Seven Ravens: Two Summers in a Life by the Sea
by Lesley Choyce
Hamilton: Wolsak and Wynn Publishers, 2009, ISBN 978-1-894987-39-4, 249 pp., $19.00 paper.

Lesley Choyce is amazing. Now 58, he's the author of seventy books--adult novels (most notably The Republic of Nothing, now being developed into a feature movie), YA novels, collections of short stories, non-fiction, poetry--but he is also publisher of Pottersfield Press, part-time professor at Dalhousie University, host of a syndicated TV show, and a champion surfer. He lives in an old farmhouse overlooking the North Atlantic Ocean, at Lawrencetown Beach, Nova Scotia.

Hard to believe that he would suffer bouts of depression, that he would begin to doubt "who I was and where I was going." (10) But a few years ago, Choyce felt he needed to take time to "[get] back to essentials, setting free the past, settling into the high water mark of here and now" (219) and rediscover his "small forgotten world of happiness." (222)

Seven Ravens is a chronicle of what he did in the two summers he set aside for his odyssey. Part memoir, part meditation, it is a moving, tender and often funny account, as he communes with nature literally just beyond his door, always accompanied by his notebook.

Choyce is a little coy about which two summers these were. The book is broken into two sections, "Year One" and "Year Two," and in each he says the summer was "my fifty-second" (30, 209). Since he was born in March, 1951, his fifty-second summer would be in 2002. One can assume that the two years in question are 2002 and 2003. (There are other editorial glitches--typos, grammatical errors--that should've been corrected.)

The title Seven Ravens refers to his belief that, because he once saved the life of a raven, other ravens are watching out for him, "to make sure I am safe." (12) When hiking in the Nova Scotia wilderness, he will stop "to write in my notebook each time I see a raven. I will assure myself that something significant, something vital, will happen at each point along the way until I am seven ravens from home. And at that point, I turn around and return." (12)

He believes every altruistic act will result in something good. "If I care for a thing without expectation of any reward, that very act of caring sets in motion cosmic machinery that will return the favour." (236)

Choyce has a knack for looking after birds, wounded or simply too young to face the world. One fine chapter deals with a blue jay his daughter brought home; Choyce allows it the run of his office and he records its antics. "It's as if [my chaotic, cluttered office] were designed exclusively for him, a veritable Blue Jay Disneyworld. One of his favoured places seems to be a slanting drawing table with a top of shiny Formica; he lands near the top and lets gravity skate him toward the bottom and he does this over and over, sliding down the slope as if he were blue jay skiing." (64)

Choyce's observations on East Coast birds are as illuminating as those on prairie birds in Trevor Herriot's recent Grass, Sky, Song. Choyce has the same kind of empathy and understanding as Herriot; both writers make you care about the creatures that share our world. Both make you appreciate the distinctive splendour of each and every species.

Choyce is especially articulate in expressing his respect for the ocean, his knowledge of tides and rock formations and the flora and fauna of the sea. His sojourns in the Atlantic by kayak, his riding waves on a surfboard, his excursions over rocks to tiny islands--all are documented with love and wit. You feel, with him, the grandeur of nature.

At the same time, he muses about literature--books he's read and books he's taken with him (philosophy, science, classics)--and history. He's appalled by the things humans have done in the name of religion and international relations; countless wars show that no animal is more stupid than man.

Yet his own ability to deal with his depressed state, to find a "restorative regimen" for himself--reading, studying the natural world around him--give him hope, not only for himself but also for the world. By book's end, he has achieved "a state of grace."

Some of his autobiographical bits--his childhood in New Jersey, for example--recall his 1987 book, An Avalanche of Ocean: The Life and Times of a Nova Scotia Immigrant. That book made several references to his wife, but she is not mentioned in Seven Ravens, though on page 162 he says, "I'm a husband, a father, a writer and a surfer." He says on page 38 that, when his daughters Sunyata and Pamela go away to school, he'll be alone. Perhaps a desire for privacy in personal matters dictated a certain reticence, but it only raises questions for the reader, questions that aren't answered. Yet the main topic of this book is personal--the author's psyche.

Nevertheless, Seven Ravens is a lovely work by a writer who should be better known and better celebrated. If he lived in Toronto (and he never will), he'd be touted as a national superstar.

Dave Williamson is a Winnipeg novelist.

Buy this book at McNally-Robinson Booksellers.

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