Hi all! -- Especially my nature-loving friends here in the forum!
I have written this piece in a more formal style.
This is a post for all who love nature, especially my friend here, the man who teaches his young son about the principles of life and living, from nature.
(Please identiy yourself to me again, friend. We have written about this subject together before. I have lost your name, and as I have only one screen and few buttons I cannot call up your post.]
I hope many of you wiill enjoy the wonderful descriptions of the virgin Russian steppes in the 1600's as much as I do.
Not long ago my eldest daughter told me she loved to read Gogol. Soon after, I read part of what is below, quoted in a review of books. So I used my computer and ordered Gogol's "Taras Bulba" from our local public library. I was excited by the beauty of the writing, and especiially charmed, because here are described the Russian steppes as they were in the 1600's before any plough had ever touched the land. In describing the Russian steppes of that time you also describe the once virgin Canadian Prairie.
The Russian steppes and our Canadian prairies are almost the same kind of land. Really, we Canadians live in a land much like Russia. Our two countries are physically more alike than Canada and the United States are. The U.S. is a vastly different land, with moderate and even tropical climates. If climate and land form shapes a people's nature then we should be more like Russians, however our greatly differing histories and root populations readjust things again and make us just ourselves.
Do you know that many Ukrainians came from Russia to the Canadian prairies and settled them? They were called "the men in sheepskin coats" and often had to dig out rooms in the ground which they roofed with sod as the first homes for their families. It took an extremely tough people to settle the prairies where weather conditions reach extremes of heat in summer and deep winter cold with blizzards and white-outs. That was why this tough people was invited to come and settle that land. They were very successful.
When Ben and I came across Canada, 3,000 miles, from Niagara Falls in Ontario to live in Kelowna, British Columbia, we drove here. Ben had all of our belongings packed in a rented truck with eight manual gear changes, and I drove our Volkswagen camper van packed with our tent and camping gear and most of our four children, as frequently one or the other kept him company in the truck. It was a great adventure! The youngest was 2 years old and one of her earliest words was "Mountain!"
We finally reached and crossed the vast, flat Canadian priaries and entered Alberta and then. away off on the horizon we saw some low-hanging clouds. That's what we thought we saw, but it gradually became clear to us that we were seeing snow-covered mountain tops. As hours passed and we drew closer and closer they grew, until we saw and then were passing through the wonderful, towering Rocky Mountains in all their savage glory! No wonder our child learned to say "Mountain!"
Back on the prairies we had seen a gigantic rock, called Buffalo Rock. It stands alone in the middle of the fields and is a peculiar shape. The reason for its shape is that buffalo used to come there to scratch themselves. They did this for all time past into far distant ages. No one really knows for how long. I expect ever since there were buffalo on the Canadian prairies. Their walking around the rock and brushing themselves against it caused the rock to wear away and there is a great swath of missing rock all around the base, as tall as a buffalo, and the rock above is still intact and overhangs it. There are no more buffalo roaming free, although some are being raised on farms like cattle.
Now the prairies are a vast granary. The description below, from Nicolai Gogol is from his epic "Taras Bulba" written from 1833 to 1842. He said "Songs are my joy, my life! How I love them! Every song is a piece of folk history, living, vivid, full of colour, truth, revealing the whole life of a people"; it is of priceless use to a writer who would "feel out the spirit of a bygone age." That is how he was able to mine ancient memories of the beauty of the ancient steppes.
I hope you will enjoy these passages, and find it interesting to know that they reflect the past of part of my land, as of Gogol's. He is describing Ukrainian Cossack horsemen riding across the steppe.
Best wishes to all, Mary.
"The sun had long since come out in the clear heavens and bathed the steppe in its warm, quickening light....The farther the steppe unrolled, the more beautiful it became. At that time all the South, as far as the Black Sea, all the land which is now Novorossia, was but one green virgin wilderness. No plough had ever touched those boundless waves of wild growth.
"Only horses trod down the tall grass, disappearing in it as in a forest. Nothing in Nature could be more beautiful. the earth's face looked like a green-gold ocean spouting millions of flowers. Through the tall, slender stems of the grass peeped blue, purple, and lilac cornflowers; the yellow broom shot high; the caps of the white clover dotted the plain; an ear of wheat, brought God knows from where, was ripening in the thicket. Among the slim stalks partridges pecked about with outstretched necks. The air was filled with the voices of a thousand different birds. In the sky hawks hung motionless with outspread wings, their eyes fixed immovably on the grass below. The cry of a cloud of wild geese, wheeling on one side of the horizon, was echoed from God knows what distant lake. From the grass a gull rose with measured stroke and bathed luxuriously in the blue currents of air. Behold, now it vanishes in the heights till only a black speck is visible, now it turns on the wing and gleams for an instant in the sunlight. O steppes, how beautiful you are!
"....In the evening a great change came over the steppe. All its many-hued expanse caught the sun's last flaming reflection and darkened gradually, so that the dusk could be seen closing over it, painting it dark-green; the vapours thickened: every flower, every herb breathed forth its scent, and the whole steppe was redolent. Broad bands of rosy gold, as if daubed on with a gigantic brush, stretched across the dark, blue tinted fields; here and there shreds of fluffy, transparent clouds gleamed whitely, and the freshest and most enchanting of breezes barely stirred the surface of the grass, gentle as sea waves, and softly touched the cheek. The music that had filled the day died away and gave place to another. The speckled gophers crept out of their holes, sat on their hind legs, and made the steppe resound with their whistle. The chirp of the grasshoppers became louder. A swan's cry was wafted, ringing silvery in the air, from some secluded lake.
"....The stars looked down upon them. Their ears caught the teaming world of insects that filled the grass, their rasping, whistling, and chirping, which, magnified by the still air, rang clear and pure in the night and lulled the drowsy ear. If one of them happened to awake and arise, he saw the steppe spangled far and near with sparkling glow-worms. At times the night sky was illumined in spots by the distant glare of the dry reeds burning on the meadows and river-banks, and then, dark flights of swans, winging their way northwards, were suddenly lighted up by a silvery-pink gleam, and it seemed as if red kerchiefs were flying in the dark heavens."
