Mystic Dances

“Bison are spirit animals.” Dad said, “And they can come to us in the physical plane as well as in the spirit realm, but always pay close attention when they appear to you.”

Earth moist under the foliage makes the stride of our gait consistent as we move through the bush. The woods envelop us and carry us as a mother her child, gently as we go. Woodpeckers symphonize from their percussion chucks. We come into a clearing and the mythical Carpathians appear before our eyes in their soothing flow under an expansive violet sky.

Pristine to the eye and inspiring breath, the Carpathian Mountains are my Ukraine. It’s where my people come from. As child, I walked these trails stamped out of generations imprinting their steps, their Kolomeyka dances, their marches. We collected mushrooms and wild barriers, which mom, assisted by grandma always, would turn into preserves. That in winter, like greedy children, we’d delight in the memory of our spoils and the mapping, to the exactitude of the palm of our hand, the very places to return to in our next excursion.

Bison were there to be seen also, the bulls on the fringes of the herd choreographed into a slow mystic dance. Dad said we were lucky to see them, if at all. He said they were sprit animals and should never have the expectation to see them.

My childhood came to an abrupt end at the age of 10, when my father moved to Canada and by coincidence that same summer Ukraine attained its autonomy from the Soviet Union, it was August 24, 1991. My father left in pursue of his family’s future, having been sponsored by a distant brother of our grand-father’s who had immigrated to Canada in the 1930s. I as the eldest, by turn, had become the head of the family.

It’s curious to consider that one’s childhood should end at age ten, but it is as it happened. After three years, dad sent money for my mother and I to come to Canada. Canada, the very word, to me, means comfort and security, it’s home. It’s where I became a man, and the cautious but fun-loving child I had been was replaced by a weary tentative young man looking to find his luck in life.

What happens to us when we go from child to adult?

It’s not that childhood ends at ten. It’s more that a chasm has taken place. Life continues to move along, but there’s a rapture, we become aware of the existence of other lives, of other lives to be lived, and of other worlds to inhabit. Memory serves me well in all its exactitude. The current life is active; the other is dormant, but always there. However, the past is obliterated by the now, the present: the new land, the new home, the new friends, the new body. The now is all I have.

Bison were to be seen at the base of the mountains. Dad always said they’re meant to roam freely. Farmers in the area were always vigilant of them as they trampled over their crops looking for food, and hunters were issued licenses to invite tourism and big-game hunting. Cautiously and from a distance, we’d witness their majesty, prodigious power and at once discern and quiet.

It’d been five years since the spring of 2014 had given rise to the Orange Revolution in Ukraine and placed it at the center of the world’s news headlines. Now, Ukraine was in as much turmoil, particularly the tensions with Russia over its invasion of key eastern provinces. Ukraine literally means border land for the many peoples that have inhabited it. Today, I had come home. Dad and I had come to bury grandpa, a man of integrity and strength. He’d always refused to leave his Ukraina, his breath to life.

As was dad’s custom, we followed a trail into the Carpathians. In silence, we move along, our gaze to the ground, if less to not lose our step, more to become aware of the ground we stood upon – solemn and sacred. The bison would not be heard, less seen. I felt burdened, so much had happened. I’m sure it was for grandpa who dreamed himself free, and for the bison, and all the wrong that had been done to this land and its people. I felt flushed; the collected dew on my cheeks began to stream as rain down my face.

We continued somberly until we came upon the clearing that exposed the mountain tops. We stopped to catch our breath. A silvery blanket rolled over the prairie below and a rising chromatic scale ascended to the peaks and created a play of kaleidoscope with the sky, sunset neared.

“The thing about spirit animals,” dad said, momentarily breaking our silence, “is that they live in us and in our dreams. They become a compass and our cardinal point, they awaken us to Source. We might not see them, but if we tune in deeply they are with us – always.”