Spruce Island is a small rock near Kodiak, Alaska, and I was dispatched there to write about an annual pilgrimage to the longest-running Russian Orthodox community in the United States. Sadly, I've lost track of the video and audio and the other interactive bits :(
Forest cathedral:
Pilgrimage to Spruce Island
Stepping off the bow of the skiff, the icy water is
shockingly cold. For the last hour, rough Alaskan Pacific seas have sent sheets
of spray over crew and cargo, dampening clothes but not spirits. Wading on
stiff legs to the black sand beach, they congratulate each other on their
arrival at one of the most isolated and spiritual Orthodox Christian sites in
the West, the Shrine of St. Herman on Spruce Island, Alaska.
It’s the morning
of August 8, the overcast skies are still gray after an hour’s journey from
Kodiak by fishing boat, and a small group of pilgrims are standing
ankle-deep in Monk’s Lagoon. While a
second skiff tenders to the beach with more people and supplies from the
50-foot salmon seiner anchored offshore, those on the shoreline are portering
boxes of food above the tide. As the incoming skiff grinds to a halt some ten
feet from the beach, the four parishioners in the small boat peer down at the
cold water, then look to the others on shore quizzically.
“Over here!” echoes a faint cry from the far side
of the lagoon, after the splashing and groaning is complete and the new load of
pilgrims and supplies are safely landed. The skiff is pushed off, and the
disembodied voice again drifts around the lagoon. “Over HERE!” A hundred yards away, a black-robed figure beckons to a
portal through the trees.
The
voice belongs to Rev. Dr. Michael Oleksa, Dean of the St. Herman Seminary on
Kodiak Island and one of the organizers of the pilgrimage. “We can’t have
people wandering off around here,” he says, as several start down the wrong
trail. Calling again, he gathers the group together at the trailhead to the
small chapel and erstwhile home of St. Herman, the island’s dominant historical
figure and spiritual heart of the pilgrimage.
The Faith
Orthodox Christianity, deeply rooted in Alaska since
the founding of Russian America in the mid-eighteenth century, has found a
sacred cornerstone in the raw natural setting of Spruce Island. A powerful blend
of spirituality, history and adventure annually draws Orthodox Christians from
all over the world to nearby Kodiak on August 7th, 8th,
and 9th, for a series of church services culminating in the symbolic
day trip to the shrine on the island. This year, some 50 pilgrims are seeking
to sip water from the holy spring, anoint themselves with sacred soil, and take
in the rustic sanctity of the forest chapel.
For some, like Jane Szepesi of Ottowa, the
journey is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. “The whole thing has been an
adventure for me.” she says of her month long journey, driving and camping
alone from her home in Ontario to Alaska. “I didn’t even know if my car would
make it to Winnipeg.
Others living in
closer proximity, like Anchorage resident Lucinda Wolkoff --whose husband owns
the fishing boat that brought the group to the island-- return to the island
annually and simply can’t stay away. “Every day I want to come back,” she says.
“It’s so pretty here, I just want to cry.”
Spruce Island,
roughly 10 miles long and 3 miles wide, is a
richly forested member of the Kodiak Archipelago in
the Gulf of Alaska. With only one small community of 50 inhabitants, Ouzinkie, and no scheduled
boat or air service, the island has a feeling of profound isolation despite
being only 10 miles from the town of Kodiak.
The rugged topography of the region reflects that a
mere 10,000 years ago the islands were still covered by glaciers from the last
ice age. Situated near the foot of Alaska’s Aleutian Chain –home of more than
50 active volcanoes— the archipelago is also parked in one of the most active
geologic neighborhoods on the planet. The residents have been repeatedly
reminded of this, most notably on March 27, 1964 when the town of Kodiak was
swept by a 35-foot tsunami caused by a massive earthquake carrying twice the
force of that which destroyed San Francisco in 1906.
On calmer days, the Alaska current flows peacefully
around the islands, fostering a rich marine ecosystem tied tightly to the
fishing communities in the area. Salmon, halibut and crab, the most
commercially important species, are in rich abundance, as well as the harbor
seals and otters that originally attracted the Russian merchants and fur
traders in the early eighteenth century.
Herman’s legacy
Russian
explorers lost little time establishing a beachhead in the Aleutians, much to
the detriment of the indigenous Altiiquts, who were exploited as hunters and
manual laborers in the fur trade. Brutal treatment, along with tragic losses
due to the induction of European diseases, severely strained the Russians’
relationship with the natives that they regarded as a valuable labor resource. In
the hope that a church presence would help pacify the situation, the trading
company invited several rugged Orthodox clergymen from a monastery on the
Russian/Finnish border in 1794.
It was not
an easy assignment. “They were selected because they were used to the northern
climate,” says Dr. Lydia Black, a retired anthropology professor from the
University of Fairbanks, who is volunteering her time to sort through the
Russian-American archives in the basement of the seminary in Kodiak, “and they
were used to very hard work.”
But things
didn’t go as planned, as the clergy quickly sympathized with the Altiiqut. The eldest
of the group, Brother Herman, was particularly outspoken in their defense.
After running afoul of the company, Herman relocated from the church in Kodiak
(where the modern successor to the Russian American company still operates
today) to Spruce Island, where he constructed a barabara, a crude subterranean
dwelling.
His departure to
an ascetic lifestyle did nothing to lower his profile. Over the next three
decades, his indefatigable benevolence –teaching and caring for the infirm and orphaned Altiiqut-- raised his
reputation to mythical proportions: local traditions arose in which he
conversed with animals, halted a tsunami, stopped a forest fire, and prayed
into existence a sacred spring where there was no fresh water. He also had
considerable influence in Russian society. “Captain Galavnin, a very famous
naval commander, was very impressed,” says Black. “He checked every piece of
information he got from the administration with Herman.”
Herman remained
on the island for the rest of his life, a venerated healer, educator and
intellectual known throughout Russian America. His passing in 1836 also did not
stem the tide of his popularity: shortly after his death natives built the
shrine over his home that still stands today, and number of visitors to the site
hasn’t waned since. On August 9, 1970, Herman was canonized as the first
Orthodox saint in Alaska, and the Holy Resurrection Church in Kodiak has since
organized the yearly pilgrimage to commemorate that day.
The forest
“Coming to Spruce
Island is like coming to the Holy Land,” says Father Oleksa. The pilgrims, conversing eagerly about the boat
trip once they landed on the beach, have grown quiet and introspective upon
entering the forest. What conversation remains is now spare, and long silences
are broken only by whispers and low tones. Walking slowly and stopping
often, the group tapers out. “As you
walk through this forest, it’s as if one has entered the most sacred, ancient
cathedral. But it’s a cathedral made of forest… of trees of moss, of vines and
berry bushes, of devil’s club leaves and a thick soft carpet underfoot. Quiet…
peaceful… and most of all, holy.”
In the
shadowless, diffused light of the old growth timber, the moss-covered path
weaves its way gently through the hundred-foot columns of Sitka spruce which
give the island its name. A hushed breeze gently lifts the broad leaves of
devils club, only hinting of the flattening gales that siege the island in
winter. Salmon berries, a sweet, watery cousin of the blackberry, swing heavily
on bent stems. Thick shags of moss hang from the towering spruces, many of
which house tiny shrines, simple eaves holding a candlelit icons of
Alaskan saints.\
A ten minute walk
from the beach, the small white chapel of St. Herman sits nestled in the edge
of a clearing barely large enough to contain it. Gathering around the chapel, a
sturdy structure with the characteristic
three-barred cross on its peak, the group waits for the Bishop to arrive (he
had the combination to the lock. When it was discovered that the wait would be
considerable, one pilgrim, in authentic Alaskan mien, brandished a Leatherman
tool and quickly un-hinged the door).
The Liturgy:
Stepping inside the chapel during Divine Liturgy is
an immersion of sight, smell, and sound: no senses are left in poverty.
Elaborately robed and belted clergy fill the room with hymns and lyrical
prayers, with frequent rejoinders from the parishioners. Potent layers of
incense, swung from golden censers, fill the room with a bouquet. Spanning the walls and podiums are
arrays of richly hued icons, their gilded frames reflecting the light thrown
from intricate candelabras. The thirty or so parishioners who could fit in the
chapel are anointed with oil, kiss the icons, and sip sacramental wine. After
the walk through the pristine forest, the experience is nearly overwhelming.
The rich sensory nature of Orthodox services, from
the onion-domed architecture to ornate system of icons, is not merely for
aesthetic purposes. Rather, the church’s dogma itself is carried almost
entirely in artistic vehicles: The hymns, icons and orations convey every tenet
of the faith. “There are no books or lessons to carry. The hymns are a capella
--no organs or other instruments—so you have everything you need with you,”
says Father John Peck, a priest in St. Herman’s Chapel in Fairbanks. In the
rural Alaskan villages, where daily struggle with nature is a reality of life,
the lack of accouterments has played a role in the church’s proliferation.
Indeed, nature itself is embraced by the Orthodoxy,
a marked departure from many other western faiths. “Everything material is
capable of becoming sacred,” says Father Peck.
A noble life, like that of St. Herman, “reverberates
in the natural world… it affects the earth the trees, the air, the sky,“ says
Father Oleksa. “It makes this place where a holy person has lived …a sacred
place.” A deep-seated inseparability between the saint, the spirituality and
the island has developed, and nobody seems capable of, or particularly
concerned about, distinguishing between the three.
Six hours after arriving, the pilgrims
are gathered back on the black sand beach of Monk’s Lagoon for the trip home.
The atmosphere is quiet and contemplative, and many stay just within the
treeline as if reluctant to leave.
Spruce Island has a “kind of a
timelessness about it,” observes Ms. Szepesi, reflecting on the morning she
spent at the chapel. As the skiffs buzz in from the fishing boat, the quiet
group stands, gathers their gear, and takes in one last memory of the saint, his
home, and the nature that surrounded them in the forest shrine. “I feel like
I could just stay here forever.”
