When you just start reading this brief blog, what Iʼll say here at the very beginning may seem banal. However, the most important thing for Ukrainians at the moment is not to lose hope and strength to move on. All those are not empty words.
Last week, when I was standing on the slope of Lake Superior near the Canadian border and looking at “The Witch Tree,” it all seemed so unimportant to me because of the Russian full-scale war against Ukraine. The war has been going on for almost three years, and is the largest continental war in Europe since WWII. Yet, standing there at Lake Superior, my WPI colleagues were so excited. It also gives me pause when I see airplanes flying overhead here, because there have been no civilian planes flying in the Ukrainian sky for almost three years now, only Russian missiles and drones.
Standing at the tree, I said “Let’s go” after it seemed to me that we had already seen everything. The fellowslooked at me with incomprehension. Then I realized that, being a Ukrainian, I’ve just lost the ability to be happy with the simple things. Such as, when you, for example, discover new places, as it happened to me when I visited Lake Superior.
Together, we WPI fellows were visiting Grand Portage in Minnesota to discover one of the most beautiful state parks with its waterfall and lake views. And my Ukrainian friends kept texting me with advice to visit Niagara Falls since I was already close to Canada with a clear message: “Make the most of your time before returning to Ukraine.”
It is a five-minute walk from the highway to The Witch Tree on the edge of Lake Superior. And you have to walk this way in complete silence with a bag of tobacco in your left hand. When I told my friends that I can make a wish here near the sacred, over 300-year-old Spirit Tree just by sprinkling this tobacco beside it, all my friends and colleagues texted me: “Wish Ukraine victory!” This is the only wish of all Ukrainians for now.
And summarizing, I’d like to mention one more fact. After the Russia full-scale invasion started in February 2022, fortune tellers, tarologists and astrologers became very popular on Ukrainian YouTube. And that’s obvious. Because if people can’t get answers from the officials when the war will end and what the future holds, they look for those answers anywhere. Even though we all know the Kremlin holds the key to end this brutal war.
That’s why, sprinkling this tobacco beside The Witch Tree, I wished for Ukraine to win this war, because I’m not losing hope. And I think the Ojibwe First Nation tribe, for whom this Thuja occidentalis is ancient, will make my wish true.
