Ravens and Wolf
Sentinel and warrior.
Great Bear Rainforest, British Columbia. October, 2023.
Not the sharpest photograph, but one still worth sharing.
I've been around a lot of ravens over the years -- from the highest peaks of northern New England to the Mexican border. And I thought I understood them fairly well.
But here at first in this quiet cove, they were unseen and speaking a mysterious language I had never heard, with voices and phrases that sounded like humans in the tree tops. I looked at our guide. He whispered, "They're telling the wolves we are here."
We remained silent and motionless in the hull of the boat for over an hour, and eventually the ravens settled onto the shore between us and the forest.
A few minutes later, the wolf appeared like a ghost behind them. It approached, but the ravens never moved. And then the wolf turned. It trotted quietly up the shoreline away from us and dropped out of sight again.
That evening we were told by our First Nations hosts that it was special to see a raven and a wolf together. The raven is the creator, the wolf is the provider. Sentinel and warrior. Everything is connected to everything else.
Feels magical