Mama's Home Remedies: Discover Time-Tested Secrets of Good Health and the Pleasures of Natural Living (33 page)

“Trees are monuments to people who have died,” she would say. “Nature gives these tree-monuments to those who are alive.”

When I walk through a forest, I feel energized and rejuvenated. I never feel lonely around trees, the keepers of our life’s secrets. Every year our itinerary for summer vacation was the same. My first trip here was when I was three years old, and for many years thereafter just the four of us: Mama; Papa; my sister, Laura; and I enjoyed this beautiful resort. After our plane landed at Adler airport, we headed to picturesque Crimea. This prime destination was our favorite spot—a place where friendly cypresses and oleanders swayed in the fresh breeze from the clear turquoise sea and a profusion of golden orange magnolia blooms greeted its visitors. It seems that when people immerse themselves in this special Mediterranean microclimate, they are rejuvenated.

Our cab driver sped along the twisting road through the mountains. The road was difficult and we were nervous, but he seemed to be an attentive driver. One side of the mountains held an open view of the sea. The road, bathed in bright sunshine, was perched high in the air. Beams of light stretched from the sun to the sea where they scattered over the sea’s surface like sugar crystals on a frosted cake. All year I had waited to visit this salubrious place that seemed to pulse with vibrant, vital energy.

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This year our parents had promised us a big surprise and I was anxious to see it. After several minutes Mama asked our driver to stop and we stepped out of the car.

“Look at the tops of the mountains,” Mama said.

The profile of a woman’s face, formed by the mountains and resembling the Russian Empress, Catherine the Great, was immortalized in stone by the most amazing sculptor in the world—Mother Nature. It was a striking and welcoming gate to our beautiful destination—Crimea.

Crimea is a peninsula between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. Its climate is similar to that of northern California with its cool and breezy mornings and evenings. Its copious mountains, tal trees, and subtropical exotic plants created a lavish panorama, and its warm azure seawater was luxurious to bathe in. The northern side of Crimea is a steppe, covered with rich wild grasses and field flowers. The Crimean Mountains stand on the southern side. Crimea is known for its more than 600 curative and preventive health centers, many curative mud deposits, 200 mineral springs, and essential oils. Yalta, the largest city in Crimea, is home to a famous health resort that opened in 1783. Its inhabitants pass on ancient legends of this city’s origins from generation to generation.

In ancient times ships were sent out to discover

foreign shores from the capital of the Byzantine

Empire, Constantinople. The voyage was not easy. The explorers met violent storms on the Black Sea. A thick fog rested on the waves and often obscured the horizon. For many days the explorers drifted aimlessly. When water and food supplies dwindled on the ships, the exhausted sailors lost their will to go on and simply waited to die.

One morning a light, saving breeze began to blow and slowly dissipated the milky shroud of fog. In the bright sunlight the explorers saw green and purple mountains in the distance. Their journey would become easier now that the fog had lifted.

“Yalos! Yalos!” A sailor on watch cried out the Greek word for shore. 232 ^ Mama’s Home Remedies

They had found the wonderful Tavrida (Crimea), where there was no snowy winter and the fresh, healing air held the scent of the sea and the aroma of herbs. The low spirits of the tired explorers were lifted. They manned their oars and directed their ship toward the calling shore. On the fertile land, among the natives, they founded a small colony and named it Yalos. From then

on, the city was called Yalta.

Yalta is the main city in Crimea, with a population of about 85,000. The Russian author Anton Chekhov wrote his best novels and stage plays there, and Russian tsars and their families vacationed each July at the beautiful palace in Livadia, several miles north of Yalta.

Every morning of our vacation in Yalta, we opened the big Venetian windows in our spacious apartment on the beach and gazed at the endless expanse of sea and sunny, blue sky. Before going to sleep at night, we were again attracted by the sky, this time to gaze at the Milky Way, which looked like millions of stars had been swept across the sky in a single brush stroke. There in Crimea I saw closely for the first time stars falling toward earth and never reaching it. They burned up so fast.

“Look, a star fell!” exclaimed Laura.

“They say that when a star falls, a person dies. A star cannot live when there is no energy to keep it burning. It’s the same for people,” I told her.

“This is very sad, but it is so beautiful at the same time,” continued my sister.“As a child, I dreamed of igniting the stars. It seemed that if you could keep them illuminated, no one would die. And my magical stars would not fall so suddenly and quickly out of the sky,” said Mama softly. With the midnight blue sky as a backdrop the lighthouse clearly stood out, but the stars shone above it like fireflies in a woodland village of fairies. Suddenly a second star fell and cascaded through the sky.

“Oh, my God! It’s really scary,” I said.

“Don’t be afraid of fal ing stars,” responded Papa. ”Better make a wish quickly. I know your wish wil come true if you want something good to happen.”

We closed our eyes and made a wish to return to Crimea next summer, Dialogue with the Trees of Strength and Everlasting Life @ 233

where we could easily breathe in the fresh fragrance of cypresses and listen to the sound of sea waves with foam-white crests rol ing to the shore.

“You know, girls, it is true that some stars quietly witness death, but I never was afraid when I saw them,” said Mama. “A white fal ing star is the shadow of a person who has passed away; it is his echo. Everyone has his own star. It lives in the sky while the person walks the earth. But there are silver fal ing stars, which bring hope and grant wishes. You can easily recognize the silver ones. They are usual y bigger and brighter when they descend from the sky.”

“Girls, come close. I wil tel you a fairy tale about how children threw the sun into the sky. My grandma told me this when I was a little boy,” Papa said. A long time ago the sun was a human who

had two bright lights under his arms. When

he raised his hand, the earth was illuminated with sunbeams, as it is now with electricity. When he went to bed, everything plunged into cold and darkness. People didn’t want to live in darkness and decided that children must fetch the Sun Man and take him to the sky.

This decision was passed down from generation to generation. One day some children sneaked up on the Sun Man when he was sleeping. They took him by force and threw him like a ball to the sky. Those children had forgotten that their elders had told them to treat the Sun gently. Since then the Sun walks on the sky, lighting up everything around. When the Sun rises, he sends away the cold and darkness and his light spills all over the earth and warms every living thing: people, trees, plants, flowers, and animals. But at night the Moon came to the sky. Nobody expected that the Sun would see the Moon at this time. When the Sun saw the Moon, he pierced her through with one of his sharp knife-like beams. The Moon was badly hurt and begged the Sun for mercy. She asked the powerful Sun if she could at least keep her backbone. The Sun was a generous person and allowed the Moon to keep her backbone. She was still sick when she returned home and remained hidden for several days, but soon the Moon recovered from her wounds and appeared again in the sky. Each day she grew

larger and larger until she became whole and full. And that happens every time the Moon enters the sky.

“That is the end of my story,” said Papa.

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We listened to the sound of waves crested in white foam rolling slowly to the shore. As if on cue, the midnight-blue sea suddenly

became antique gold in the middle as the full

moon blazed her path through the sea.

“It is known that at such times of full moonlight great writers were inspired to create their best romantic poems,” added Papa. “Tomorrow will probably be a beautiful, romantic day.”

The next morning the gentle sound of the blue sea woke me up. It always seemed as if it beckoned to me to come and swim in its grandeur. I enjoyed a refreshing swim every morning at sunrise and then carried renewed energy throughout the day ahead. I felt ready to absorb new and exciting impressions from the beautiful surroundings.

Clusters of oleander rustled their narrow green leaves, and pink cyclamen flowers basked in the sun, raising their heads to the sky as Yalta awakened slowly and lazily. Under the rising sun vacationers began to fill the soft, golden sand beaches. But we had already enjoyed the water and were ready to explore new areas of Crimea.

Often Mama and Papa would entertain my sister and me after the beach with promenades in the magnificent Crimean Mountain Forest Preserve. There we had unforgettable journeys in oak, pine, and beech forests surrounded by mountains. This huge park was founded in 1923 as the Crimean Hunting Preserve. There people hunted and enjoyed the thick forests in a climate that healed body and soul.

On the northwestern side of the Crimean peninsula were the Swan’s Islands, where we walked through alpine meadows and emerald groves of pines, oaks, and hornbeams. Giant pines stood in all their mighty power and noble beauty. Their ruddy trunks and deep green needles towered above the other trees. They appeared to be close, but at the same time far away, wrapped up around
the Crimean Mountains. Rocking gently under a warm breeze from the Black Sea, they witnessed through many sunny springs and summers the dreams and hopes of all the different people who visited the park. The energy of the pine tree, according to the Druid’s horoscope, corresponds to people who are born from February 19-28 and from August 24September 2. The Latin name for pine is
Pinus
, which means a rock, and like a rock, the pine is strong with a firm trunk and roots and does not demand any special treatment. The same can be said for “pine people.”

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My youngest son, Yuri, was born on August 29.

Now he is 24 years old. He is a young “pine” man. When he was a baby, I would give him baths infused with pine needles. Pine baths invigorate the body and can

be a blessing when we are overtired at the
end of a workday. It can be especially beneficial to people who work in the sports and fitness fields.

Bathing in fragrant aromatic pine water can make you feel

alert, cheerful, and refreshed while restoring your energy. The aroma of pine comes from its essential oils, which act as a pain reliever, a disinfectant, and an anti-inflammatory agent. They stimulate the immune system and improve the metabolism.

If you are overtired, suffer from a headache, or want to improve your mood, try a pine bath:

r 1. Fil the bathtub with warm water and dissolve in it 3½ ounces of liquid pine concentrate or two ounces of pine powder. You can also use an infusion of pine needles. Take a warm, but not hot, pine bath for 10–15 minutes.

A pine bath is beneficial to us because the essential oils of this tree evaporate easily and fill the air with the smallest high-energy particles carrying an electric charge. When we breathe in ionized air, it greatly heals our body and it acts as a calming, natural remedy. This is important to know because many of us don’t realize that we are always undergoing a so-called green phytoncide starvation because we live far away from the forests. Only on occasion do we take a walk in a forest. People who live close to forests are more often able to walk in them. It is unfortunate that many of us rarely have the opportunity and pleasure to communicate with pines, our green giants.

Grandma kept on the window sill an opened, small glass bottle with essential oils of pine, linden, birch, lavender, or peppermint. It increased the biological activity of the air in our house and it made positive changes in our health. It helped to propel the hidden reserves of our bodies toward wellbeing. I try to live the way that Grandma did, and so bottles of these essential oils are a permanent fixture in my house.

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One summer my husband, Greg, Yuri, and I went to Pitsunda, a small town on the shore of the Black Sea at the foot of a steep mountain in the high Caucasian Mountains. He was three years old and it was the first trip of his life. We enjoyed the month we spent there. It was a month filled with swimming and breathing fresh air or “heliotherapy,” as we like to call it. We relaxed on sandy beaches, bordered by huge boulders that resembled knights from a fairy tale. We took trips and walked in the shadowy grove of ancient pines in Pitsunda, which supplied shipbuilders for many centuries with the strongest wood.

This small town on the cape was founded by the ancient Greeks as a Middle Age city together with Port Piteous, in Greek
Pityus.
It still maintains parts of its ancient fort walls, which house the Byzantine era basilica, a cathedral built in the tenth century. We made the trip again and again through this ancient, sacred place that keeps the secrets and myths of one of the small parts of Europe from the Middle Ages.

We walked with Yuri every day underneath a canopy of lofty branches in this centuries-old pine grove. It was warm, cozy, and quiet. Yuri walked slowly, his tiny feet treading carefully on dried pine needles that formed a thick cushion on the ground. “Mama, I want to live here forever!” Yuri said. This had been his first meeting with a tree-friend that was predetermined by Nature on the day he was born. Yuri wanted to visit the pine grove everyday. As a small boy, he couldn’t explain
why
he wanted to go to the pines, but a connection already had been made.