Large Fierce Mammal

Meisner’s Cove on the west side of Covey Island, looking east over the water across which the Raven flew and the Porpoise swam. With this picture as reference, I would have been sitting just below the grass line just to left of the dark terrain feature on the right edge of the beach, while the path followed by both the Raven and the Porpoise would have taken them from left to right across the foreground. Click to enlarge. Photo credit: Rolland C. Reynolds

“For this to be experienced I needed to be exactly where and when I was. So simple and yet so profound.” ~ Moments of Magick

Welcome back Goode Reader, to this second chapter in my chronicles of camping trips spanning 20 odd years, some more odd than others, to Covey Island, Nova Scotia.

The first two oddities were encounters with wildlife that, though wondrously thrilling, were only rendered remarkable when the second happened two years later. Differing only in time and the animal involved — the first a Raven and the second a Porpoise — there was the same Man (me), performing the same actions, for the same reasons, in the same place, on the same island, at the same time of day, under the identical weather conditions of a calm, misty sunrise, when I was the only Human witness to the visit of a fellow Traveller.

On the first occasion, I was sitting alone on the wide stretch of beach at the south edge of Meisner’s Cove (see photo above and map with aerial photo at the top of the previous chapter here) in the early hours before anyone else was up, tending the morning cook fire as I meditated on the glassy calm of the inlet in which the Mi-Pet-Val lay at anchor. Abruptly, my attention was drawn by a powerful and rhythmic swoosh, swoosh, swoosh, coming from my right and getting louder. Looking in that direction, a huge Raven materialized against the gloom of the wooded north arm of the cove on a heading that would take it straight across the water in front of me. With not a breath of wind to raise the slightest slap of a ripple on the beach, I watched and listened as the Raven passed, dwindled, and ultimately disappeared around the south arm of the cove to my left — swoosh, swoosh, swoosh ….

I felt honoured, to be sure, but in the moment, and not yet being the Man I am today, I chalked it up to right place, right time, and returned to the tasks at hand.

Two years later, and under identical circumstances, my attention was once again drawn to a sound from the direction of the north arm of the cove; this time sharp and loud enough in contrast with the stillness of the morning as to set my heart to pounding. As my eyes scanned the beach, woods, and water of the cove in the direction the sound had come from, the dark back of a Porpoise broke the surface, its blow hole emitting a misty spray in concert with that same sound — PSSSSSHHHHHT !

As had the Raven, the Porpoise, which seemed in no particular haste, passed majestically before me as it crossed the cove from right to left — northeast to southwest — rhythmically breaking the surface to breath every twenty seconds or so — PSSSSSHHHHHT … PSSSSSHHHHHT … PSSSSSHHHHHT ….

By this point, even the me of that time was not so uneducated as to miss the pattern. Groundhog Day with Raven and Porpoise.