Raven and The Old Woman

I met The Old Woman of the World first in Sharon Blackie’s book, If Women Rose Rooted. She lived in a cave with Trickster Crow, spinning on her wheel and drinking her herbal tea, so reviving to lost selkies who come looking for their skins. After listening to Sharon Blackie tell more of The Old Woman and Trickster Crow in the interview she gave on The Medicine Sessions (see the link at the end of this post, about 58 minutes in), the characters started to take root in my own life and imagination. The story itself is older than Ms. Blackie, but as her exquisitely crafted adaptations were my original inspiration, I just want to be sure to acknowledge and give credit where it is due.

You will notice that my own adaptation has transformed Trickster Crow into Trickster Raven. Here in Tlingit Aaní, where I live, Raven is Trickster. Any time spent watching the precocious birds proves this, as the traditional stories of the Tlingit people recount. This Basket of stories is not an attempt to retell Tlingit wisdom. Rather, I wish to weave new stories into the frame of The Old Woman and Trickster Raven’s relationship.

Now to begin.

Raven and The Old Woman

Out on the horizon, rests an island. On that windswept and wave-worn island is a beach strewn with driftwood. Above that beach stretches a great wall of cliffs, and in the southwest side of those cliffs is a cave. In that cave lives The Old Woman Who Created the World.

She goes by many names, for many people know her. She is not like the old women we know today, frail and bent from neglect. Rather, The Old Woman is tall and strong, like a mountain, and worn in the same ways. She has deep wrinkles left from avalanches of tears. She has laugh lines carved by countless joys and jokes. Her hair is long and silvery-white, like waterfalls cascading down out of melting snow and clouds.

Her great body moves slowly, but with the strength built of daily climbs down the cliff path to collect driftwood her sister The Sea gifts her to feed her fire. Or she heads up to the top of the island, to gather from her children, The Plants, The Fungi, and The Lichens, who share the island with her. Through love, tending, and gratitude, she has raised her children well and they are most generous.

On the days she climbs the cliff above the cave, she carries two baskets. One she wove from the strong inner bark of her daughter Cedar. In this basket she places the food gifts of her rooted children. The other basket she wove from the long leaves of her daughter Iris, which she dyed many colors and wove into beautiful patterns. Into this basket she collects the gifts of her children to make dyes.

Beside the entrance to the cave trickles a small, fresh waterfall from which she collects her drinking, cooking, and washing water. Back inside her cave, lit by the afternoon sun, she tends the fire which has burned since she finished creating the world and came to live in the cave. She blows her great breath onto the coals, waking the fire and making it ready for its meal of driftwood.

Three cauldrons bubble away in her hearth. Into the largest, she empties her Cedar basket of its fruits and roots, leaves and mushrooms that feed and heal the world. She enjoys little nibbles as she drops them in the water. Any bones she has collected from the beach and the top of the island she tosses into the middle cauldron, the broth of all the world’s animals. She tops the cauldrons off with fresh water and stirs them both heartily, being sure to scrape the bottoms so that nothing scorches.

Into the smallest cauldron she empties the Iris basket, with its mushrooms, lichens, roots, leaves, and bark. These she stirs slowly in the pot of urine with a carved wooden spoon, which she hangs carefully on the far side of the hearth, for one must not tend fiber and its dyes with the same tools as one cooks.

With the fire and the water and the beings of the Earth tended, The Old Woman inhales a deep breath, filling her great lungs, and then blows all of it back out again so that the cave sparkles with dust from the pollen, ash, sand, and all manner of tiny things that float upon the wind. Tingling and alive, the air swirls through the cave and out through the opening, carrying its tiny treasures off where they may feed new life.

Satisfied with her day’s work so far, The Old Woman walks to the other side of the cave and sits down before her loom. The tapestry she is weaving is quite large, and filled with every color imaginable. She hopes that it will be the most beautiful tapestry the world has ever seen.

But when she sits down to her work, she sees that someone has been pulling some of the yarns loose. Yes, Someone has been pecking at her weaving, leaving holes in the fabric. This Someone has a surprisingly dextrous big black beak…

The Old Woman glances up at the stone shelf in the dark corner above the cave mouth. A faint flutter proves that the culprit is awake and has likely been watching her every move with the rapt attention of one reveling in the anticipation of having his trick discovered.

“Raven! You naughty bird!” The Old Woman admonishes him. “Did you really have to peck holes this time?”

Quivering with Raven-laughter, the Trickster spreads his soot black wings and swooshes noisily through the cave to alight upon The Old Woman’s loom.

“Don’t you like my holes? I worked hard to achieve that casually tattered look,” Trickster Raven puts on his best mock-offended face.

“Oh, I am sure you did,” grumps The Old Woman. “Why couldn’t you have torn out the yarns nice and even-like, from the bottom? I could have picked right back up again without much trouble. But these holes… I shall have to unthread so much of what I have woven just to mend the damage you made.”

She heaves a heavy sigh and lets her old but keen eyes rove over the tapestry - the most beautiful one yet. Raven watches her intently. Her eyes catch on something else amiss.

“What have you done with the urchin quills?” she cries out. “Half of them are missing!”

Delighted at her discovery, Raven fluffs out all his feathers and caws out his laughter.

“The world needs its sharp points, for protection and reprimands. You can’t take away the quills - everyone will be left too vulnerable!” Crossing her arms, she glares up at him. “They are up on your shelf, aren’t they?”

His head feathers still fluffed up, he gives one last barking laugh.

“Well, bring them down. We can’t be having roses with no thorns now, can we?”

“Make me!” Raven dares her.

The Old Woman eyes him. “I have a better idea. Why don’t you go look for some more urchin quills on the beach while I unravel the mess you made here.”

“But that will take forever!” Raven complains. “You know I could pick that tapestry apart in less time than you could climb down to the beach.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” she interjects.

“If you stay here,” Raven continues as if she hadn’t spoken, “I will have found all the urchin quills you will ever need and still have to sit around waiting for you to weep over every broken weft.”

“Fine, have it your way,” The Old Woman relents, rising slowly from her weaver’s seat. “Just don’t pick the whole tapestry apart while I’m gone. Save me something to work with.”

“You had better hurry back, then.” Raven hops nimbly down to her chair. “You know how I get when I’m bored.”

The Old Woman lifts her Iris basket on her way out of the cave. Oh, she knows how he gets when he is bored - or focused. She will have to move quickly if she wants any of that tapestry left intact by the time she returns.

The stones along the path down to the beach are worn from ages of tread. The rock is dished out and cradles her old feet as she makes her way down to the jumble of driftwood. She finds urchin quills enough between the logs, but not as many as she had hoped.

The Old Woman keeps herself on task by remembering the last time she left Raven alone in the cave for too long. He had lit her tapestry aflame and the whole sky erupted in fiery smoke and ash. She had raced inside as fast as her old legs could carry her - though she was not quite so old way back then - and flung a basket of water on the burning loom.

The fire had left the loom with a few scorch marks, but had nearly destroyed the tapestry. She was able to save a few strands of yarn, but she spent a long time after that incident spinning and dyeing and making the world anew. Raven himself had still been a bit of a youngster in those days, and white, with a long, feathery tail. He had been quite vain about that tail of his, but he didn’t get out of his own fire trick unscathed.

A spark had caught his tail on fire and in a panic, Raven flew up to his shelf to put it out. But he could not see through all the smoke and bounced about on the smoky, sooty roof of the cave before finding his perch and pecking the fire out. He lamented the shortening of his tail for a long time, but it did not prevent him from pecking apart her tapestry whenever he got the chance.

Raven spoke the truth when he complained about how she would weep over every torn or unraveled yarn. The Old Woman is one who knows how to mourn. She despairs of unraveling her own work, no matter if it is necessary. She much prefers to let Raven peck it apart quickly and get on with the tending and the spinning and the dyeing and the weaving anew. But she could never tell him that. Best to let him think he won his way.

“That’ll do!” she calls from the entrance, her long shadow engulfing Raven and the loom, and the wefts in a tangled heap on the floor. He gives one last tug for good measure, then flies out past her.

“Where are you going, this late in the evening?” she inquires.

“To find dinner! All that pecking has made me hungry.” Raven flies off into the sunset.

The Old Woman serves herself a scoop each from the herb and bone cauldrons, and savors her own supper. After tending the fire and stirring her dye pot, the sun is nearing the horizon by the time she sits down at her loom. She fingers the tangled yarns, a pretty berry red catching her eye. She carefully picks it out of the heap. A turquoise, and then a raven black stand out among the rest, and she frees them as well. She wraps the yarns up neatly, ready for weaving.

Raven returns to his roost in the cave as the last light of day fades. The Old Woman rises and bids her friend good night. She could never be truly angry with him, for all the trouble he puts her through. For she knows as well as he does that if she were to ever finish weaving the most beautiful tapestry the world has ever seen, the world would end.