Jon Turk is a
fascinating person, a Ph.D chemist who writes text books for a living and an
adventurer who lives for expeditions and the experiences of live in the wild
and raw landscapes of Earth. The book
opens with his Kayak adventure across the Arctic and the Bering Strait that
introduces him to the people of Russia in the furthest north and furthest
east. Those least affected by Russia
itself and still part of a tundra life style and culture that dates back to the
Glaciers.
“The people of
Vyvenka live in poverty and hardship, ravaged by foreign armies and predatory
businessmen, perched on a sand spit that
will someday wash away and carry the village into the sea. Yet life goes on with laughter and love and
few complaints.”
He falls in love with
the people and with the land. Unlike
native Montana, this is a land of flat landscapes that seem to meld in to the
horizon. It is a place where each day is
an adventure in survival.
“Arctic Tundra
consists of a thin veneer of soil lying on top of a thin foundation of
ice. The ice is impermeable, so when the
snow melts in June water is trapped on the surface, creating an immense
circumpolar bog. Zillions of mosquitoes
breed in the standing water, so summer
travel across the tundra consists of slogging across an infinity of muck while
the biting scourge drains your blood.
Early spring is the best time for travel because the temperatures remain
mostly below freezing, but well above winter extremes, days are long,
sun-drenched snow covers the ground, and there are no bugs. “
But this land that
had held a tradition of thousands of years was overwhelmed by the greed and
power of the Stalinists like the American Indians were overwhelmed by a
European greed for land and wealth.
”’The Soviets forced
our people to move into the villages and become moves eaters. Moolynaut’s mother and father had no other
way. When my father died and my mother
was left alone to raise four children, she had no other way. People with small children did what the
Soviets said so their children would live.
But the older people, if their children were already grown and could
care for themselves…
Through the wisdom
and care of a hundred year old woman shaman he finds a spirituality that has
eluded him. It is a primitive
relationship with the earth that predates modern religion and through it he is
cured of a severe injury and sent on expeditions in the Tundra to the sacred
stone and to the source of wisdom itself.
“Lydia stopped for a
moment, ‘Some of the older people…walked into the tundra to die.’”
Like so many of us
who find the earth – Gaia – to be the true source of life, he connects with
this wisdom of life and this reverence for the earth and the Tundra
messenger - the Raven.
“Simon had explained
further that to receive energy from the earth, a person must be in tactile
contact with it, by walking, skiing, living in a yuranga or herding
reindeer. A generation ago, when people
moved to towns and started traveling by machine instead of by dog and reindeer
sled, some of this primordial bond was severed – so they lost some of their
ability to extract energy from the tundra – and the cycle was weakened.”
Because of my knee,
hip, back, eye pains I relate to his chronic pain, his broken pelvis, his
determination not to let pain be the end of his spirit of roaming. It is a story of strength of commitment over
strength of pain and a new source of strength that comes from the base beliefs
of the last shaman still in Russia.
“I rolled over carefully
so I wouldn’t disturb anyone, and felt a sharp pain radiate from my pelvis,
ripple across my groin, and lodge n the top of my femur. I breathed deeply, again trying to figure out
what was hurt, how serious the injury was, and how I could compensate. Somewhere in my subconscious, I realized that
the feelings had been my bedfellow all night, steady, lingering, insistent,
intensely worrisome, without actually becoming debilitating.”
He is cured by magic
and magic becomes a force within the world that has always been here, but is
beyond the quest of the intellect and the mind.
He finds the world changed and his own values altered. He returns to the Tundra from the mountains
three more times.
“Yes, you spent your
formative years in a Soviet school, sitting on a chair, in front of a desk,
lined up in a neat row inside a rectangular room, learning letters, which are
just squiggles on a piece of paper – an abstract of the thing and not the thing
itself…Your mind was molded so that Moynaut can never transfer her power to you…When
the old grandmother dies, two million years of accumulated wisdom, insight, and
intuition will pass into the ground with her.”
“It’s not how we seek
self-awareness; it’s whether we take the time and energy to make the journey.”
The story is folded
over through many adventures, many observations, personal sharing, fascinating
people and complex emotions. But it
comes together in a surprise – YOU MIGHT NOT WANT TO READ FURTHER IF YOU ARE
GOING TO READ – when his wife dies in an avalanche in California. He is with her and he experiences the
avalanche much differently from the one that had created his physical
injury. This is a deeper hurt and causes
his final steps in accepting who he is and what is truly valuable in life and
the world.
I relate to the bear
because it was my totem from a Shamanistic sweat on the Rosebud reservation
years ago and the Raven because of its impact upon me when I walked the woods
after the death of my son Matthew.
This book is well
written, stretches your beliefs and understandings, and touches on the nerves
that motivate the experience we call life.
Jon Turk is an interesting person, but also complex.
http://www.jonturk.net/The-Ravens-Gift
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