The Raven’s Gift with Jon Turk

The raven’s gift with jon turk

I read Jon’s book this long weekend in Vancouver.  It explores his extended interactions with the Siberian tundra, its people and the reindeer life way which is presently seriously threatened through ignorance, exploitation and a communal failure in organization and confidence.  This is far too common and will in time fully reverse and internally modernize.  In this case it will be easily done as better tools are perfected. 

More critically Jon reports his first halting experiments with walking the spiritual path with the assistance of the key mushroom mentioned elsewhere in my postings and the guidance of an experienced shaman.  Nothing unusual is learned there but it is the source of the shaman’s healing power which on its own is critically real.

In Jon’s case he is completely relieved of a badly damaged pelvis incurred in an avalanche accident that included a broken platinum late and episodic pain.  Since what took place is specifically impossible, the cure can be nicely chalked up to the intervention.

This led to his continuing search for understanding and reporting that takes place in this book.  Read the book and grasp once more our tantalizing access to the ubermind.

Jon has dedicated his life to living the adventure available outside our cocoon of civilization and is to be commended for it.

The Raven’s Gift: A Scientist, A Shaman, and Their Remarkable Journey through the Siberian Wilderness by Jon Turk 

- Reviewed by Angie Abdou for The Fernie Fix's January 2010 Issue

In December, I had the privilege of reading a pre-publication version of Jon Turk’s The Raven’s Gift in manuscript form. This month, we all get the privilege of having Jon launch the real thing right here in Fernie. On January 22, you can hear Jon speak about the trials and tribulations that led to his startling and revelatory third book – a memoir that questions some of Western culture’s primary modes of thought and being.

Confronted with injury and death, Jon discovers a way to put his own culture’s biases aside and learn from a supposedly more “primitive” culture. Through his personal challenges, he eventually grows to balance his own dependence on logic with an equally profound belief in magic. In The Raven’s Gift, Jon shares these experiences and offers readers an opportunity to profoundly alter their own perceptions of human life. This magical account of the natural world and its connection to the divine places Jon Turk in the company of contemporary mystics, such as Carlos Castaneda. Like Castaneda, Turk shares his own shamanic experiences and urges us to be open to mystical possibilities.

For readers familiar with Jon Turk’s first two books – Cold Oceans and In the Wake of Jomon – let me issue a warning: be prepared for something completely different. As in his first two books, Jon chronicles his own arduous expeditions and the lessons learned from them, but the similarities end there. The three books do, though, work as a kind of trilogy, outlining Jon’s changing attitude toward his own adventures: physical, intellectual, and finally spiritual. The three books are also linked through the role of Chris Seashore. In Cold Oceans, Jon meets Chris and they begin their long and adventurous relationship as best friends, ski buddies, and lovers. From Chris, Jon learns to temper his masculine, single-minded focus on the goal of completion and to find pleasure in the details of his journeys. In The Raven’s Gift, Jon is stricken by Chris’s untimely death and forced to search out the lessons to be learned from that tragedy.

You will read two phrases over and over in this book: “On the one hand” and “On the other hand.” On the one hand, Jon Turk has a Ph.D. in Chemistry and belongs in a lab. On the other hand, he’s a born outdoor adventurer. On the one hand, Jon is a Westerner who believes in logical, rational explanations. On the other hand, he has experienced magic. On the one hand, Jon is a scientist. On the other hand, he finds he has much to learn from a shaman. Through Jon’s account of his repeated trips to Siberia (as well as his tale of a mystical experience right here on our own Three Sisters), The Raven’s Gift leads readers away from this dualistic way of thinking and towards a place of balance.

Reading The Raven’s Gift in Fernie was a surreal experience. One day I read about the avalanche that fractured Jon’s pelvis. The next day I saw Mitch at Freshies. He’d been present at Jon’s accident and because the book’s account was so vivid and engaging, I felt as though Mitch had just that moment shaken off the snow and must still be buzzing from his frightening brush with death. Mitch looked baffled when I said that talking to him was weird, like he’d stepped right out of the pages of a book. About a week later, I was at Cincott Café reading about the events that led to Chris Seashore’s heartrending death, and Mark Cunnane came bounding through the door. “I can’t talk to you right now,” I said, “You’re in an avalanche!” Turk’s prose is so intense and sharp that the Mark in The Raven’s Gift was more real to me than the confused Mark standing at my side.

Jon’s intimate and candid style invites readers into his most personal moments as he copes with grief and confronts the biggest questions of what it means to be human and to live. I look forward to his launch at the end of the month and know it will be a performance not to be missed. I’m betting on some tears in the audience. Afterwards, I hope to get myself invited over to Jon’s place so I can take a peek at his boubin. What’s a boubin? Read The Raven’s Gift and find out. Trust me – you’ll want to see it too.

The Fernie launch of The Raven’s Gift: A Scientist, A Shaman, and Their Remarkable Journey through the Siberian Wilderness by Jon Turk is January 22, 7pm at Freshies.

            - Angie Abdou is a local writer who has recently finished a novel about mountain culture. It will be published in spring 2011 by Brindle & Glass Press. For more information on Angie’s publications and upcoming speaking engagements, see this website.