Totems and Nature’s Hunting Guides
On Wednesday afternoon, Young Homey caught me outside Dean Hall, on the Central Washington University campus, as I was watching a couple dozen mallards dabbling in the Ganges. “So,” he said, “where you going this weekend? There are bucks everywhere – this is gonna be a fun deer hunt. What are you gonna look for?”
“Ravens and owls,” I said, “almost always ravens and owls.” After a quizzical look, a light came on somewhere in there. “Oh, he smiled, “Like when they tell you a deer is close by… Well, I listen for the pine squirrels, and one of my buddies says camp robbers, and another says wild turkeys let him know… Not so sure about that one…” I mentioned the last time Edward and I wandered some deery draws up the Naneum, finding nothing. At some point, the last of the Hucklings turned to me with “So, where are the ravens and owls when we need them?”
It’s about totems, really; totems I have experienced and enjoyed since I first stepped into the woods with an intention to make meat. And the totem critters to which Edward had also learned to listen afield.
The first time I ever thought about totems was sometime in the mid-1940s – right after WWII. We were on our way from East Wenatchee to visit Grandma and Grandpa Minshall in Tacoma. “Grandma” was actually my mother’s aunt Ethel. Since all four of my parents’ folks were on the other side, the Minshalls were the closest thing we had. They loved us like grandparents, and they certainly treated my folks like their own kids. Family legend had it that Grandma had been a wild redhead – a real pistol – until she met Grandpa. He often claimed that he never could handle her, but that he had a lifetime of fun trying.
At any rate, on one of those trips we saw a totem pole in a small town by Tacoma, outside a store that sold groceries, pop, souvenirs and all the other stuff such stores sold after the war. It was faded and worn, but the fierce, protective bird face at the top burned right into me. The Old Man (all of 26 years old at the time) said it was a sacrilege for it to be used like that.
He called totems the symbols (mostly birds or animals) for a person or a family. In honor of the wild relations who brought them good fortune or protection, he said, Native peoples would carve their images into big cedar logs, paint them and stand them up outside their homes. I remember the one at the store had a giant raven on top – at least I remember it as a raven.
The Old Man never talked much about totems, and I don’t know that he put much stock in them for himself. Grandpa occasionally would talk about certain animals or birds that showed him where to hunt or “protectors” that seemed to warn him off dangerous situations. “I don’t know that I put much stock in the Indians’ ‘guide’ creatures,” he might say, “but I do see certain ones before I get an elk or deer – and where the hell were those ‘protectors’ when I met Ethel?”
Early on, I found that a couple birds were my common companions afield. The “Kruuk kru-u-ck kruk” of the raven and the “Hooo hoot!” of the horned owl were in the woods with me as far back as I can remember being out there on my own. They were always nearby when I walked the box canyon at my aunt and uncle’s place up the Little Chumstick out of Leavenworth. It always seemed like we were looking around together.
The great horned owl (Bubo virginianus), in any number of cultures, is said to bring wisdom and stealth. The keen observer might learn both, and certainly I tried.
The raven (Corvus corax) is the largest of the crow family. It is the most entertaining, too. Intelligent, graceful, acrobatic flyers, ravens have been called “the dolphins of the avian world.” It will soar and glide in flight, unlike the crow, which will seldom glide for more than a couple seconds. A pair of birds may even “dance” together, touching pointed wingtips in flight. In some Native American traditions, raven is a teacher of magic – the magic of life. I was always open to that, too.
On a hunt for bighorn sheep in Colorado’s Tarryall Mountains some decades ago, I awaited first light from a rocky outcropping. As the sun touched the sky, a bull elk bugled in the timber below me and a raven swooped low over my head. As the bugle died in the echoing cliffs, a raven feather settled onto my lap.
On many, many hunts, over decades, the predawn hoot of the great horned owl told me I would be offered a deer or an elk.
This weekend, a hundred thousand plus Washington hunters will be pursuing deer in habitat across the state. A good many of them will have ears and eyes open for some totem animal which just might show them the animal with which they will feed family or community. Whatever that totem, it will no doubt sweep them deeper into Nature than they might otherwise go.
