Garrett lay prone, anchoring his body to the earth. His thighs, his chest, his elbows, all reached down into the rocky, dull yellow soil like the roots of the creosote bushes around him. He slowed and deepened his breathing, crafting it into a perfect metronome as he drew the dry air of the Mojave Desert into his lungs, then exhaled out, again and again. When he felt the rhythm steady, when he knew that the only movement of his body was from the faint rise and fall of his chest, he closed his left eye to look through the rifle scope. The raven looked back at him. Even from 300 yards, the powerful lens allowed Garrett to clearly see the black shiny feathers and blacker eyes of his target. The bird stood motionless on a small rock outcrop raised eight inches above the dun-colored landscape. Behind the raven, miles and miles behind it, the desert rose up into the darker reddish-brown peaks of the Cady Mountains.
He began to make tiny muscle adjustments in the cadence of his breathing, countering the small up and down movement of the barrel with his body. The changes were slight, but at this range it would be the difference between a kill and a miss. Garrett knew not to hold his breath. His dad had taught him in this same stretch of desert never to hold his breath, and he had perfected and improved on that training to lethal effect in another desert on the other side of the world. The thin crosshairs in his magnified vision stopped moving, holding steady just above the raven’s eye, black on black. Once he fired, the force of the planet’s gravity, the same force that held his outstretched body so tightly to the Mojave Desert, would pull the bullet down to the center of the raven. He moved the tip of his index finger to the edge of the trigger and began the slow squeeze that would take the raven.
Something stopped him. He and the bird sensed it at the same time. The raven flared its large black wings and lifted into the arid sky. Garrett slowly unwound the tension in his finger, releasing the pressure off the trigger. For a moment, he continued to lie unmoving on the earth, extending the embrace of synchronicity between body, breath, and soil. He listened to the desert; he heard the light scuffle of a lizard nearby, the distant rumble of the Union Pacific trudging along its tracks to the south, and the soft whisper of a breeze through a smoketree, all of it undisturbed by the crack of a rifle that would not come.
When he finally rose, the horizon extended in front of him. The dry, undulating plain spread out before him in shallow rises and dips; pale green puffs of burro-weed and creosote scattered among the rocky soil. Sand-covered fans swept toward him in wide, gentle deltas, the ghosts of torrential rivers that resurrected for only a few brief moments each year, frantically racing down from the mountains before reaching their ephemeral rest in the expansive flatland where he stood. A purple dot moved slowly near the raven’s vacated perch. It was a person, he saw through his rangefinder, picking their way overland across the desert. He had not seen the dusty plume of a vehicle for hours. There were no trailheads nearby, and in fact no trails to speak of on this side of the mountains. This land, tens of thousands of ignored, forgotten and precious acres, could go for days–weeks–without attracting human attention.
Garrett slung his rifle over his shoulder and whistled with his thumb and middle finger, piercing the desert silence. The woman startled as she looked over at him, a white man with a gun striding across the desert. He wore jeans, a long sleeve red plaid cotton shirt, and a tan trucker cap with the Federal Bureau of Land Management triangular logo on it. His boots were the same ones he wore every day: tan, high lace “jungle” boots purchased every two years from the PX in Twentynine Palms. The woman he approached did not move, like a jackrabbit deciding whether to bolt or remain still.
“Hi there,” Garrett said, as if they were passing each other in the grocery store and not the only two people for miles around.
“Hello,” she answered carefully. Her eyes drifted up to the federal government logo on his hat, and she seemed to relax just a little. He could see now that her purple pants were yoga pants, and her white tennis shoes were covered in dust. She was young, maybe twenty, and asian. Her hair was loose without a hat, long and dark, the same color as her top, and she carried a teal-blue day pack. Her appearance in the dull browns and yellows of the desert heat was as incongruous as a butterfly in a snowstorm. Garrett waited for her to continue, to explain her presence. She just stood there, looking at him.
“Do you need any water?” he finally asked, breaking the silence. It was not yet 10 a.m., but the September sun was already pushing down on them, promising to break 90 degrees before noon. Garrett had two, 32 oz bottles of water in his pack. One for drinking, and one for fuck ups, his dad would say. She shook her head no.
“I’ve got some.” She pulled a small half-liter plastic water bottle from a side pouch on her pack. It was three-quarters empty, the Crystal Geyser label peeling halfway off. The pack was too small to carry much of anything other than the tiny water bottle and a few granola bars. A large, rolled up piece of paper jutted out of the top where the zippers met, like a giant straw sticking out of a soda cup.
“What are you doing out here?” he finally asked, unable to pretend any longer not to recognize what they both knew: she did not belong here. Her name was Lisa, she finally told him, his direct question breaking whatever spell of silence had kept her from talking. She had decided to take a hike near an old summer camp her parents used to send her to when she was young. She wandered a bit through the hills, and the sight of ravens had drawn her down here. She was a student in Berkeley and had started a bird watching club, or something.
“I’m here for the ravens,” Lisa continued. “Did you know a group of ravens is called a conspiracy? Or some people call them an unkindness of ravens.” Her voice strengthened as she talked about the ravens, animated for the first time. “I don’t like either of those names though. Ravens are very smart, and that doesn’t seem fair to them. But I suppose it’s better than a murder of crows.”
Garrett did know about the conspiracy of ravens. It was his job to know, but he ignored her question. “Do you mean that Christian ministry camp over by I-15?” It was the only summer camp he knew of, but it was over 15 miles away on the other side of the hills west of them. Lisa nodded.
“Yeah, I used to go there every summer as a kid. I think I can find my way back.” It would take her hours to get back, Garrett thought, if she didn’t get lost. If she wasn’t lost already.
Garrett shook his head, realizing his day was shot. His own truck sat on the road a half-mile back. He and Lisa would have to walk 30 minutes back to his truck, then another hour to drive down to I-40 before doubling back up to I-15. He needed to take at least two or three ravens today to keep pace with his monthly quota of 45 ravens a month.
The Raven Predation Mitigation Program sought to protect the endangered desert tortoise. Whereas ravens used to migrate away in the summers when water and food became scarce, the population had proliferated in the Mojave in recent years, sustained by the human detritus and irrigation that was now available year round. Their preferred snack, however, was a juvenile desert tortoise. The ancient, armored creatures could live up to 80 years in the desert, surviving the harsh summers with the moisture of the plants and flowers they ate, but the shells of the young took nine years to harden enough to withstand the long, sharp beaks of the ravens. Lisa was right that the birds were smart. They learned to pierce the shells of the young, killing and devouring them before they were protected. Once one bird learned how to do it, it taught the others. An unkindness of ravens could wipe out an entire generation of tortoises in a single season. So they sent Garrett to kill the ravens.
“Come on with me. I’ll give you a ride back to your vehicle.” He began to walk east, toward the narrow dirt road. Lisa followed without protest.
◊ ◊ ◊
As they walked, the spell of silence resumed its hold over Lisa. She kept glancing at Garrett, his rifle, and the BLM patch on his hat. He did not sense fear in her, but rather an evaluation, like she was slowly working out what he was. He felt judged; an irrational sense of sadness and shame stalked him like a resentful djinn released by their footsteps across the virgin soil crust.
“Why ravens?” he asked after twenty minutes, unable to abide the diffidence. They reached the gravel road and turned south, toward Garrett’s truck. They continued to walk without speaking. Garrett waited in the silence, nearly giving up, until Lisa finally responded.
“When I was a kid, I wanted to be an artist. I saved up my allowance for weeks to buy a case of this special paint from a fancy art store online. When the box arrived, it was only bottles of black paint instead of all the colors I thought I’d ordered. I had wanted to paint flowers and sunrises, things with color, but there was so much black paint. I had to go looking for things that were black otherwise it would go to waste. I began to watch the ravens in the tree across the street from my bedroom. The more I watched them, the more I learned about them. They became my favorite thing to paint. Then they became my favorite thing.”
“Is that what you’re studying at Berkeley? Painting?”
She shook her head no and looked down. “No. My parents told me I had to study for a real job, like a doctor or lawyer or something. I still paint for fun, but I’m a poli-sci major so that I can go to law school later.” Lisa’s tone changed as she continued, accelerating like a river the moment before it plunges over a waterfall. “That’s where I learned about the plans to kill the ravens. The government is just killing them. And I decided…I needed…to do something.” She was still looking down, the force of her words divorced from her body.
A smoky cloud of gray haze coming toward them interrupted their conversation, relieving Garrett of the need to respond. As the car came near, he recognized it and felt an overwhelming sense of solace. The forest green Subaru, covered in dust and faded stickers, slowly bumping over the torn road, was as familiar to him as any vehicle he’d ever owned. The car slowed to a crawl as it approached, allowing the dust cloud behind it to settle to shallow wisps of powder before it stopped next to them.
“My God Garrett,” Jane said as she opened the car door and stood next to him. “What in the hell are you doing walking out here?” She stepped forward to wrap him in a bear hug, her strong arms contracting around both him and the rifle. The woman, Jane, could have passed for a weather-beaten fifty. In fact, she was seventy-two, and capable of hiking most people half her age into the ground, including Garrett. Jane wore old hiking boots, an olive green fishing vest over a loose, cream-white, long sleeved shirt, and slate gray hiking pants that matched the color of her hair, which she wore pulled back into a tight ponytail. Garrett could have described the outfit before she ever stepped out of the car; it was the same clothing she had worn nearly every day for all of the thirty plus years he’d known her. Other than his mother’s funeral, when she wore a black dress and silently wept beside him, he could not think of a time he had ever seen her dressed differently.
Before waiting for Garrett to answer, Jane turned to Lisa. “And who the fuck is this?” she asked, bafflement in her voice. On his eighteenth birthday, Garrett had hitchhiked to the recruiting office at the nearby base and spent the next eight years in the Marine Corps. Throughout his enlistment, he’d failed to meet anyone who cussed as much as Jane. Ever since he could remember, even as a little kid, a swarm of swear words had followed her like locusts.
Garrett introduced Lisa and explained her presence, as best he could understand it. Then he told her he was there to control the ravens. Lisa remained quiet during the introduction, retreating to her own thoughts again.
“So they’ve got you out here shootin’ ravens, huh? Seems like fucking overkill, don’t you think?” Jane asked. Garrett wasn’t sure which tool Jane thought was excessive: him or the rifle.
“It’s still just a varmint gun. I’m only using .22-250 for the range. The birds won’t let me get close enough for anything else.” When he’d first started working on the Raven Program, he could practically walk right up to the birds with a shotgun. The ravens learned quickly; they adapted. He stopped using his BLM truck because the ravens could recognize the wildlife control officers’ vehicles and would fly away before he could get in range. It was an effort now to get one or two a day, despite the hundreds he would see.
Jane waved her hand dismissively at Garrett. “You know I don’t know shit about guns. My job is to protect critters, not fucking shoot them.” Jane was the director of the Wildlife League’s desert chapter. His mother had been a member, and Jane’s best friend. Together they taught him to see the extraordinary diversity of life that overflowed in the searing desert. He’d spent his childhood with Jane and his mother seeking out burrowing owls, fringe-toed lizards, and bighorn sheep. Because of Jane, Garrett could identify thirty different plant species that were within a quarter-mile of them. Jane could probably identify more than fifty. Where other people perceived a barren wasteland, Jane saw one of the most biologically unique habitats on the planet. She had spent her life trying to protect it.
“What are you doing out here?” Garrett asked. Jane gestured toward the mountains.
“Taking pictures for the hearing next week. Someone’s got to show those assholes up in Sacramento what they’re paving over with their damned clean energy projects. Are you the one they’re sending up for the feds?”
Garrett nodded yes. A new administration and a rush to show progress on climate change meant that large swaths of public lands in the desert were suddenly prime targets for development. Biologists estimated that the last approved project, a 5,000 acre solar development near the Nevada border, had killed or displaced over one hundred fifty endangered desert tortoises when the construction destroyed their burrows.
Now there was a new proposal, this one 8,000 acres, planned right where they stood, stretching east along the base of the mountains. Garrett was set to testify on behalf of the federal government in support of the efficacy of the Raven Program, in case the desert tortoise issue came up again. It was imperative that the clean energy projects move forward to address the climate crisis. The impacts to the desert tortoises could not be allowed to derail the projects. His job was to assure people that the ravens, lured to the desert by human sprawl, could be controlled to offset the pending destruction of the tortoises.
“Are you here to protect the ravens?” Lisa asked Jane, her face brightening with hope.
“Oh honey, I don’t give two-shits about the ravens.” Jane answered, furrowing her eyebrows at Lisa. The young woman deflated a little as Jane continued. “Damned things are a fucking plague. I’m an environmentalist, not an animal-rights activist. BLM can shoot as many of those fucking birds as they want as far as I’m concerned.” Jane’s tone softened a bit as she turned to Garrett, “I’m just surprised you’re the one doing it.”
Garrett shrugged. “I’m a good shot.” USMC, BLM. Different letters in the same government. He’d shot men for oil. Now he shot ravens for solar.
Jane’s eyes lingered on him for a moment, a knowing look of sympathy that evaded his bulwark of feigned indifference. “You seen your dad lately?” she finally asked, deciding not to press him.
Garrett’s mother died from emphysema, though she’d never smoked a cigarette in her life. Garrett’s father smoked a pack a day in the house. Near the end, he sat at his wife’s hospital bed for days on end, holding her hand, stroking her hair, reading to her, as he watched her fade away. The only thing that could make him leave her side was the cigarettes. Every two hours, like clockwork, he would kiss her forehead, then leave her to walk outside and smoke. His addiction to the toxic pollutants that had killed her was still too strong to overcome, even as it stole his last precious moments with the only thing on Earth he’d ever loved.
“It’s been a while,” Garrett admitted to Jane.
“I know he’s a cocksucker, but you need to go see him. He’s lonely.”
“Maybe,” Garrett said, needing to change the subject, “but today I’ve got to drive this one out so she doesn’t die in the heat.”
“Fuck maybe. I’ll take Berkeley here back to summer camp if you promise to go see your dad. I’m heading that way anyway.”
“No,” Lisa asserted defiantly, committing to whatever internal decision she’d been mulling over. “I came here to protect the ravens. And you,” she looked at Garrett sternly, “I know what you are.” She pulled the tube from her small teal pack and began to unroll it. The poster fought against Lisa’s attempt to flatten it out, the corners bending back in on themselves as if the sign was too embarrassed to reveal itself. She finally managed to stretch her arms out wide enough so that Garrett and Jane could read her sign. In the center of the large paper was a beautiful and intricately painted black raven, an eerily accurate likeness of the bird that had been in Garrett’s sights an hour ago. She’d painted the wings a thick, glossy black, and the eyes were a different, deeper black. It must have taken hours, days even, to paint the raven. Above the image, in blood red letters, were the words Stop the Slaughter in a curved arch like the sunset. At the bottom of the sign, in smaller straight, black print, it read Corvid Awareness & Watch.
“Jesus fucking Christ!” Jane burst out laughing, “You named your bird club CAW?” Jane put her palm on the hood of the Subaru for support. She doubled over laughing before she began cawing like a crow. “Caw! Caw!” Garrett chuckled despite feeling that he shouldn’t. He couldn’t see Lisa. Her arms stretched out as wide as she could hold them to unfurl the sign, and the poster completely covered the upper half of her body. He wondered if she was embarrassed from Jane’s laughing, if she’d realized the absurdity of bringing a protest sign to the middle of nowhere. While Jane strained to stop her uncontrollable guffaws, Lisa continued to hold the sign up high, her face and expression obscured behind the elaborate, magnificent painting of the raven.
“Alright,” Jane finally said, wiping tears from her eyes, “that’s the funniest goddamn thing I’ve seen all week. Get in the fucking car Berkeley, and I’ll give you a ride back to Jesus camp.”
Garrett watched the dusty green Subaru drive away until Jane and Lisa disappeared over the horizon, leaving him alone in the desert. The silence enveloped him as he took in the landscape. He tried to picture the land filled with 8,000 acres of mirrors and machines, but he couldn’t see it. The vastness of the proposed solar development was beyond his ability to comprehend. He knew only that it would happen, and that he was part of it.
◊ ◊ ◊
The hearing room smelled of Pine-Sol and perspiration. The sweat of generations of men–mostly men–who had planned the powering of California permeated the walls and carpet. From coal and oil, to nuclear and gas, and now solar, the incessant aspirations of progress endured.
Jane was not there. An angry voicemail greeted Garrett when his plane landed at the Sacramento airport that morning. The Wildlife League’s national office had stepped in and forbade Jane from opposing the massive solar project. Clean energy was too important, they’d told her, and the politics of it all were too complicated right now.
“Do you know what that cocksucker in San Francisco told me?” Jane demanded of his phone’s recording, “He said, ‘What’s the point of saving some turtles if climate change destroys the planet?’ That fucking son-of-a-bitch can’t tell the difference between a turtle and a tortoise and he’s trying to tell me what to do in the desert I’ve spent forty years protecting. Fuck him!” She had continued to rant until the recording cut off.
The solar developer’s attorney smiled at him. Garrett sat next to the dais in the witness seat and adjusted the microphone in front of him. A large map stood on an easel to the side of the room; it showed a satellite image of the desert overlaid with red cross-hatched lines demarcating the 8,000 acre proposed project. The room was full, but quiet. There were no protesters here, no opposition from Jane or anyone else. He felt a flicker of unjustified reproach toward Jane for her absence. She was not one who just gave up, who did what she was told. The desert needed her. He found himself looking around the room, hoping to see Lisa, to see her sign and the beautiful painting of the raven, black on black.
“Mr. Thomas, thank you for being here. Can you please state your name and occupation for the record?” His job was to alleviate the Commission’s concern over the extinction of one species by explaining that they could sacrifice another.
“Garrett Thomas. I’m a wildlife control officer for the Bureau of Land Management in the Barstow office.” I am the Raven Killer. A climate warrior. Through death, I provide absolution to those who would reclaim the barren wasteland for a clean energy future. Garrett felt his pulse quicken as he took shallow breaths of the stale, confined air.
“And can you please summarize for us your opinion on the effectiveness of the Raven Predation Mitigation Program?”
Garrett looked at the map. The satellite image, taken from high above the planet, did not look like the Cady Mountains. It was too flat. Too lifeless. Garrett searched the image for the place where the raven had stood, where he had met Lisa, but he could not find it. The perspective was all wrong. The blood colored lines cutting across the landscape did not make sense to him.
“Mr. Thomas?” the attorney prodded him.
Stop the Slaughter. The words from Lisa’s sign occupied his mind. The beauty of desert life–tortoises, acacia, burrowing owls, fringe-toed lizards, silver cholla cactus, and the magnificent ravens–flooded his thoughts, a torrential burst of imagery, violent and ephemeral.
Killing the ravens is not effective, Garrett thought. They came because of us. They adapted and thrived in the world we created. They will continue to feast on the nascent generations of juvenile desert tortoises even as we bulldoze the burrows of the adults. His rifle could not tip the scales of fate for the tortoise. The Mojave, severe and fragile, teeming with resilient life, could not possibly rebalance itself as we destroy thousands upon thousands of its acres. We must go elsewhere for our power. We cannot sacrifice the desert.
The tension built within Garrett as the pressure of his words, of his truth, strained to come out. He opened his mouth to speak. The chairman interjected first.
“Thank you for being here Mr. Thomas. However, as we are a bit pressed for time, I just want to ask whether any of the parties here intend to cross-examine the witness?” A murmuration of head shaking nos in the hearing room. “Very well. Mr. Thomas, your written report on the matter will be sufficient for our record. The Commission very much appreciates your availability here today, and you are excused.” For a moment, Garrett continued to sit unmoving. Then he gathered his things and stood.
◊ ◊ ◊
The Mojave blurred into mottled streaks of browns and tans as Garrett drove east. Most people only ever see the desert this way, he thought. They drive by going 90 mph and see a single thing: flat, hot, and dry. A sepia toned monotony of barren wasteland. You have to stop and look carefully at a place to realize that it is more than just one thing. Garrett exited the freeway at the Shady Palm trailer park. The afternoon sun swelled above him, unbroken, relentless. It was hot for September, hotter than he remembered as a kid.
He stopped his truck next to a disheveled lot. A large, tattered American flag hung from the side of the doublewide. Lined in neat rows by the front door stood an eclectic array of painted pots, the colors faded from years in the sun. A friendly, smiling garden gnome sat in each pot, his mother’s whimsy still in their hearts. He remembered her setting them up in her makeshift garden, the gnomes like sentries watching over her little slice of Eden, green and full of life. With her gone, there had been no one to water the plants. The gnomes continued to stand guard, watching impassively, as the world around them shriveled and died in the heat.
He exited the truck and walked to the front door as the 100 degree heat bore down on him. He rapped on the door and announced himself before hearing a muffled “come in” from inside.
Travis Ritchie grew up skiing and hiking in the mountains of California. The beauty of nature gave him so much in his youth, and he chose to spend the first half of his career defending it as an attorney for an environmental nonprofit. He is currently a stay-at-home dad in Oakland, California.
