ALONG THE WAY

Those Sneaky, Clever, Fibbing Ravens Can Fly Upside Down, Too

DON'T KNOW WHERE I FIRST HEARD that ravens can fly upside down. Nor why I believed it. But I do remember the day I confidently plopped down this implausible fact in mixed company. I was sitting at a gathering of writers when someone mentioned the glossy, black-eyed, cawing troublemakers. So I naturally popped out my most impressive raven factoid. "Did you know that ravens can fly upside down?" I intoned.

My editor hooted audibly. "Upside down?" he repeated, skepticism dripping like Gila monster venom from the hollow tooth of his tone.

"Uh, yeah," I said, flailing for my forgotten source. Now that I considered the matter objectively, it did sound ridiculous.

"Ever actually seen an upside down raven?" he deadpanned.

"Well, no. But I did see photos in National Geographic of a raven sliding down a snowdrift on his back," I said.

"Where did you hear they fly upside down?" he asked, grinning.

"I, uh, well, I don't remember exactly."

Outed. A glib and careless citer of dubious facts.

Thereafter, the editor decided that upside-down ravens captured something irresistibly metaphorical about my relationship to the world. Whenever he introduced me, he would wait a beat, then add"And did you know that ravens can fly upside down?"

That was years ago. In all the time since, I have watched ravens, craning my neck at 75 mph on the highway, tilted backward on cliff-edge switchbacks and sitting in the silence of ancient Indian ruins. But I had never seen one turn upside down.

Still, in the watching I've come to love themalthough they have made a humble fool of me. That seems appropriate. One naturalist observed of ravens that their chief difficulty stems from being much too smart for their station in life. They mate for life, are good parents, share the responsibility of raising the next generation and establish elaborate pecking orders. They have been scavenging our kills for thousands of years, and many reports suggest they sometimes still lead hunters to deer for the killing.

Captive ravens can learn to talk, and wild ravens communicate with an impressive vocabulary of calls. They can use sticks as tools, and they can open locks and unwrap packages. They can lie. When they come upon a big source of food, the dominant birds take their fill first, often stashing food for later. The other ravens watch, and if they can get away with it, they'll craftily steal the food hidden by the dominant bird.

Therefore, a bird hiding food will go to great lengths to confuse the watching birds. They'll pretend to hide a piece of food in three different places before actually hiding it, using misleading calls and complex body language.

I have spent many happy hours in wild places watching ravens. They cavort in the air. They croak. They chortle. They gleam blue-black in the sunlight. When they fly past, the wind whistles through their wings. They have repaid me a thousand times over for the humiliation of believing that they can fly upside down. But years ago I gave up asking people if they'd ever seen one fly upside down.

Clearly, by now I should have stopped staring after ravens with that irrational lilt of hope. It makes no sense. Why fly upside down? What purpose would it serve? It defies physics. How long can you go on mere faith-the evidence of things unseen?

Still...

Recently, standing on the rim of Canyon de Chelly in a bone-biting cold, 30 mph wind, I turned to watch a raven angling into the face of that wind. The Navajos and Apaches tell many stories about ravens, as no doubt did the ancient tribes whose 1,000-year-old ruins crowd the canyon. The raven brought death into the world-and cattle. He outfoxed coyote. So I savored the raven in the canyons of the ancient ones-as it played with the wind, gleaming in the sunlight.

And then, he turned upside down.

He flipped onto his back with a twist of his wings, which he held half folded as he angled upside down into the wind. He held there for a second. Then two. Then he flipped right side up. He flapped once, then flipped over onto his back again. A second. Then two. Then upright again for another flap. Then again onto his back. Satisfied that he had mocked the wind, he veered off into the canyon.

Tears sprang, unbidden, into my eyes. I felt not so much vindicated as blessed.

For all important things require faith-the turning of the eyes to the sky, past all reason.

The evidence of things not seen, but so earnestly hoped for.