by Richard Kahn

The owl flies silently over my head, white and brown wings making no sound…over the river into the tundra, the owl drops out of sight and then emerges from a fold in the land a small creature tucked in its talons…Screeching peregrine chicks hidden somewhere on the cliff face, strident calls, chaotic screaming…pleading, hidden from view. The adult falcon, invisible, screeches a warning…

A group of silent black and white geese run across the gravel bar…Gulls watch, their incessant call not so much the call of the wilderness, but more like a reminder that the familiar lives in the most exotic places…or, perhaps, a reminder that the exotic is merely a perspective shift of the familiar.

Loons call, they are distant silhouettes on the water, sometimes sounding like ducks or geese…sometimes laughing…they run across the surface of the river beating their wings as their feet stir up white wakes…They leave the surface, turn and head upstream, heads down, necks extended, wings beating the air, they fight to fly unlike the hawks, eagles, falcons and owls who float effortlessly on the air…hovering, soaring, hurtling towards the ground, blasting straight into the sky.

And then there is the raven, dark shape, calls like a gull, flies like a hawk, soars with the eagles…In the middle of the night the raven’s call wakes me up…it is close, and unlike anything else I have heard here…sound like wind passing through a long pipe…a bird flute…it is unique and unlike the mimicking cries I hear from the raven during the day…If the caribou are the magician animals, dancing across the tundra, appearing and disappearing mysteriously in their own way, then the raven is the magician bird…dark like a shadow…silent or noisy at will, a mimic or a unique individual…secure, curious, nomadic…

The National Petroleum Reserve of Alaska, by Richard Kahn

by Richard Kahn

There are no geese on the Colville…But, there are loons, and rough legged hawks, and peregrine falcons. We sat beneath a cliff as the peregrine screeched at us from above. A second falcon joined the first and together they screamed at us, warning us away from their nest. As the second falcon landed on her nest I could hear the excited calls of her chicks anxious to be fed.

Hot sun, wind, deep green water, tall cliffs. I watched a rough legged hawk soar on the thermals, hang motionless above the cliff, then the hawk tucked one wing and dropped like a stone, tucking both wings close to its body. Just above the dense alders covering the cliff the hawk opened its wings, thrust out its legs, extended its talons and disappeared silently into the trees…a moment later it exploded from the dense brush and shot straight up into the deep blue sky…silhouetted against the clouds it hung motionless, tucked a wing, turned towards the earth and with both wings tight against its body it once again dropped like a stone…just above the alders it opened its wings, extended its legs, spread its talons and disappeared into the darkness of the alders. Out of the green into the blue…motionless against the clouds…the hawk fell again…disappeared into the dark brush…All the while a second falcon cried as it rode the thermals over the cliff…soaring in circles…screeching…the cliffs shone silver in the early evening light, glistening rock, green hills…

The gravel bar turned yellow, the river reflects the yellow glow of the low angled sun… three loons float by…quacking…swimming back and forth in the current…they are silhouettes against the bright water…an annoyed gull flew at me. I could hear the rush of it’s wings as it swooped above my head…the loons swam peacefully in front of me…the gull flapped in crazed circles diving at my head…circling and diving again and again until he tired of his game and soared off into the pink, yellow, grey blue sky…

Pink sky, blue river turning slate grey as the sun slides behind a distant hill. The constant ceaseless hum of the land in my ears…The pink sky…the hum of the land…the calling falcons…soaring hawks…angry gull…meandering loons…no geese, no geese at all…

A hot day on the river, no caribou, only the falcons and hawks …the bright water…We are camped at the confluence of the Killik and the Colville, the Killik running fast and blue…the Colville slow and green…they merge in front of our campsite…the river doubles in size and flows away from us…A strong wind comes up, the temperature plummets…the hum of the place fills my head…There can’t be enough time here…each moment…ordinary or extraordinary is precious…My mind tires at trying to absorb all the details of the place…my eyes ache from the looking…my spirit is alive from the just being here…Time to wrap myself in my sleeping bag…but I don’t want to give up the day…I don’t want to surrender to sleep…to dreams…to the sound of the flapping tent in the wind…