Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Siberia book event - The Raven's Gift

On Saturday, April 10, at 4 PM, we will have a booksigning and talk with Jon Turk, author of The Raven's Gift - a scientist, a shaman, and their remarkable journey through the Siberian wilderness.
In 2000, while kayaking the Siberian coast, Jon Turk met an elderly woman named Moolynaut, a Koryak shaman, and learned about her journeys to the spirit world. A year later Moolynaut entered the spirit of a great black raven to help mend Turk's pelvis, which had been previously injured in an avalanche. When the healing was complete, Turk was able to walk without pain. Turk, as a scientist, could find no rational explanation for the healing, and the experience changed his life, irrevocably altering his view of the connection between the natural spiritual worlds.
Searching for the spirit raven, he traversed the frozen tundra where Moolynaut was born, camping with bands of reindeer herders and recording stories of their lives, and of their spiritual beliefs. Framed by high adventure across the vast and forbidding Siberian landscape. The Raven's Gift is a life altering vision of the ties between the natural and spiritual realms, informed by one man's awakening and guided by the ancient spirit bird with wide black wings and the power to heal. The tension between Turk's logical scientific background and the mysterious shamanistic wisdom is at the heart of this wonderfully told story.
Jon Turk is the author of 25 environmental and earth science textbooks, and 2 adventure travel titles. He has climbed big walls in the Canadian Arctic, mountain biked the Mongolian Gobi, skied high peaks throughout the world, kayaked around Cape Horn, traversed the northwest passage, and paddled the Pacific Rim from Siberia to Alaska.
The event is free and open to the public.
For more information please call 729-5083