home, lurching above rocky cliffs plunging into tumultuous seas below, I got the tingling sensation that this was indeed a special place. When I walked through a herd of over twenty grazing deer, eerily silent and indifferent to my presence, as I carried my bags for the first time on the walkway to my new home, the energy I sensed was of an area governed entirely by the laws of nature.

I was greeted on the doorstep by squawks and voice-generated sounds that imitated water drops, coming from two ever-present, ever-watching resident ravens, perched on the roof above the door, poised to capitalize on the contents of my roughly packed food boxes. These were my new neighbours, ambassadors of Langara, and any being that roamed this area was under their neighborhood watch.

That summer passed along both fast and slow and not without incident. There was the time a startled deer fell backwards off a retaining wall, head awkwardly pinned below it by the weight of its own body. It broke its neck beyond repair and had to be taken out of its misery. The Main Lightkeeper, a lover and friend to all animals, visibly shaken emotionally by the incident, put me in charge of the field dressing, skinning and butchering of the animal.

There was the weather-imposed week of loafing around the large, five bedroom house, feeling like the Phantom of the Opera, as I aimlessly wandered the halls, having finished all of my "indoor projects". This week prompted me to dive into a Golden Girls Box Set marathon, which I finished in an embarrassingly short period of time, and led to at least one moment of confusion as to whether the story I was telling to the other Lightkeeper was actually mine, or just me rehashing the zany antics of Blanche, Dorothy, Rose and Sophia. Then there was an incident of mistaken edible mushroom identification - a story to be told some other time.

By two months at Langara, I had found myself fully in the groove of life on the lights. Working in 12 hour shifts, I dutifully reported the weather every 3 hours, making observations about the clouds, the sea conditions, precipitation, temperature, among other readings. Between my 3 hour reports, I crammed in as much activity as I possibly could. I took on station projects - clearing old trails from a WWII radar station through the bush, mowing the lawns, painting and repairing, gardening, and servicing equipment. I also made time for personal projects - knitting a sweater, reading books, reviving an old smokehouse, working out, and hiking with my trusty dog, Reggie, in as many directions as possible. My proudest accomplishment, however, was making a pair of deer hide moccasins from scratch - a project I had long dreamed of doing, for which I had been gathering materials for years.

To give an idea of the amount of effort that went into these moccasins - it took three separate tries for me to successfully brain tan the hide. I lost the first two hides in their final stages of preparation, once to racoons, and once to my own dog. That was a month of misspent labour. Four years earlier, I had gotten a local tannery in the Yukon to prepare sheepskins I had acquired at a hunting camp. I sourced rabbit skins from a farmer who was a customer at a local meat shop I had been working at in Vancouver five years earlier.

At the lighthouse, I had finally managed to smoke and tan the hides in between weathers, created a pattern, sewn the lining out of the sheepskin, created the moccasin with the deer hide, and trimmed the whole thing with the rabbit fur. The final product was not perfect, but they were the cozy comfy slippers of my dreams.

The day that I finished my moccasins was atypical for a temperate rainforest climate - it was unusually hot and sunny. As one must be opportunistic in these times, I took this as a chance to stain the outer deck of the spare residence/weather reporting office - the house that I called home. Three hours passed in a flash, as they tend to do when in the throes of mindless labour, and it was once again time for me to dutifully record and report my weather observations. As the stairs were wet with rusty red stain, I left the door to the house wide open as I couldn't reach it to close it from outside. My slippers sat in the doorway. I beamed for a moment in the glory of their new existence.

I checked thermometers,scanned the sea for swell, the sky for clouds, and the Canadian flag for wind direction. Reggie, in an eternal struggle to protect his bones and food, was quarreling with the ravens again. They were teaming up on him. One cleverly distracted him in a zone away from his food which was also just at the end of his leash, while the other gobbled up his kibble and, for a little fun, knocked over his water dish. As I hustled back to the house into the office to write down my observations and prepare for my radio broadcast, I rescued Reggie from his tormentors and brought him inside with me.

As all the northern lightkeepers keyed in for their weather reports one by one, I was on deck to report my observations. I was doing my usual routine imitation of each lightkeeper before me: "Good morrrrrning, Green Island eez CLOOOWWDEEE, one five, wind eez sout-wesss one five, wit a two foot chop."

I cleared my throat, and was giving my notes one last look over. Suddenly, I heard an unusual, yet distinctive sound coming from the kitchen behind me. First, some squawking from one of the ravens outside. Then, the sound of claws skittering across the linoleum floor, and wings flapping. My home was being invaded, just as the radio clerk said "Langara Island, go ahead with your report...". I fumbled through my observations, tripped over my words, apologized and went into autopilot as I rattled through the words on the page in front of me: "Uhhh, good morning. Langara is clear, uhhhh. Visibility one-five, wind Northeast, and uhhh, sorry, oops,uhhh, where am I? Wind northeast one-zero, two foot chop and low westerly swell....." As I was stumbling through my broadcast, all I could think was that one of the ravens had the yarbles to come into the house, and pick away at some of the bread I had made earlier that morning.

Once I had signed off, I ran into the kitchen to confirm my suspicions. The bread, surprisingly, remained completely intact and unscathed. I walked to the open back door to shut it and that's when I looked down into the entrance way, my eyes widened, and my throat tightened. I swallowed hard, as I noticed that one of my precious slippers was missing. In a flash, I darted out the door, momentarily forgetting that the step was wet, forever staining my wool socks a rusty lighthouse red in commemoration of this event. My breath shallowed with panic and desperation, my pulse was in my temples. I ran around the yard, startling the grazing deer, looking helplessly yet hopefully at the sky, perhaps for a raven perched in a nearby tree with a moccasin casually dangling from its beak. I checked the front, side, and back lawns and ran along the pathways. No sign of either raven, or the moccasin.

Next, I ran over to the Principal Keeper's House and blurted out the story of the alleged theft. As I frantically told him what I had suspected, pausing only between expletives, one of the ravens reappeared. It returned to the scene of the crime. We watched as it jumped on the railing near the now closed door and had THE NERVE to look inside the house, presumably to make off with my other slipper! This threw me off the edge. I lost all control of my movement as rage took over and I lunged forward towards the house and at the raven, who was obviously back for round two of its pillaging extravaganza. I yelled "where the @$*! is my slipper!?" somehow expecting a worded response.

I don't even know what I would have done in the unlikely event that I would have captured

this raven. I in no way expected to even come near it, but I wanted it to know, in no uncertain terms, that I was very unhappy about being the victim of its trick. While still at a comfortable distance, the raven squawked and took off to land in a high branch of a nearby hemlock tree. Back to its usual role of observing, watching, probably laughing in its own raven-like way.

To cool off my nerves, Reg and I went for a walk down the two miles of boardwalk that leads down to the ocean to the east of the station. In the hours that we spent hiking along the shore, I went through all the stages of grief over my lost moccasin. First the denial that the product of my hard work had vanished. Next, anger, as I pictured a raven sitting in my slipper, incorporating it into their nest. This image, for some reason, made me absolutely livid. Next,I entered into the bargaining stage - I thought maybe I could coerce the ravens into giving the slipper back using treats or some other desperate tactic.

Next, depression. I realized that I may never get that slipper back. On top of it all, I didn't have enough deer hide left to make another one. As I arrived back to the station, with hopeful eyes, I scanned the lawns for a glimpse of a lonely moccasin. Finally, I reached the final phase of grief, acceptance, as I knew the moccasin was probably gone, dropped into the sea, or used as a nest. I got back in time for another weather report.

By the afternoon, I was sitting out in the sun, waiting for the next layer of stain to dry. I sat brushing Reg, who was shedding his thick black fur in the summer heat. I had not seen the ravens since the last attempt at stealing the other slipper. Several hours had passed by this time. Suddenly, I became acutely aware of eyes looking down upon me from the roof above.

"What do you want?" I said aloud to the larger of the two ravens. I barely looked up, feeling dejected, and as though just by their presence, they were rubbing in their newfound treasure and my loss. I continued to brush Reg as I sat on the stoop with four eyes fixated on me. Then, a shadow moved above me, and it landed on the railing about six feet away from me. Again, I felt eyes. More intensely this time, a gaze coming from the smaller

of the two ravens, as the larger one stayed above.

Perhaps affected by the mental metamorphosis one goes through by being in an isolated environment for over 2 months, I felt something about the way the raven was perched

uncharacteristically close, and at eye level with me, that it was trying to communicate with me in some way.

Throwing caution to the wind, I looked straight into its dark eyes and asked aloud "Are you going to show me where my slipper is?". After a moment of transfixed gazing, the raven jumped to lawn in front of me, and began to bound in its distinctive way, one foot in front of the other, moving almost laterally towards the forest behind the the lighstation. Every few hops, it stopped, looked behind at me while I followed, stumbling dumbfoundedly. I felt compelled to follow the raven. Not because I wanted to catch it, or because I thought I may outsmart it to lead me to its nest where I presumed my slipper was, but because I really got the feeling that this raven wanted me to follow it. So I did follow it. Across the lawn, it continued to hop, and occasionally wait. Soon, it took to the sky, and flew into a branch of a cedar tree at the edge of the forest. It patiently waited as I walked to it. Then, it flew to another tree not too far away, deeper into the forest, and waited for me there.

Over time, I was fully immersed in forest, walking along an imaginary path, across pillows of thick green moss, led by my raven guide to a place I would not have wandered if left to my own faculties. This went on for about ten minutes until the raven reached a branch which hung above a steep, rocky gully, criss crossed with deadfall that pointed to the ocean below. On this branch, it began making gutteral croaks as it bowed its head with its beak pointing towards the ground below it. As I approached, the raven dove down off the branch swooping into the gully, where it disappeared from sight.

Below the raven's last seen perch, on a log, bathed in a beam of sunlight, surrounded by shiny abalone shells, laid my fur cuffed moccasin. I couldn't believe my eyes. I was overwhelmed with joy and another feeling that is hard to describe - it manifests as spooky, but is not accompanied by fear. It is a rare feeling that you experience when something profound and seemingly impossible changes your perspective forever. The kind of feeling you would get, for example, if you had just realized that you had directly communicated with a pair of ravens.

In my bewildered state, with my beloved footwear in hand, Reg and I emerged from the woods. I walked inside the house, slipped on my moccasins, made a tea, and grabbed the dog brush. Reg and I sat on the back stoop for another grooming session while the sun slowly set to the West as we gazed at the outline of the high hills of Alaska before us, to the north. Before the dark curtains of night fell over this incredible land, our resident jokers joined us on the lawn for one last visit, as though making their final bows to their captive audience.

"Hello there you two!" I said with gleeful warmth in my voice, "Stay there, I have something for you!". I ran into the house, opened the fridge, and grabbed the package of blueberries that had come in on last week's monthly helicopter grocery order. The ravens, now perched on the safety railings that warned of cliffs below, adjacent to the house, waited patiently for my offering. I sprung open the package, and threw the blueberries on the lawn before them. Apprehensive at first, they hopped down and began to feast on the tasty novelties.

After that day, I spent another month at Langara and I've been back to the Lightstation for work a couple of times since that summer. The ravens remain ever present, ever watching, and occasionally stir up trouble whenever the opportunity arises. They have seemingly turned their attention to the other residents of the station. They are often seen engaging in air battles with seagulls, and stealing sandwiches from the occasional maintenance worker who comes to the island. The week before I left in the summer of 2013, the Head Lightkeeper had fallen victim to the pair, when he left the door open to the paint room, and returned to find it vandalized with opened and overturned paint cans, all while the ravens cackled in the trees above. Since they borrowed my moccasin, however, I have never been the target of any of their hijinks. I'd like to think we're beyond that in our relationship. Maybe the old adage is true, good communication is the foundation to all great friendships.