I reread a book this week that I first read years ago. The book is The Raven’s Gift by Jon Turk; it’s about kayaking and cross-country skiing in northeastern Siberia. I’m drawn to vast and empty places (yes, I’m the girl who’s travelled to the Badlands ten times) so a book about exploring a tundra is my cup of tea. The book didn’t disappoint.
But this time, reading it, I was struck by thoughts that didn’t engage my imagination the first time through.
The deal is this. Turk has a PhD in chemistry and earned much of his life’s income writing textbooks. He’s also a passionate skier, rugged bicyclist (I need to read the book about riding a bike across Mongolia) and wilderness adventurer.
He was once caught in an avalanche that broke bones in his legs, shoulder, torso, and pelvis. Surgeons fixed his pelvis with a metal plate although his pelvis would hurt, ache, and sometimes cripple him for days at a time in the coming years. It took nearly six months for him to heal enough to walk again.
A few years later we meet him kayaking across the northern Pacific. (Oh yeah). He and his travelling companion encounter a storm near Vyvenka which is a small town on the Kamchatka peninsula of eastern Siberia. Over the next few days he meets some people in this community. We learn a lot about how folks live there now that the Soviet Union collapsed.
We also learn about the tens of thousands of years of reindeer herding from which these people descended. Their culture goes so far back that the few herders who remain still use some tools that are, not kidding, made from mammoth tusks.
Turk meets Moolynaut who is an old woman with shamanic powers and, amazingly, she heals his pelvis. There’s a lot to all this and it’s fascinating to read.
What struck me was this observation. The evolution of humans from prehistoric times to now is exceedingly long and it took eons for people to begin to make even the simplest tools. Some cultures figured out clubs and axes. Plus, probably much of their everyday accouterments were made from materials that simply disappeared over time, so we don’t often dig up sleds, animal skin clothing, ropes, leather belts, boots, and harnesses.
We call them primitive and compared to us, probably they were. But, Turk asks, how did humans survive all those hundreds of thousands of years in places as harsh as Siberia? Did they just bumble around? Of course not, so what did they know that we don’t know?
How did they not only exist, but also flourish in places where we modern folks couldn’t last two days without high tech gear?
What he postulates is that the way we use our brains has changed so much we no longer have access to what was normal consciousness for them. What he encounters in Moolynaut and others of the Koryak culture is a way of existing that is oriented to the moment that are in, not to socializing, not to a chronological way of getting through a day.
The Koryak are intelligent and welcoming, but they live tuned to the weather, to the way the wind is blowing, the way the ice is forming or melting, to the sounds of weather, animals, and people that are around them. They don’t panic, they have confidence in themselves and their skills. They don’t rush or worry too much. They know what they need to accomplish, even in the insane political changes brought to them by their government that changes how much fish they can or can not sell in a year. Their world changes like crazy yet they have an underlying connection to nature and each other that is stunning to watch.
They are not naïve. They are not some western invention of “innocence.” They live in deep poverty gratis of Russian politics and many are ravaged by vodka addiction. Life is hard, consumerism is futile, they live with infrequently purchased food stuffs, plus the fish they catch and small animals they can snare or shoot.
They don’t live in anticipation of the next thing they can do or buy. They spend their intelligence and energy to survive together in their community. They know old stories; they watch bad TV; mostly they watch out for each other. When the power goes out, which it often does, they go to bed.
I’m not saying this as powerfully as it struck me while reading. So much of our lives happen in our to-do lists, grocery lists, making the list for what we need to go on a vacation, buying presents for others, remembering this and that. We fix our houses and take our cars in for checkup and tune-ups. Look at how much time and mental energy we spend just trying to stay healthy - medical appointments, the gym, bike rides, and hikes, and weight equipment et al. We read online reviews to find the next thing we should stream on our subscription TV and music platforms. So much of our mental bandwidth is about getting ready for the next thing.
By being the modern people that we are, we are oblivious to clues that are around us. What the birds are saying. What color is the lake this morning and what does that mean about the weather tonight?
What healing and centeredness might happen if we listened? Could we sleep at night if we knew how to listen to what’s outside our head instead of obsessing over what’s in it? What would we know if we could tell direction by the way the air is moving? What are the connection between our bodies and the world around us that we completely miss, don’t see, don’t honor, don’t know? What if we listened to our skin and guts instead of the chorus of new, old, and ceaseless social media voices that clamor in our heads?
Could we, too, flourish a hundred thousand years if we listened for the reindeer that might be over those hills over there?
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