Ravens

Today, ravens in thin air.  The University of Houston presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them. 

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     Years ago, I photographed ravens flying over Timberline Lodge – seated, as it is, high on the slopes of Oregon’s Mt. Hood.  At the time, those birds didn’t seem very significant. I just took pleasure in their grace of movement. 

Raven flying over Timberline Lodge

     But then I learned some surprising things about them. I found that the Raven’s respiratory system adapts well to higher altitudes – to thinner air.  Not all birds can move so easily from one altitude to another.  (And Timberline Lodge is six-thousand feet above sea level.) 

Mount Hood

But there’s more: Ravens hold a special place in the mythology of our Native peoples of the Pacific Northwest.  And, the terrain in that part of the world varies from sea level to fourteen thousand feet in as little as fifty miles.  The Raven is free to roam any part of that world.

So back to Timberline Lodge: The Works Progress Administration, or WPA, built it in the late 1930s. They also sponsored a great deal of Public Art. Paintings and sculpture grace every room and hallway in that magnificent timbered building.

Timberline Lodge

And the Raven is a prominent theme.  The high dining room with its splendid view of Mt. Hood is named The Raven’s Nest. We walk up one stairwell and an eerie sculpture – a silvery flock of Ravens – spirals up beside us. 

Raven sculpture in Timberline Lodge

And I’m back to the mystical role that Ravens play in the worldview of so many Native peoples – like the Tlingit, Salish, Yakama and many more.  The Raven is, in their traditions, a transformer – one who brings light.  Even a trouble-maker, but one who transforms our world in the process.  I found these words which, I believe, describe that thinking:

A Raven flew off with the night
clutched in its beak.

They said he was trouble.
And perhaps he was.

But when he cracked open the dark,
light spilled out – 

With it, warmth for stiff hands,
and laughter for houses once quiet.

For joy and healing often come 
on somber black wings.

The lovely, eerie Raven – this bird who can teach us by the sea, or on the mountaintop.  Here we’re given a fine mixture of folklore, and insight into the lives we seek to live. 

Today, you and I live in such a literal world.  We need only ask our browser for articles on the stunning intelligence of Ravens – and of their cousins, the Crows.  And more still – their care for one another.  Now scientific observation and data tell us what the original occupants of our country already knew.  That this lovely black bird, which has taught us in the past, has more lessons for us, still.

I’m John Lienhard, at the University of Houston, where we’re interested in the way inventive minds work.

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SOME SOURCES:

Common raven physiology - Wikipedia

All Season Mountain Resort - Mt. Hood Oregon | Timberline Lodge

Ravens in Native American mythology - Wikipedia

Raven Cooperation | The Engines of Our Ingenuity

And you might be as Intrigued as I was with this amazing variety of Raven Vocalizations: Common Raven Sounds, All About Birds, Cornell Lab of Ornithology

I have used the corrected spelling of Yakama, instead of the familiar spelling, Yakima. All photos are my own.

This episode first aired on March 9, 2026