When I was in my late teens, I had a boyfriend whose family had worked at the Northern California Renaissance Faire every summer for years. I joined them for a couple of years, spending time at their feather fan shop or braiding ribbons at their friend Julia’s velvet-bag shop, wandering the dusty trails, sipping spicy iced chai or savoring waffles and ice cream.
The event wasn’t exceptionally loud, but it provided a steady hum of voices — people talking and singing — as well as medieval bands and musicians playing their instruments as they ambled up and down the paths. Each weekend, I would come home and soak in a long bath to wash off the dust, sweat, fire retardant and anything else my body had accumulated after two days in the dry California oak woodland. And, as the warm water rumbled and filled the tub, I thought I could hear the murmur of voices and the sound of pipes and flutes amid the white noise.
I was amused to hear these ghosts of the weekend, and often leaned in to hear conversations and melodies that weren’t quite there.
This past weekend, I rented a house in the Santa Cruz Mountains — a place that often feels haunted to me, after experiences I had there 20 years ago. After more than a year being at home with my partner and kiddo, I needed some extended time alone. I love them dearly, but I was wiped out from the lack of solitude. (In a recent interview with the Pleasure Mechanics, author Emily Nagoski described her similar situation as like being tied to a chair and force-fed chocolate.)
The house was surrounded on all sides by redwood trees — which was one of its major selling points for me. The whole weekend, ravens flitted from tree to tree throughout the canyon, cawing and cackling and croaking at each other. The only time it got a little too loud was when one of them hopped around on the flat roof over my head, cawing its head off.
When I came home yesterday afternoon, I rested in bed with a portable fan blowing cool air across my skin, and I could hear the echoes of the ravens’ calls. They were faint but unmistakable above the hum of the fan, an artifact of my brain subconsciously dancing along a weekend of raven-song. I hadn’t thought about that phenomena in a long time, and it made me smile.