I sensed Grandmother’s intensity shift as she identified the birch trees growing thickly along the Soviet roadside. She acknowledged them, with a nod of her head, and explained to our Siberian guides, Andrei and Andrei, that the birch trees represent a very sacred voice to our people.
I tried to see the forest, by my window was frosted and obscured sight. So, I looked ahead and caught sight of the sun glinting on water. The van pulled to the edge of a sandy overhang, and the eight of us clambered out of the van.
Grandmother immediately acknowledge Nunde, the sun, the source of all life, as she hung in the western sky over this river, or lake, or whatever body of water it was that caught Nunde’s rays and sent them skating across the water’s surface, bouncing playfully toward us. I followed Grandmother’s gaze as she turned in a circle, scanning the land where we had come. Her next comment focused her concern about the fences, she saw.
"What about the fences?" she asked Andrei, and repeated her question several times before the answer came back through the translator that it was okay. We would simply walk past them.
So Baird hoisted his camera and headed up the path with Alexey, the soundman, trailing him.
I followed Andrei, whom I learned later, was a Buffalo Heart, and flanked Grandmother, to her left, and slightly ahead.
I noticed white lights and white clouds sitting over the lake. It seemed to be a magical place where boats cruised by in pools of orange and magenta from the setting sun.
Angie and Larissa followed us as we climbed a short and steep path over the embankment, and finally, after three weeks in Europe, we set our feet in the forest.
Tall pines shot up out of the Earth and towered above us. The ground was strewn with their cones, pointing us to go further. I followed Grandmother now as she quickened her pace and headed first south and then east deeper into the trees, which she calls, the Standing Tall People.
I lengthened the distance between us purposefully as I watched her wander from tree to tree – touching them and listening to them, I knew she had entered a place, poorly described, as rapture. She was back in the forest again, and reaching out with all her senses to greet her relations.
Baird and Alexey, at first followed me, at a distance, also respecting Grandmother’s private dialogue.
But they soon pushed past me, and I saw Baird lift the camera to his shoulder, aim it at Grandmother, and begin, for the first time in her 51 years of living, to capture her sacred and intimate interactions with all of creation, on film.
Seeing them move toward her, I quickened my pace and decided to stay closer so I could stop them if I thought I needed to intercede. I treasure her privacy as much as my own, and make it my business to protect it whenever she allows me.
She had wandered off the path and was moving through groups of trees now still touching the bark, pausing and looking up into their branches – looking in spite of her years, and her position, like a child exploring the parts of itself in joyful discovery.
I glanced over my right shoulder and saw Larissa and Angie and Andrei spaced evenly across the wide forest path, walking slowly but steadily.
The other Andrei was moving through the forest, and he seemed to be looking for something in the plant people as he went.
I was torn between my desire to be exactly at Elasi’s side, and the desire to give her plenty of space.
As I slowed my steps, we came to the crest of the sloping landscape, and I heard a bird, probably a woodpecker, hammering at a tree. I couldn’t quite spot the bird, but I could hear him working steadily, and I wondered if he was sending a morse code for feathered beings about the two leggeds who had arrived in his home area.
Elasi picked a place in what appeared to be a circle of pines with some still green shrubs providing some ground cover. She placed her coat on the Earth, as her prayer blanket, and dropped to the ground, greeting her Mother, called Ela.
Beyond her, there was yet another fence running north to south, with a huge gate that stood open to a road, and yet more forest.
She prayed. Baird and Alexey followed her with the camera and mike.
Andrei came up, and handed me a bunch of brown berries he had harvested. I smelled them and was amazed at their clear strong spice smell. He broke off a piece of the stem with 7 berries on it and gave it to me.
I thanked him, and realized that Elasi was moving deeper in prayer movement with Ela, and I wanted to join her in a respectful way.
I saw a tree stump beckon, and I sat on it. Then I slid off and sat on the Earth within a few moments, because I wanted to fully touch the land myself.
I began to listen. And closed my eyes after noting that Angie was standing directly ahead of me by a tall pine so she could direct the men with the equipment. Larissa was standing in the middle of the road, and opened her arms to the sky, and began her prayer movement. Andrew and Andrei stood and watched. The Buffalo Heart removed his shoes and stood erect, in complete respect of Grandmother’s work.
In the silence, I heard the Raven speak from the North. She called out five times, the number that vibrates for Creator.
The woodpecker intensified his activity, and it sounded like a drum now.
Behind my closed eyes, I could see violet lights appear. I smelled the pines release their song in the sweet hushed breath of the north wind that gently brushed my head.
I felt the Earth. I felt many join us there in that beautiful oasis in the forest.
Someone lit a fire at a distance. Several cars drove by. A man on a bicycle rode past the gate, and his bell tinkled in the breeze.
I opened my eyes to see Larissa dancing her prayers in the road, to see Grandmother Pa’’Ris’Ha move more deeply into the woods and the camera retreat as Baird waved Alexey to give her more space.
Angie began to direct them to shots of the setting sun and the woodpecker in the tree, and suddenly, I heard Grandmother singing the lodge song. And I knew there was a connection made. I heard her singing in Elati, and felt her moving in her partially secluded grove.
Angie now sat on my friend the tree stump, and I thought that Elasi was dancing in a circle, acknowledging the four Spirit Keepers, and sending out her songs to the Earth keepers in this place.
Then I heard her rattle. The woodpecker sang in synchronicity with her song.
I later found out that Elasi had lain the whole time on Ela with her heart and mind, moving the dance only through thought. But I had felt her dancing the directions, I was sure I had seen her on her feet, moving in the sacred circle.
As I sat there, I recognized the many who joined us, not by name, but by feeling the awakening of light arching among all of us, as we focused on our message of peace and harmony and friendship for those who provide stewardship for Siberia’s lands.
Elasi appeared as suddenly and as gracefully as she had disappeared and I knew how right her world was by the huge grin on her face. She greeted us all joyfully as she thanked those who had brought her to her natural environment.
She said there were many voices there, and that we would find what we had come to find.
Her eyes sparkled and I saw her free from the heaviness she had been balancing up to now. She had been given that which is most dear to her heart.
She chuckled as she told us she could easily disappear into this forest, and never come back. I responded that we would sit and wait for her if that happened. Then I handed her the spice berries from Andrei, and she inhaled their aroma thankfully.
We gathered around her as she selected a spot under another pine tree, this time overlooking the lake in the West.
Nunde had disappeared below the horizon, but soft full clouds of pink light still bathed the horizon. I saw columns of light streaming up from the lake and a single electric light blinked as it sang its warning to passing boats about the rock on which it perched.
Peace permeated the landscape. Peace settled over us, and Grandmother began the ceremony of evening prayers – addressing her statements so that Larissa could translate for our Soviet brothers, and share with them the step by step movement of releasing the burdens of the day, and giving back the joys we had experienced to Creator.
As we sent our thanksgiving and our joyful appreciation for our wonderful day for Nunde to take to those just beginning their new life on the other side of the world, I remembered that the time difference meant that we were sending our prayers to Cleveland, Ohio, and to the USA – to our very own husbands, and children, and friends.
Elasi spoke into the spirally smoke bowl, and Larissa translated the words and also the feelings that went with them.
Grandmother personally went to each of the Soviet men who had made it possible for Angie, Larissa and Baird to join us in this wonderful odyssey. And she took each one’s hand and kissed it, saying that by her act, she was expressing her complete trust for this one.
And she turned each hand over and kissed the palm and said that by this act she was demonstrating her knowledge that each of them would never harm another.
And then the hugs followed and each hug confirmed that we had found love again. We had lived its essence, we had reached out past the barriers of nations, of language, and of mind, and we had touched each other, we had touched the Earth, with our hearts. And we piled back into the fan, profoundly content with the gifts of this day, profoundly at peace with all of creation.
