Nightbirds - a tale of initiation

This is a story I also wrote in Hawaii back in 1994.

In a way it is amazing that often the best and most impressive childhood memories seem to be about truly weird experiences. It is the sense of near mystic weirdness that renders them memorable. It was a day in the late summer - or rather I should say: it was a night in late summer. These warm September days I was waiting impatiently for November to come, where I would finally become a teenager and as so often in my life I expected everything to change from that day on - about which of course I was wrong.

In this special night I couldn't sleep. I always had dreamt of having a tame raven and there was a nest with young ravens right in our neighborhood, which I discovered in the forest one lonely summer afternoon. Of course I couldn't reach it without any equipment because it is an old raven tradition to built their homes way up in the highest tree to be found in the whole forest where it is protected from nosy little boys and the bloodlust of hobby hunters.

This day I came home from school and began to make up detailed plans. First of course I had to get a rope and other things you always need when climbing an almost insurmountable tree, but my mother wouldn't let me out again that night although it remains bright in German summer nights until late in the evening.

Now there I was - lying in my bed, thinking of these cute little birds. They were almost grown up animals about to leave their parents nest. "Will they still be there tomorrow? Will they fly out early in the morning?" I asked myself and I just couldn't sleep with these thoughts on my mind. Mothers just never understand!

At around one o'clock in the morning I was unable to stand it anymore - avoiding all noises I slipped out of the door, patting my dog so that she wouldn't bark. I fetched the rope from my father's garage and then headed towards the forest with the birdsÂ’ nest I was longing for.

My heart was beating fast as I strolled through this warm but dark and moonless night. I saw terrifying shadows and heard whispering voices that made me shiver but I pulled myself together and it only took me about ten minutes to get to the forest. Ten minutes which almost felt like hours.

In the forest it was even darker than on the open field - there was hardly any wind, and the only audible sounds were the shouts of eagle owls and silently rustling leaves of thousands of willow trees around me. I strolled through the dark forest, always expecting something horrible and unspeakable to happen but when I finally found the tree standing there pointing high into the night, I forgot all my fears and got more and more excited.

You have to plan every single step when you want to climb a high tree - especially when you are boy of twelve years fairly small for his age. But there was the experience of an almost uncountable number of similar enterprises - only they hadn't happened to occur during the night. And I never had embarked on them alone before. But still: this just had to be done!

The only approach to climb the tree was to first get onto a neighboring tree, which was nice enough to offer me branches making it easy for me to climb up to a height where I was at the same level as the lowest branches of the crow-tree. This was approximately ten meters above the ground and almost five meters away from the other tree but I didn't think of the danger. I had to throw over a help line, let it to the ground, get down to pick it up and climb up the "helping-tree" again, where I then could pull over the rope and secure it. This way I built a rope bridge between the two trees, and hanging with my head down to the ground I slowly traveled hand over hand until I reached my destination. There I had to pause for a while because I was out of breath and sweating heavily after this physical and mental exercise.

Finally there it was: just a few meters above me I saw the huge crows nest and I heard the birds squeaking silently and occasionally making funny birds' noises. I climbed upwards, one branch after another, slowly securing and tightening my grips to make sure I couldn't fall down. And then, almost in reach of the birds at a point where I already could see their bills on the edge of the nest - I got stuck.

My left foot was stuck in a fork of a branch and it was impossible to get it out immediately and while struggling with my stuck foot, the storm began.

Suddenly the silence of the night turned into a roaring and howling inferno and the wind was so powerful that it almost blew me off the tree. The noise was incredible. Clouds were coming up and covered the starlight what made the night so dark that I couldn't even see my hands in front of my face anymore. I was not only alone on this tree but alone in the whole universe, holding on to this tree, the last solid thing in existence and all by myself fighting against the united power of ancient Nordic gods.

In my imagination I had to undergo a test, which I only could pass when I wouldn't show any fear and I lost the fear all of a sudden - I felt great and incredible. I saw the rope falling down in the storm and while big heavy raindrops hit my face and while hanging in the tree soaking wet and hardly being able to hold myself I shivered, yet not of fear but of excitement. And then an unexpected happiness overcame me. I felt happy because in fact I wasn't alone! I was united with the crows now hiding in their nest, being so much closer to them than I could ever have been if I just took one out to own it. Now it was different. We shared the experience of the end of the world. A raven family and a human boy right in the center of the Apocalypse. How foolish I had been, to think I could own another living creature!

Later I just wondered what they might have thought of me, a little human boy sitting in the tree in the night for hours, laughing like a lunatic while staring up to them.

I never bothered them again, just watched them when they were flying around our house, talking to each other in their croaking language while feeding in the fields. I raised several young raven birds that fell out of their nests, but I never wanted to own one anymore. This lesson had taught me at an early age that nature cannot be owned.