“Hi!”
“Well, hello. How come you’re not inside?”
“I’m hot blooded. I was getting too hot in there. I’m warm blooded in the summer and cold blooded in the winter, I save up all my summer heat for winter and burn it off then.”
“Are your parents in there?”
“My dad is. And my sister. My mom and my brother are at St. Herman’s. I live in Wasila on Lazy Mountain.”
“How far is that from here?”
“Oh, a couple of half hours. Where are YOU from?”
“I’m from Seattle.”
“Wow! How many years have you been here?”
“More like days. How many days. Ask me how many days I’ve been here.”
“Okay, how many days have you been here?”
“Four.”
“How did you get here?”
“Well, I flew from Seattle, and then I drove here from Anchorage.”
“Last time I was here I went all the way down to the bottom of the cemetery.”
“Is there anything down there to see?”
“No, but I went all the way down there anyways.”
“Are you in school? What grade are you in?”
“I’m not in school. I mean, I’m sort of in school. I’m home schooled. I’m in first grade.”
“Do you like it?”
“Actually, no, I mean, I like Russian and Science.”
“Wow! You’re learning Russian! That’s cool. Do your parents speak Russian?”
“No, but my grandmother does. We went to visit her once in Illinois where she’s from but now she lives here with us.”
“So, do you speak Russian with her?”
“Not really. But we have this computer, we use it for school and it crashed and now it only plays videos in Russian.”
The little Russian Orthodox church emptied out and my new young friend ran off to meet his parents. A woman in a head scarf came and stood next to me. “He’s not shy, that one, is he?”
“Nope, I enjoyed his company very much.”
“Have you been inside the church?”
“Not yet, I was waiting for the service to finish. I didn’t want to interrupt.”
“Oh, you’d have been very welcome. Go have a look now, Father is still in there teaching the kids, please, go have a peek. And have a good Sunday!”
I made my way back over the icy path and tip-toed inside. It smelled of incense; there were little icon paintings all over the walls. The priest was seated in a low chair surrounded by serious, pale children who eyed me as a stranger. The priest didn’t look up, he just read to the kids from the bible. I smiled at the older sisters in the entry way and quietly went back into the churchyard.
Outside this little church, a white building with blue trim and onion domes, there’s a sign. There’s a native language inscription and a translation. “Thank you, you came here.”
No, no, thank YOU. The pleasure is ENTIRELY mine.
The tiny village of Eklutna is about a half hour drive from Anchorage and it’s home to a Russian Orthodox church. Make the trip to see the cemetery, which is full of spirit houses (here’s a nice story on NPR about them).