3 Faces of Raven

A fun short story about working in Alaska at the intersection of cultures and history

Aug 06, 2025

I’m tired of traveling. I might blame the weather, but instead I’ll blame my boss. My boss is a passive aggressive, screaming, immature, crisis-creating, Seventh-day Adventist, vegetarian asshole. It is the “asshole” bit that matters the most, not his diets. We spent last Friday in Kodiak together. I got to listen to him misrepresent the capabilities of technology, misrepresent the scope of the mission, then I got to sit in his rental car while he drove around the island like a NYC cabby. All starting and stopping—break, gas—break, gas.

At the top of a mountain, on a razor’s edge, driving on gravel, with an extremely steep four-thousand-foot drop to the ocean, I want to see his hands at 10-and-2 on the wheel and his eyes glued forward. Instead, he is talking to me, looking out the side window, driving forward while looking sideways. I look over the hood of the car, all I see is ocean. Four-thousand feet below. Steep. This ridge is the top. No higher to climb. The fall would be far, quick, and deadly. Nobody would know we were gone, given the car would sink into the ocean. Goodbye us.

We don’t belong up here, certainly not in a tinny rental car. This is the domain of the mountain, the eagle, the mischievous raven. In their domain, I witness harmony, beauty, and grace. Feelings I did not share for myself.

I chirped, squeaked, then squealed. I hate being scared. And being scared from his recklessness is another thing altogether. To scare oneself, to push to the limit to work together to face the fear, that’s one thing. I don’t like it much, but I’ll do it as needed. Looking out two sides of the car and seeing nothing but a tumultuous ocean four thousand feet below while the car still rolls ain’t for me. Did I add that the wind was screaming at a gale? The little Ford rental sedan quaked. I removed my seat belt. My hand was on the door. I was ready to leap from the car before going over. I am not taking that fall.

That was Kodiak, Alaska.

Lies, racism, and fear while getting a neck-jerk tour of the crooked streets as the Boss tells me about the Seventh-day Adventist missionary corps that built the church there and their attempts to save Aleuts natives on the island.

Juneau

Better? Well the wind was blowing forty again. I was travelling alone, and now two hours away by airplane. Therefore, a different place, a different trip but I still worked for that same boss and the same federal agency-ish. The rain drove down from the sky in buckets. Rain so loud that when on the phone, people told me about a lousy static problem. Sorry, peeps, that’s the sound of the rain on the metal roof. I had perfect five-by-five reception on my mobile. The rain turned my Chevy rental into a crazy drum. I called the car “Blue Airbag”—airbag being the only word printed on the dash anywhere. Every other label had already fallen off this cheap piece-of-shit.

Wow! I thought the Kodiak rental car had it tough.

As I drove, I witnessed part of a mountain slide to the road below.

During one pass of the road, the mountain left a tongue of mud sticking out. It lapped down between trees across a pond. During the next pass on the same road, I saw that mud now included uprooted trees. The tongue, now bigger, lay between two houses.

That hillside road then had a big yellow digging machine and a cop car.

During my third pass by that road, I saw that the slide-down area had grown yet again. More trees claimed by the mountain. Trees with the bottoms pointing skyward, adult trees laying flat in the mud. The pond disappeared under mud and mess. A car with its wheels down crowned the mud pile that defined the bottom.

The little white car had come sliding down the mountain from its parking space three-hundred feet above. One minute, the owner could see it on the road. Then the rain and the mud carried it down the hill.

Like a jealous creature, the mountain stole, then stacked his new treasures. He stole from the forest. He stole from the homeowners. He shook his shoulders in the heavy rain, reminding us all that he’s the boss. You might already know this if you listen to the hills.

Imagine the owner of the car that was stolen by the mountain. Come winter this fella will have a new ski trail, nice and smooth, stretching from his living room to the remnants of the ice-skating pond below. Instead of appreciating his new private ski and sledding run, he’ll be yelling at All State Insurance that he wants a new white car and a fine new place to park it.

The local agent will tell him about the local Juneau deities and the special limitations in their policy protecting it from paying in the event of a natural act. The Agent will say: “If the Mountain decides to take your car as a gift, then you must honor that gift. And you must find a way to park your shiny new car and build your human house so that Mountain is less tempted by them.

A really good insurance agent in Juneau might even also suggest replacing the car with something that ravens won’t be jealous of. “He likes shiny things,” the agent will say, speaking now of ravens. “Get something older and rustier and don’t park it out so close to where Raven soars around all day, that’ll be better.” You live on the mountain with trees and ravens as your neighbors. Find harmony.

Regrettably, the claims adjuster actually lives in Ohio. That adjuster fails to understand the wisdom of an Alaskan insurance agent. He’ll have to take his big green stamp out from his left desk drawer, hit the forms once with an “act of god.” And with a bigger red stamp, the documents will get marked “denied.” What do Ohio Christians know of steep mountains and rain so loud you hear it through the phone? And cars so old and plain and blue that the only word remaining within them is “Airbag”?

Ravens and mountains never learn. They never repent. Why should they? They don’t have All State agents. If you listen, you know that they are the real bosses.

Imagine a Raven repenting, if only for a minute? Repentant Raven would transform into an insurance guy. Repentant Raven would invent a special insurance rider, mark it as paid, then with a flap, pay the homeowner fella extra money. That extra money might do so much, like buying materials to protect the house from the land sliding away beneath it. Then Raven will be able to tell the family the good news and maybe even hand them the keys to a newer car that has more chrome and silver and white. A car fresh from California or Japan. Wouldn’t that make him happy? Him being Raven. He likes new cars that are shiny and white with lots of chrome.

Repentant Raven is the good guy for the people. Happy people.

The mountain shudders . The mountain sends the car and the fella’s yard to the bottom of the pond. Repentant Raven makes Mountain look weak.

Who wins that fight? Raven will spend more time looking for good wind to ride, ‘cause that Mountain won’t want that old Raven sitting on his shoulder for a while. Raven would fuss and feud with Mountain. Ravens just do that. They fuss, don’t they?

Soon Raven will find new things to get into. He’ll fly off to tease someone else.

Too bad Raven can’t touch my boss. My boss has Jesus and that’s kind of like having a shield. Oh, and Raven can still make little messes and tease my Boss but unless Boss understands Raven, he won’t get the message.

My boss misses most of the conversation by listening to just one god. All the others scream at him. He refuses to hear them. My Boss feels their fury. And I feel fury from him all the time. Boss uses his fury to yell at others like me and the rental car. You have to have fury to tempt the fates by driving on a knife’s edge ridge four-thousand feet up with the ocean bubbling below the steep cliffs. When Boss find a quiet moment, he reads about the “Four Faces of Jesus as told in the Scripture.” Poor Boss, I doubt his mind ever had a quiet moment. That’s the book I see him reading when I leave him in the parking lot of Walmart on Tuesday.

I come out of the store. I see Raven sitting on a shopping cart.

Raven watches Boss read. Raven leans in to see the book and the chrome or maybe he wants some of Boss’ poofy fake-red hair.

Me? I know. I listen to Raven. I see his tricks sometimes. I tip toe, quietly, stealthily. I control my breath. Just by thinking about the next step, I move forward. Even this newly-filled plastic Walmart bag stays quiet for me. Just as I step behind old Raven, I let out a caw that shakes his tail feathers.

“Caw!!!!”

Raven doesn’t know what to do.

He turns his head towards me and starts to fly at the same time. Mistake, Raven. It is like he trips right there in the middle of the air. He’s all turned one way and flying the other. Like Boss up on the Kodiak Ridge. Except Raven tripped.

I roll with laughter. I am laughing and laughing for catching old Raven himself. Raven reading the back of a Jesus book. I got him. I got him good.

Luckily, I leave Alaska. Otherwise, I might be in for some trouble myself with Raven. But it is all fun. He knows I got him. He respects me better for trying. Maybe if Boss wasn’t reading about the faces of Jesus, Boss could have described Raven’s face before I scared the feathers off of him.

As it is, Boss missed the entire episode—looking up as the great black bird recovers flight. How do I tell him why I was laughing? I can’t.

I don’t. Jesus was born in a desert on the other side of the planet. The Boss will never understand the real world.