MY STRANGE DAY began around 5:30 a.m. when I was awakened from a deep sleep by the thunderous cawing of a raven near my home in the desert outside Cave Creek, Arizona.
Living in an urban interface area in the upper Sonoran desert with few neighbors, I was used to hearing the sounds of desert animals such as quail, coyotes, hawks and owls. But this was different. While I resist anthropomorphizing animals, this creature sounded like it was definitely trying to get my attention with its relentless caws that echoed off nearby mountains intensifying the commotion.
I didn’t want to get out of bed. But then I thought that maybe this bird was injured and could use my help.
Reluctantly I slipped on jeans and flip-flops and walked out of the house shirtless. Oddly, the cawing stopped the moment I stepped outside. At first I couldn’t find anything. Then I started walking around the perimeter of the house, which was bordered by soaptree yuccas. I looked on the ground as well as in each soaptree yucca as I investigated. Still nothing – until I reached the back of the house near the screened-in porch.
I stopped 20 feet from the largest soaptree yucca. Clinging to the sides of its branches was not one but two desert ravens. My initial thought was that this explained the unusual volume. But then I noticed something else: These were the largest desert ravens I had ever seen. They were the size of small turkeys.
I slowly walked toward them expecting these huge ravens to take off any moment. They didn’t. Instead, they seemed to be as curious about me as I was about them. As I got within a few feet, I discovered something even more disturbing.
These ravens didn’t look like any ravens I had seen. They had an expression on their faces that I can only describe as old and human. I had the sense they were examining me.
And then something happened with their eyes. In an instant they changed from black to a luminescent green.
I blinked, trying to convince myself I was seeing things. But then the ravens both turned their heads from me simultaneously and few off toward the mountains.
Silently.
Weird Stuff Even Before the Ravens
After the raven encounter, it was still early in the morning. I wanted to go back to sleep before heading to work. But I knew it would be impossible to turn my mind off after the extraordinary visit.
Instead, I fixed breakfast and thought things over. I had built my Santa Fe style two story house just a few months earlier. I had purchased the one acre natural desert property because of its proximity to the Tonto National Forest yet only 40 minutes from Phoenix where I worked as a journalist for the Arizona Republic newspaper.
This unusual unincorporated area called Tonto Hills was a transition zone between lower and upper Sonoran Desert. At 3,200 feet elevation, it was usually much cooler than Phoenix (at 1,000 feet) and attracted a wide range of wildlife, especially colorful, migratory birds.
Still thinking about the ravens, I recalled the day a year or so earlier when I decided to purchase the property. I had driven up to Tonto Hills from Chandler (where I lived at the time) and was impressed by the stark beauty of “the real” desert and the cooler, cleaner air than down in the Valley. Phoenix and its never-ending sprawl was beginning to suffer from the same brown cloud and temperature inversion maladies that negatively impacted Los Angeles County residents.
I remember walking the property on a blustery day, carefully stepping around the lush desert plants and different sized boulders. I stopped along a natural wash thinking this would have been a good home for indigenous people because of the wildlife and the ability to see enemies approaching from lower elevations.
One particularly strong wind gust blasted away stirring up desert dust. The gust was followed by a gentler wind. And it was in this wind that I heard the voices – human voices whispering in a language I didn’t recognize.
At first I thought there were people nearby and I was hearing their voices being carried by the wind. But I was alone. And the whispery voices weren’t in English or Spanish. It sounded more like the guttural sounds of traditional Navajos or Hopi. And the voices didn’t just appear and disappear. I heard them for a good minute as the gentler wind continued to blow. It sounded like I was standing in the middle of a community of people actively going about their daily lives. I even thought I heard the background noise of dogs barking.
Then the wind gusted again and when it abated, I was standing alone once more in absolute silence.
What exactly took place in that minute of whispering voices, I do not know. However, I felt a kinship to this property that I did not feel with any of the other lots I had seen. I purchased the property the next day and eventually built my desert house. I never heard the whispering voices again, but over the years I did find a bucketful of Anasazi-style pottery shards, especially in the area of the wash where I had heard the voices in the wind.
Yet Another Odd Bird Encounter
A couple of weeks after the non-ordinary encounter with the two desert ravens, it happened again. This time I was walking my Airedale on the dirt roads (which have since been paved) of Tonto Hills. It was another blustery day with the wind occasionally kicking up clouds of dust. After about 30 minutes of walking I returned, but stopped at the top of the driveway when I noticed a large red-tailed hawk sitting in one of the soaptree yuccas near the garage. Finding a perching hawk is not that unusual, but it was perched in a strange way, as if “at attention” and directly facing my house.
But the strangeness didn’t stop there. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw another red-tailed hawk sitting in a soaptree yucca next to the first one – also looking directly at my house without flinching. And then there was another. And another. And another. And another …
All told I counted a dozen red-tailed hawks perched in different soaptree yuccas around the perimeter of my house and staring at it in the same way.
Normally my Airedale would have been barking at birds, but even he apparently was mesmerized by the sight. He sat down silently without a command and just took it all in.
A Lunch Date With Carlos Castaneda
Several days later I was at work at my desk on the 10th floor of the new Arizona Republic newspaper building in downtown Phoenix. For lunch, I often walked over to the spacious second floor lobby of the Hyatt Regency hotel and sat in one of their comfy chairs. Hyatt’s second floor lobby was mostly empty during the week and the hotel’s staff didn’t seem to mind me eating my small brown bag lunch there while reading.
At this stage in my life I was an avid reader, often able to read large sections of multiple books during my hour lunch. Sometimes I would reread books I had particularly enjoyed. During this week I was rereading some of the books by literary sorcerer and 60s cultural icon Carlos Castaneda. I had originally began reading his books while in high school, and although I enjoyed them, I didn’t really understand them that well. So here I was reading them once again: “A Separate Reality,” “The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge,” “Journey to Ixtlan,” “The Second Ring of Power,” “The Eagle’s Gift,” etc.
This time around, I was older, had more life experiences, and I found the ideas in Castaneda’s books more understandable. If nothing else I was intrigued with the possibility of Castaneda’s main storyline: Anthropology student meets Yaqui shaman for purposes of finishing thesis but ends up ensconced in the shaman’s world as his apprentice.
Like so many others who had read Castaneda’s books, I was intrigued yet wondered how true it all was. I kept thinking what it would be like to talk to Castaneda, but I wasn’t even sure he was still alive. Besides, from everything I had read, Castaneda was an enigma who had more or less disappeared 30 years earlier. There wasn’t even a verified photograph of him.
I returned to my desk after lunch and tried to reorient my mind to the prosaic world of the journalist – not a simple task on this particular afternoon. I had trouble concentrating. My mind kept floating back and forth to the images and narratives from Castaneda’s books. I also couldn’t shake the indelible scenes from my desert property – first the odd ravens then the circle of hawks.
Around 3 p.m. a features editor walked over to my desk and asked how I was doing. I told her I needed a cup. I started to get up. She told me to hold on a second.
“We have an assignment for you,” she said.
“OK,” I said.
“We need you to fly to Los Angeles.”
“Los Angeles?”
“We want you to interview Carlos Castaneda.”
I forgot about the coffee.
I was under the impression that Carlos Castaneda was a fraud. But now I wonder after reading your article. I’m going to read his books to get a better idea.