The Raven's Gift: A Scientist, a Shaman, and Their Remarkable Journey Through the Siberian Wilderness

I have mixed feelings about this book. The author just kept pounding how wonderful Koryak culture was but he either got lucky meeting the right people or lied about the situation. Up North of Russia is horrible. People live in horrible conditions (much more horrible than he described). Plus he transliterated Russian words wrong. I had to go intuitive about them. He should have done his research. But it was engaging even though it was repetitive in the second half. (spoiler alert) Ya, we got it that your wife has died. Ya we got it you cried all the time, and you really don't have to repeat that she was your lover on every page. But I think it was just poor editing. Overall, it's an interesting read but don't believe everything he says.

This is a book worth reading, but probably not for the reasons you would expect. Turk is a romantic adventurer and his accounts of where he has gone and what he has subjected himself to are interesting in themselves, yet there are guys like Turk sipping their craft brews in hundreds of bars across the mountain West and recollecting all their impressive feats in far-flung and exotic places across the planet. They are not explorers in the old tradition. They aren't looking for trade routes or the shortest path to India or China. They could hop a plane and be where they want to go in hours. No, they brave the elements and the wilderness for the sheer satisfaction of having done it. And if the journey involves experiences that could be described as "gnarly" or "technical", all the better. It's something to recount that most people haven't done because most people would find the adventure too hazardous and too uncomfortable. Apparently, these gnarly dudes just can't help themselves. The wild adventurousness of their free spirits just leads them on, and on, and on.I hadn't got very far into the book before I thought, "This guy is really full of himself." But the part about his meeting with a Siberian shaman interested me, so I kept going. Much of what Turk recounts reads pretty much like an ethnographer's description in a field study. Turk even mentions Carlos Castaneda a couple of times, but Turk's book lacks the eerie suspense that Carlos is able to generate in his encounters with Don Juan. Turk does a little of this and little of that, goes here and goes there, and occasionally has a significant experience with the Siberian shaman, Moolynaut. She cures him of a major trauma to his pelvis (it's broken and then repaired with a metal plate and screws) the result of being caught in an avalanche while skiing in the Rockies. Then Turk finds himself caught in an inner conflict with his logical, rational mind (he's a scientist, don't you know) and his intuitive right brain awareness. Should he accept the shaman's version of reality, or stick with his own? He wrestles with this problem through the latter part of the book. I found this to be the more interesting part of his account.Finally, he comes to a working comprise. Part of him feels that the shaman knows something valuable and important, but another part of him has formed his identity within a Western, logically-based reality in which shamanism has to be bogus. Nonetheless, his pelvis is pain-free and he has resisted going to a doctor to verify medically its miraculous repair because that just might end the magical effect. Moolynaut is a great character, mysterious and enigmatic, but I didn't learn any more about shamanism than I already knew when I began the book. She turns out to be more of an ethnographic curiosity, more like a topographical feature of the landscape than the focus of inquiry into a very ancient and still active method of travel between dimensions.

“Magic moments integrated with the greatest sadness, preaching acceptance. My animal friends were teaching me to heal by finding wonder within tragedy.”The Raven's Gift is exactly that — a gift to all of us who are open to life and its unimaginable possibilities.Jon Turk communicates timeless messages from his own experiences with the natural and spiritual worlds — one and the same! Jon’s story and awakening bring us to the realization of our interconnectedness to life itself and the healing power that runs through it. A man’s love for nature and science merges back to its source.This is a must-read book for those who are ready to start their own inner adventure. You might just find what you have been looking for!

The Raven's Gift is my second armchair adventure with Jon Turk. What drew me to it was the scientist vs shaman hook, though I cheerfully admit to a fondness for any tale dealing with the far north. Thanks to my Dad, I grew up on Robert Service's ballads and Jack London's stories, and some of my fondest memories are of the aurora country just south of the Arctic Circle in Yellowknife, Canada. But let's go back to scientist vs shaman.The best scientists have keen powers of observation. That's what gives a shaman his/her power, too. Both Jon Turk and his Siberian friends are blessed with a superior ability to see, and Dr. Jon (PhD) Turk is doubly blessed with a talent for finding the most amazing words to share his observations with us. I found the language of this book a delight.More than that, I was moved to deep thought about the powers we have gained through technological process--convenient air travel to a place like Kamchatka, chemical analyses of water, the Internet, that sort of thing--and the powers we have lost, such as the ability to taste the wind and listen to the snow, to smell the earth and sing to wolves, to understand that we human beings are in no way separate from our environment.Thinking of shaman vs scientist and weighing the truth of scientist Jon vs shaman Moolynaut-- witnessing the lives of Misha, Igor, Lydia, Dmitri, Svetia, Chris , Sergei and even Anastasia's baby--I ended up more convinced than ever of the truth of the Buddhist maxim that everyone's life is equally real.The world is round. Put your finger anyplace on the globe, and it becomes the central point. Shine a light on any person living at any point, and the one truth that is absolutely clear is this: no matter what the arena, their life and death struggles are real. They matter. Deepening this understanding is Jon Turk's gift to readers of The Raven's Gift.

This journey between worlds is thrilling and moving. It takes the reader into a real but unseen world . Personally it has had a transformational effect. Read it twice.

I enjoyed this book a great deal and the other reviews here are pretty good so I wont say much about it. In one part of the book this lady told Jon about the importance of talking to fire and this is really interesting because I gave a prayer to the great spirit while I had a candle lit in my own home and the candle flame flared up until it was 7 inches or so in length and stayed that way until I blew it out. I never seen a candle do that before. It gave me goosebumps it was so unexpected. This book is wonderful and makes me wish I had access to a medicine person to help with my own poor health. if anyone knows of a medicine person in Alberta be sure to hook me up.

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A wonderful book about a spiritual journey in the tundra of Kamchatka and the unique hardy original peoples living there, relying on fish and sometimes reindeer. A book about how one finds the magic within everyone's right brain and can live in the now moment.

Excellent read on many different levels, the physical, the spiritual and the human.I thoroughly enjoyed it.