OCTOBER 3rd, 2025

Today I am in Santa Rosa, north of San Francisco.

In the old Russian tradition, I waited until the very last minute, and when I finally decided to register for the conference dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the first Russian pilgrimage to the settlement of Fort Ross, I got the reply: “Sold out, no seats available.” I thought — that can’t be! But it could: Russian history in the United States has turned out to be in demand. This was evidenced by the parish hall of St. Seraphim of Sarov Church, packed with a couple of hundred guests.

The organizers gathered a magnificent lineup of speakers — from a wonderful talk by the dear Maria Sakovich (granddaughter of Archpriest Vladimir Sakovich, who organized the first pilgrimage back in the 1920s) to guests from Russia, who joined online to tell about the pilgrimage center of St. Innocent near Irkutsk. Among the honored guests were His Beatitude Metropolitan Tikhon, Primate of the Orthodox Church in America, and Metropolitan Maximilian, hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, Metropolitan of Irkutsk and Angarsk, head of the Irkutsk Metropolia, who came with the blessing of His Holiness Patriarch Kirill.

The presentations were so engaging that I even forgot I had left Los Angeles at two in the morning to arrive in time for the 9 a.m. start. My eyes and ears literally absorbed a treasure trove of information — each talk was accompanied by rare photographs and even documentary footage.

Especially memorable were:

• Archpriest Alexander Krassovsky, who spoke about the restoration of the cemetery and identification of the remains of Fort Ross settlers;

• Professor Nina Bogdan, author of a recently published book about the Russian diaspora in San Francisco, who presented a paper on some of the early Aleut settlers (after her presentation, I was lucky enough to speak with her about the book);

• Susan Morris, who traced the path of St. Peter the Aleut, martyred by the Spaniards in Los Angeles in 1815.

I was not the only one who found all this incredibly fascinating: the hall remained full despite the breaks for lunch and coffee. People stayed until five in the evening, and many then went to attend Vespers at the Cathedral of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul.

In the hall I met old and new friends — visitors from Colorado, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington. Among the guests were also representatives of the Kashaya Indian tribe, who live on the lands where the Ross settlement once stood. I bought wonderful souvenirs specially made for the centennial and was deeply grateful to see religious artifacts brought from the archives of the Orthodox Church in America. My thanks to those who bravely took on the organization of such a large-scale international conference in our region.

Tomorrow — the road to Fort Ross.
This trip will carry a different meaning: as one of the presenters, Innokentia Robin, said, the soil of the Ross settlement was once touched by the footsteps of five Orthodox saints.

Author: Ivan Podvalov