... so for bystanders who aren't particularly interested (or able, I suppose) in taking questions, but might be able to drop a short answer for something... pipe up? Stay quiet? Etc.
S'like with stuff like that animism question -- personally, I'm not really enough of anything in particular when it comes to religious beliefs to sign up for questions, but little things like that are pretty easy to snipe up, if whoever the actual question is directed to doesn't get to it particularly quickly, or at all.
*coughs* Incidentally, it's a general belief that various whatevers (rivers, rocks, forests, animals, places, sometimes people, etc., etc., etc. -- particulars vary by belief system) have spirits of some sort "in" them, or actually are gods/spirits/whatever. Basically that everything has a little bit of divinity in it, that may or may not manifest, influence the world... it's a very broad thing.
Generally, some form of animism is believed to have been the form that the original religious beliefs took. Most later ones show signs of having developed from anthropomorphised natural phenomena (which you could probably call "animism in three words"), as well -- Zeus coming from storms, the christian god sharing traits of previous sun gods (among other things), egypt's mix of man and animal divinities, native american stuff, there's a whole bunch of so ons and so forths.
And, as often is true,
wikipedia has something to say on the subject.