Page 9 - Revelation

Svetlana de Rohan-Levashova. Revelation

A Friend

For as long as I can remember the greater part of my earliest recollections as a
child was always associated with the forest, dearly loved by all members of my

family. We lived in a couple of houses very
close to it and went there almost every day. My
grandpa who I adored with my whole little heart
was like a forest spirit to me. It seemed that he
knew every tree, flower, bird or path and he
could tell about that absolutely awesome and
unknown to me world for hours, never repeating
himself or getting too tired to answer my foolish
child’s questions.
I would never miss these morning walks
with him for anything in the world. They were
my favourite fairy-tale world which I shared with
nobody. To my huge regret, I understood who

my
grandfather really was only many years later, but
then he was just the nearest, warmest and most
fragile human being with bright lively eyes who
taught me to listen to nature, talk to the trees and
even to understand the voices of birds. Then I Vasily Nikandrovich
was just a little girl and sincerely thought that Seregin
such things were quite normal; or maybe I did
not think about it at all. I remember my first acquaintance with a "talking" tree. It was
an old and enormous oak, too huge for the little hands of a child.

— Do you see how big and kind it is? Listen to it. Listen... – the gentle and
enveloping voice of my grandfather whispered. And I heard...
Until now, as if it happened yesterday, I vividly remember that feeling,
incomparable with anything else, of a confluence with something incredibly
enormous and deep. It was a feeling of strange visions of strange far away lives which
began to drift suddenly before my eyes and deep feelings of joy and sadness, too deep
and complicated for a little child. My familiar and usual world disappeared and instead
of it everything shone around and spun in the incomprehensible and amazing
whirlpool of sounds and feelings. I felt no fear, only huge surprise and desire that it
would never end...
A child is not an adult. He does not think of anything as wrong or that it should
not be (according to our "accepted" concepts). Therefore it did not seem strange to
me that it was another, absolutely different world, which was very exciting and

beautiful. And this world was shown to me by the man my little child's heart trusted
with all its natural, pure and open simplicity.
I always adored nature. I was tightly connected with any of its manifestations,

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