background art ©2002 by cat girl
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29 December 2001—river Volga, Astrakhan, Russia Today there were only four of us at our dive site. . . the evening turned out to be extraordinary. We went to the Island, and in the middle of the Island we divided into two groups. We gave our knapsacks to the Cat-girl, and the new pupil—a psychologist —and I went into the forest to find a log. We found two very high dry trees that we could push over (the forest service discourages tree cutting with saws, so we have to be able to push it down without leaving a stump .
So I got my log ,and the psychologist got his. He went on ahead of me,
and I followed him at first; but because he carried a very long trunk I decided
to detour a little bit to the left. In a few minutes I realized that I had
lost myself in the forest. I was in the part of the forest that i didn't
know —nearly immediately, and that was a real surprise for me. I
tried walking a little bit to the right but that didn't help me —I
had completely lost the trail. So I had to walk in deep snow, carrying
this long, long
trunk. At last I saw the place that I knew —I had crossed the forest!!! And emerged very far from the place I should have. When I reached the campsite the psychologist told me that he also had lost his way, and emerged from the forest also at the same place where I had—yet I thought that he had gone to a different place . This came as a real shock for all of us. The level of river was high and that means that water was on the ice, covered with snow and more thin ice. Because I was wearing running shoes (that were already wet due to the deep snow in the forest) I couldn't walk on the ice, so the new shuilonger had to make our ice hole by himself. And he did it—he is a person of strong will and strong intent. I did three dives through the icehole at once (with three immersions each time). The second dive was wonderful and I spent a lot of time on the ice—I stand a lot on the ice between dives. Even the third dive was good and I thought that I could do even more, but then I had to return to the bank because I had to remove my wet shoes, they would gett too soaked otherwise. The Cat girl made a snowgirl but it looked like an ET, very funny and even kind. At the beginning of the evening it was only three balls of snow with eyes and a nose from charcoals but when we left the place it —better to say she, because she seemed alive —seemed to watch us like a real person. Everyone in our small group startled himself or herself with that realization. Even I couldn't have imagined that snow could be enlivened in that way. It was a very deep experience for me, and that feeling is so impossible to describe in words alone. We shouldn't have lost our way, but we did. . . the snow-ET-girl should be only snow yet she was alive and watching us with her black eyes. To all of that I should add that it was very misty or better to say mysty (mysterious). With the moon everything was white but with dull light.
September 2002—River Great Stour, Ashford, Kent, England The name comes from the latin "Stauro", strong or powerful, and actually about five miles downstream from where I practice is the river crossing where Julius Ceasar fought his first battle, when the Romans entered Britain in 55 BC. On the side of the Stour River valley is the ancient track, "The Pilgrims Way", which runs between the Winchester, the former capital of England, and Canterbury. Much of the Kent landscape is based on chalk, running down to the sea to become the white cliffs of Dover. Chalk is water permeable, so there isn't much surface water here, and despite the name, the Stour is really quite a small river.
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