To Paustovsky with every hour of the night. Konstantin Paustovsky - Meshcherskaya side - library "100 best books"

FOREST RIVERS AND CANALS

I took my eyes off the map again. To put an end to it, it must be said about the mighty tracts of forests (they fill the entire map with dull green paint), about the mysterious white spots in the depths of the forests and about two rivers - Solotcha and Pre, flowing south through forests, swamps and burnt areas.

Solotcha is a winding, shallow river. In its barrels stand under the banks of a flock of ides. The water in Solotch is red. Peasants call such water "harsh". Along the entire length of the river, only in one place does a leading road approach it, no one knows where, and by the road there is a lonely inn.

Pra flows from the lakes of the northern Meshchera to the Oka. There are very few trees along the banks. In the old days, schismatics settled in Pre, in dense forests.

In the city of Spas-Klepiki, in the upper reaches of the Pra, there is an old cotton factory. She lowers cotton tows into the river, and the bottom of the Pra near Spas-Klepikov is covered with a thick layer of packed black cotton wool. This must be the only river in the Soviet Union with a cotton bottom.

In addition to rivers, there are many canals in the Meshchera region.

Even under Alexander II, General Zhilinsky decided to drain the Meshchera swamps and create large lands near Moscow for colonization. An expedition was sent to Meshchera. She worked for twenty years and drained only one and a half thousand hectares of land, but no one wanted to settle on this land - it turned out to be very scarce.

Zhilinsky spent many channels in Meshchera. Now these canals have died out and are overgrown with swamp grasses. Ducks nest in them, lazy tenches and nimble loaches live.

These channels are very picturesque. They go deep into the forests. Thickets hang over the water in dark arches. It seems that each channel leads to mysterious places. On the canals, especially in spring, you can wade in a light canoe for tens of kilometers.

The sweet smell of water lilies is mixed with the smell of resin. Sometimes high reeds block the canals with solid dams. Calla grows along the banks. Its leaves are a bit like the leaves of a lily of the valley, but a wide white stripe is drawn on one leaf, and from a distance it seems that these are huge flowers. snow flowers. Ferns, brambles, horsetails and moss lean in from the banks. If you touch the moss with a hand or an oar, bright emerald dust flies out of it in a thick cloud - spores of cuckoo flax. Pink fireweed blooms with low walls. Olive swimming beetles dive in the water and attack schools of fry. Sometimes you have to drag the boat by dragging through shallow water. Then the swimmers bite their legs until they bleed.

The silence is broken only by the ringing of mosquitoes and splashes of fish.

Swimming always leads to an unknown destination - to a forest lake or to a forest river that carries clean water over the cartilaginous bottom.

On the banks of these rivers, water rats live in deep holes. There are rats completely gray with old age.

If you quietly follow the hole, you can see how the rat is catching fish. She crawls out of the hole, dives very deep and comes up with a terrible noise. Yellow water lilies sway on wide circles of water. The rat holds a silver fish in its mouth and swims with it to the shore. When the fish is larger than the rat, the struggle lasts a long time, and the rat crawls out onto the shore tired, with eyes red with anger.

To make it easier to swim, water rats gnaw off a long stalk of kugi and swim holding it in their teeth. The stalk of the coogee is full of air cells. He perfectly holds on the water even not as heavy as a rat.

Zhilinsky tried to drain the Meshchera swamps. Nothing came of this venture. The soil of Meshchera is peat, podzol and sands. Only potatoes will be born well on the sands. The wealth of Meshchera is not in the land, but in the forests, in peat and in flood meadows along the left bank of the Oka. Other scientists compare these meadows in terms of fertility with the floodplain of the Nile. The meadows provide excellent hay.

Meshchera is a remnant of the forest ocean. The Meshchera forests are as majestic as cathedrals. Even an old professor, not at all inclined to poetry, wrote the following words in a study about the Meshchera region: "Here in the mighty pine forests it is so light that a bird flying hundreds of steps deep can be seen."

You walk through dry pine forests like you walk on a deep expensive carpet - for kilometers the land is covered with dry, soft moss. Sunlight lies in the gaps between the pines in oblique cuts. Flocks of birds with a whistle and a slight noise scatter to the sides.

Forests rustle in the wind. The rumble passes over the tops of the pines like waves. A lone plane floating at a dizzying height appears to be a destroyer seen from the bottom of the sea.

Powerful air currents are visible to the naked eye. They rise from the earth to the sky. The clouds are melting, standing still. The dry breath of the forests and the scent of the juniper must have reached the planes as well.

Except pine forests, mast and ship, there are forests of spruce, birch and rare spots of broad-leaved lindens, elms and oaks. There are no roads in the oak copses. They are impassable and dangerous due to ants. On a hot day, it is almost impossible to pass through the oak thicket: in a minute, the whole body, from heels to head, will be covered with red angry ants with strong jaws. Harmless ant-bears roam in oak thickets. They pick open old stumps and lick ant eggs.

The forests in Meshchera are robbery, deaf. There is no greater rest and pleasure than walking all day through these forests, along unfamiliar roads to some distant lake.

The path in the forests is kilometers of silence, calmness. This is a mushroom prel, a careful fluttering of birds. These are sticky oils covered with needles, tough grass, cold porcini mushrooms, wild strawberries, purple bells in the clearings, trembling of aspen leaves, solemn light and, finally, forest twilight, when dampness pulls from the mosses and fireflies burn in the grass.

The sunset burns heavily on the crowns of the trees, gilding them with ancient gilding. Below, at the foot of the pines, it is already dark and deaf. Bats fly silently and seem to look into the face of bats. Some kind of incomprehensible sound is heard in the forests - the sound of the evening, the burnt out day.

And in the evening the lake will finally shine like a black, obliquely placed mirror. The night is already standing over him and looking into his dark water - a night full of stars. In the west, the dawn is still smoldering, in the thickets of wolfberries the bittern is screaming, and on the mshars the cranes are muttering and scurrying, disturbed by the smoke of the fire.

Throughout the night, the fire of the fire flares up, then goes out. The foliage of birches hangs without moving. Dew flows down the white trunks. And you can hear how somewhere very far away - it seems, beyond the ends of the earth - an old rooster cries hoarsely in the forester's hut.

In an extraordinary, never-heard silence dawn dawns. The sky is green in the east. Venus lights up like blue crystal at dawn. This is the best time of the day. Still sleeping. Water sleeps, water lilies sleep, sleep with their noses buried in snags, fish, birds sleep, and only owls fly around the fire slowly and silently, like clods of white fluff.

The cauldron gets angry and mumbles on the fire. For some reason, we are talking in a whisper - we are afraid to frighten off the dawn. With a tin whistle, heavy ducks rush by. Fog begins to swirl over the water. We pile mountains of boughs into the fire and watch how the huge white sun rises - the sun of an endless summer day.

So we live in a tent on forest lakes for several days. Our hands smell of smoke and lingonberries - this smell does not disappear for weeks. We sleep two hours a day and almost never get tired. Two or three hours of sleep in the woods must be worth many hours of sleep in the stuffiness of city houses, in the stale air of asphalt streets.

Once we spent the night on the Black Lake, in high thickets, near a large pile of old brushwood.

We took a rubber inflatable boat with us and at dawn we rode it over the edge of the coastal water lilies to fish. Decayed leaves lay in a thick layer at the bottom of the lake, and snags floated in the water.

Suddenly, at the very side of the boat, a huge humpbacked back of a black fish with a dorsal fin sharp as a kitchen knife emerged. The fish dived and passed under the rubber boat. The boat rocked. The fish surfaced again. It must have been a giant pike. She could hit a rubber boat with a feather and rip it open like a razor.

I hit the water with the oar. In response, the fish whipped its tail with terrible force and again passed under the very boat. We quit fishing and started rowing towards the shore, towards our bivouac. The fish always walked next to the boat.

We drove into the coastal thickets of water lilies and were preparing to land, but at that time a shrill yelping and a trembling, heart-grabbing howl were heard from the shore. Where we lowered the boat, on the shore, on the trampled grass, a she-wolf with three cubs stood with her tail between her legs and howled, raising her muzzle to the sky. She howled long and dull; the wolf cubs squealed and hid behind their mother. The black fish again passed by the very side and caught the oar with a feather.

I threw a heavy lead sinker at the she-wolf. She jumped back and trotted away from the shore. And we saw how she crawled along with the cubs into a round hole in a pile of brushwood not far from our tent.

We landed, made a fuss, drove the she-wolf out of the brushwood and moved the bivouac to another place.

Black Lake is named after the color of the water. The water is black and clear.

In Meshchera, almost all lakes have water of different colors. Most lakes with black water. In other lakes (for example, in Chernenkoe), the water resembles brilliant ink. It is difficult, without seeing, to imagine this rich, dense color. And at the same time, the water in this lake, as well as in Chernoye, is completely transparent.

This color is especially good in autumn, when yellow and red birch and aspen leaves fall on black water. They cover the water so thickly that the boat rustles through the foliage and leaves behind a shiny black road.

But this color is also good in summer, when white lilies lie on the water, as if on extraordinary glass. Black water has an excellent property of reflection: it is difficult to distinguish real shores from reflected ones, real thickets - from their reflection in the water.

In Lake Urzhenskoe, the water is purple, in Segden it is yellowish, in the Great Lake it is tin-colored, and in the lakes beyond the Proy it is slightly bluish. In meadow lakes, the water is clear in summer, and in autumn it acquires a greenish marine color and even the smell of sea water.

But most of the lakes are still black. The old people say that the blackness is caused by the fact that the bottom of the lakes is covered with a thick layer of fallen leaves. Brown foliage gives a dark infusion. But this is not entirely true. The color is explained by the peaty bottom of the lakes - the older the peat, the darker the water.

I mentioned the Meshchersky boats. They look like Polynesian pies. They are carved from a single piece of wood. Only at the bow and stern they are riveted with forged nails with large hats.

The prow is very narrow, light, agile, it is possible to pass through the smallest channels.

Between the forests and the Oka, water meadows stretch in a wide belt.

At dusk, the meadows look like the sea. As in the sea, the sun sets in the grass, and signal lights on the banks of the Oka burn like beacons. Just as in the sea, fresh winds blow over the meadows, and the high sky has turned over like a pale green bowl.

In the meadows, the old channel of the Oka stretches for many kilometers. His name is Provo.

It is a dead, deep and motionless river with steep banks. The shores are overgrown with tall, old, three-girth, blackberry, hundred-year-old willows, wild roses, umbrella grasses and blackberries.

We called one stretch on this river "Fantastic Abyss", because nowhere and none of us have seen such huge, two human height, burdocks, blue thorns, such a tall lungwort and horse sorrel and such gigantic puffball mushrooms as on this reach.

The density of grasses in other places on the Prorva is such that it is impossible to land on the shore from a boat - the grasses stand as an impenetrable elastic wall. They repel a person. Herbs are intertwined with treacherous blackberry loops, hundreds of dangerous and sharp snares.

There is often a light haze over Prorva. Its color changes with the time of day. In the morning it is a blue fog, in the afternoon it is a whitish haze, and only at dusk the air over the Prorva becomes transparent, like spring water. The foliage of the black-spotted trees barely trembles, pink from the sunset, and Prorva pikes are loudly beating in the whirlpools.

In the mornings, when you can't walk ten steps across the grass without getting wet to the skin with dew, the air on Prorva smells of bitter willow bark, grassy freshness, and sedge. It is thick, cool and healing.

Every autumn I spend on Prorva in a tent for many days. To get a glimpse of what Prorva is, at least one Prorva day should be described. I come to Prorva by boat. I have a tent, an ax, a lantern, a backpack with groceries, a sapper's shovel, some dishes, tobacco, matches and fishing accessories: fishing rods, donks, slings, vents and, most importantly, a jar of leaf worms. I collect them in the old garden under heaps of fallen leaves.

On Prorva, I already have my favorite places, always very remote places. One of them is a sharp turn of the river, where it overflows into a small lake with very high banks overgrown with vines.

There I pitch a tent. But first of all, I carry hay. Yes, I confess, I haul hay from the nearest haystack, but I haul it very deftly, so that even the most experienced eye of the old collective farmer will not notice any flaw in the haystack. I put hay under the canvas floor of the tent. Then when I leave, I take it back.

The tent must be pulled so that it buzzes like a drum. Then it must be dug in so that during rain the water flows into the ditches on the sides of the tent and does not wet the floor.

The tent is set up. It's warm and dry. Flashlight " bat"hangs on a hook. In the evening I light it and even read in a tent, but I usually don’t read for long - there are too many interferences on Prorva: either a corncrake will start screaming behind a neighboring bush, then a pood fish will strike with a cannon roar, then a willow rod will deafeningly shoot in a fire and sparks, then a crimson glow will begin to flare up over the thickets and a gloomy moon will rise over the expanses of the evening earth. And immediately the corncrakes will subside and the bittern will cease to buzz in the swamps - the moon rises in alert silence. She appears as the owner of these dark waters, hundred-year-old willows , mysterious long nights.

Tents of black willows hang overhead. Looking at them, you begin to understand the meaning of old words. Obviously, such tents in former times were called "canopy". Under the shade of willows...

And for some reason, on such nights, you call the constellation of Orion Stozhary, and the word "midnight", which in the city sounds, perhaps, like a literary concept, acquires a real meaning here. This darkness under the willows, and the brilliance of the September stars, and the bitterness of the air, and the distant fire in the meadows, where the boys guard the horses driven into the night - all this is midnight. Somewhere in the distance, a watchman strikes the clock on a rural belfry. He beats for a long time, measured - twelve strokes. Then another dark silence. Only occasionally on the Oka will a towing steamer scream in a sleepy voice.

The night drags on slowly; there seems to be no end to it. Sleep on autumn nights in a tent is strong, fresh, despite the fact that you wake up every two hours and go out to look at the sky - to find out if Sirius has risen, if you can see the strip of dawn in the east.

The night is getting colder with each passing hour. By dawn, the air already burns the face with a light frost, the panels of the tent, covered with a thick layer of crisp frost, sag a little, and the grass turns gray from the first matinee.

It's time to get up. In the east, dawn is already pouring with a quiet light, huge outlines of willows are already visible in the sky, the stars are already fading. I go down to the river, wash from the boat. The water is warm, it seems even slightly heated.

The sun is rising. Frost is melting. Coastal sands turn dark with dew.

I boil strong tea in a smoked tin teapot. Hard soot is similar to enamel. Willow leaves burnt in a fire float in a teapot.

I have been fishing all morning. I check from the boat the ropes that have been placed across the river since the evening. First there are empty hooks - ruffs have eaten all the bait on them. But then the cord pulls, cuts the water, and in the depths a living silver shine appears - this is a flat bream walking on a hook. Behind him is a fat and stubborn perch, then a little pike with yellow piercing eyes. The pulled fish seems to be ice cold.

Aksakov's words relate entirely to these days spent on the Prorva:

“On a green flowering shore, above the dark depths of a river or lake, in the shade of bushes, under the tent of a gigantic oskor or curly alder, quietly trembling with its leaves in a bright mirror of water, imaginary passions will subside, imaginary storms will subside, self-loving dreams will crumble, unrealizable hopes will scatter. Nature will enter into her eternal rights.Together with fragrant, free, refreshing air, you will breathe into yourself serenity of thought, meekness of feeling, indulgence towards others and even to yourself.

SMALL DIRECTION FROM THE TOPIC

There are many fishing incidents associated with Prorva. I will tell about one of them.

The great tribe of fishermen who lived in the village of Solotche, near Prorva, was excited. A tall old man with long silver teeth came to Solotcha from Moscow. He also fished.

The old man was fishing for spinning: an English fishing rod with a spinner - an artificial nickel fish.

We despised spinning. We watched the old man with gloating pleasure as he patiently wandered along the shores of meadow lakes and, swinging his spinning rod like a whip, invariably dragged an empty lure out of the water.

And right next to him, Lenka, the son of a shoemaker, dragged fish not on an English fishing line worth a hundred rubles, but on an ordinary rope. The old man sighed and complained:

Cruel injustice of fate!

He spoke even to the boys very politely, in "vy", and used in conversation old-fashioned, long ago forgotten words. The old man was unlucky. We have known for a long time that all anglers are divided into deep losers and lucky ones. For the lucky ones, the fish bites even on a dead worm. In addition, there are fishermen - envious and cunning. The tricksters think they can outsmart any fish, but never in my life have I seen such an angler outsmart even the grayest ruff, let alone a roach.

It’s better not to go fishing with an envious person - he still won’t peck. In the end, having lost weight with envy, he will begin to throw his fishing rod to yours, slap the sinker on the water and scare away all the fish.

So the old man was out of luck. In one day, he broke off at least ten expensive spinners on snags, walked all over in blood and blisters from mosquitoes, but did not give up.

Once we took him with us to Lake Segden.

All night the old man dozed by the fire standing like a horse: he was afraid to sit on the damp ground. At dawn, I fried eggs with lard. The sleepy old man wanted to step over the fire to get bread from the bag, stumbled and stepped on the fried eggs with a huge foot.

He pulled out his yolk-smeared leg, shook it in the air and hit the jug of milk. The jug cracked and crumbled into small pieces. And the beautiful baked milk with a slight rustle was sucked up before our eyes into the wet earth.

Guilty! - said the old man, apologizing to the jug.

Then he went to the lake, dipped his foot into the cold water and dangled it for a long time to wash the scrambled eggs off his boot. For two minutes we could not utter a word, and then we laughed in the bushes until noon.

Everyone knows that once a fisherman is unlucky, sooner or later such a good failure will happen to him that they will talk about it in the village for at least ten years. Finally such a failure happened.

We went with the old man to Prorva. The meadows have not yet been mowed. A camomile the size of a palm lashed her legs.

The old man walked and, stumbling over the grass, repeated:

What a flavor, folks! What a delightful scent!

There was a calm over the Abyss. Even the leaves of the willows did not move and did not show the silvery underside, as happens even in a light breeze. In heated herbs "zhundeli" bumblebees.

I sat on a wrecked raft, smoking and watching a feather float. I patiently waited for the float to shudder and go into the green river depth. The old man walked along the sandy shore with a spinning rod. I heard his sighs and exclamations from behind the bushes:

What a wonderful, charming morning!

Then I heard behind the bushes quacking, stomping, snuffling and sounds very similar to the lowing of a cow with a bandaged mouth. Something heavy flopped into the water, and the old man cried out in a thin voice:

My God, what a beauty!

I jumped off the raft, reached the shore in waist-deep water, and ran up to the old man. He stood behind the bushes near the water, and on the sand in front of him an old pike was breathing heavily. At first glance, it was no less than a pood.

But the old man hissed at me and, with trembling hands, took a pair of pince-nez out of his pocket. He put it on, bent over the pike and began to examine it with such delight, with which connoisseurs admire a rare painting in a museum.

The pike did not take his angry narrowed eyes from the old man.

Looks great like a crocodile! - said Lenka. The pike squinted at Lenka, and he jumped back. It seemed that the pike croaked: "Well, wait, you fool, I'll tear off your ears!"

Dove! - exclaimed the old man and bent even lower over the pike.

Then the failure happened, which is still talked about in the village.

The pike tried on, blinked an eye, and hit the old man on the cheek with all his might with his tail. Over the sleepy water there was a deafening crack of a slap in the face. The pince-nez flew into the river. The pike jumped up and flopped heavily into the water.

Alas! shouted the old man, but it was already too late.

Lenka danced to the side and shouted in an impudent voice:

Aha! Got! Don't catch, don't catch, don't catch when you don't know how!

On the same day, the old man wound up his spinning rods and left for Moscow. And no one else broke the silence of the channels and rivers, did not cut off the lustrous cold river lilies and did not admire aloud what is best to admire without words.

MORE ABOUT MEADOWS

There are many lakes in the meadows. Their names are strange and varied: Quiet, Bull, Hotets, Ramoina, Kanava, Staritsa, Muzga, Bobrovka, Selyanskoye Lake and, finally, Langobardskoe.

At the bottom of Hotz lie black bog oaks. Silence is always calm. High banks close the lake from the winds. In Bobrovka, there were once beavers, and now they are chasing fry. The ravine is a deep lake with such capricious fish that only a person with very good nerves can catch them. Bull is a mysterious, distant lake, stretching for many kilometers. In it, shallows are replaced by whirlpools, but there is little shade on the banks, and therefore we avoid it. There are amazing golden lines in the Kanava: each such line pecks for half an hour. By autumn, the banks of the Kanava are covered with purple spots, but not from autumn foliage, but from an abundance of very large rose hips.

On Staritsa along the banks there are sand dunes overgrown with Chernobyl and succession. Grass grows on the dunes, it is called tenacious. These are dense gray-green balls, similar to a tightly closed rose. If you tear such a ball out of the sand and put it with its roots up, it slowly starts tossing and turning like a beetle turned on its back, straightens the petals on one side, rests on them and turns over again with its roots to the ground.

In Muzga, the depth reaches twenty meters. Flocks of cranes rest on the banks of the Muzga during the autumn migration. The village lake is all overgrown with black mounds. Hundreds of ducks nest in it.

How names are grafted! In the meadows near Staritsa there is a small nameless lake. We named it Lombard in honor of the bearded watchman - "Langobard". He lived on the shore of the lake in a hut, guarded the cabbage gardens. And a year later, to our surprise, the name took root, but the collective farmers remade it in their own way and began to call this lake Ambarsky.

The variety of grasses in the meadows is unheard of. The unmowed meadows are so fragrant that, out of habit, the head becomes foggy and heavy. Thick, tall thickets of chamomile, chicory, clover, wild dill, carnation, coltsfoot, dandelions, gentian, plantain, bluebells, buttercups and dozens of other flowering herbs stretch for kilometers. Meadow strawberries ripen in grasses for mowing.

Black Lake is named after the color of the water. The water is black and clear.

In Meshchera, almost all lakes have water of different colors. Most lakes with black

water. In other lakes (for example, in Chernenkoe), the water resembles a brilliant

ink. It is difficult, without seeing, to imagine this rich, dense color. And

at the same time, the water in this lake, as well as in Chernoye, is completely

transparent.

This color is especially good in autumn, when yellow and

red leaves of birches and aspens. They cover the water so thickly that the boat rustles.

through the foliage and leaves behind a shiny black road.

But this color is also good in summer, when white lilies lie on the water, as on

extraordinary glass. Black water has a great property

reflections: it is difficult to distinguish real shores from reflected ones, real

thickets - from their reflection in the water.

In Lake Urzhensky the water is purple, in Segden it is yellowish, in the Great Lake

Tin-colored, and in the lakes beyond the Proy - a little bluish. In meadow lakes

in summer the water is clear, and in autumn it acquires a greenish marine color and

even the smell of sea water.

But most of the lakes are still black. The old people say the blackness is caused

the fact that the bottom of the lakes is covered with a thick layer of fallen leaves. Brown leaves give

dark infusion. But this is not entirely true. The color is due to the peat bottom of the lakes.

The older the peat, the darker the water.

I mentioned the Meshchersky boats. They look like Polynesian pies. They are

hollowed out from a single piece of wood. Only at the bow and stern they are riveted

forged nails with large hats.

The boat is very narrow, light, agile, you can go through the smallest

ducts.

Between the forests and the Oka, water meadows stretch in a wide belt.

In the meadows, the old channel of the Oka stretches for many kilometers. His name is Provo.

It is a dead, deep and motionless river with steep banks. coast

thickets of tall, old, in three girths, sedges, centennial willows,

rose hips, umbrella herbs and blackberries.

sorrel and such gigantic puffball mushrooms as on this stretch.

dangerous and sharp snares.

osocore barely trembles, pink from the sunset, and in the whirlpools they beat loudly

prorvinsky pikes.

In the mornings, when you can't walk on the grass and ten steps so as not to get wet

to a thread of dew, the air on Prorva smells of bitter willow bark,

grassy freshness, sedge. It is thick, cool and healing.

Every autumn I spend on Prorva in a tent for many days. To obtain

a distant idea of what Prorva is should be described at least

one provincial day. I come to Prorva by boat. I have a tent with me

an ax, a lantern, a backpack with food, a sapper shovel, some dishes,

tobacco, matches and fishing accessories: fishing rods, donks, traps,

zherlitsy and, most importantly, a jar of leafworms. I collect them in

old garden under heaps of fallen leaves.

On Prorva, I already have my favorite places, always very remote places. One of

them is a sharp turn of the river, where it spills into a small lake with

very high banks overgrown with vines.

There I pitch a tent. But first of all, I carry hay. Yes, I confess I

hauling hay from the nearest haystack, but hauling it very deftly, so that even

The most experienced eye of the old collective farmer will not notice any flaw in the haystack.

I put hay under the canvas floor of the tent. Then when I leave, I

I take it back.

The tent must be pulled so that it buzzes like a drum. Then she needs

dig in so that when it rains, water flows into the ditches on the sides of the tent and does not

wet the floor.

The tent is set up. It's warm and dry. Lantern "bat" hanging on

hook. In the evening I light it and even read in the tent, but I usually read

not for long - there is too much interference on Prorva: then behind the neighboring bush it will start

screaming corncrake, then a pood fish will hit with a cannon rumble, then

deafeningly shoots a willow rod in a fire and scatters sparks, then over

a crimson glow will begin to flare up in thickets and a gloomy moon will rise over

expanses of the evening earth. And immediately subside corncrakes and stop

the bittern hums in the swamps - the moon rises in watchful silence. She is

appears as the owner of these dark waters, century-old willows, mysterious

long nights.

Tents of black willows hang overhead. Looking at them, you begin to understand

meaning of old words. Obviously, such tents in former times were called

"canopy". Under the shade of willows...

and the sparkle of the September stars, and the bitterness of the air, and the distant fire in the meadows,

where the boys guard the horses driven into the night - all this is midnight. Somewhere

far away the watchman strikes the clock on the rural belfry. He beats for a long time, measuredly -

twelve strokes. Then another dark silence. Only occasionally on the Oka

On Prorva, I already have my favorite places, always very remote places. One of them is a sharp turn of the river, where it overflows into a small lake with very high banks overgrown with vines.

The tent is set up. It's warm and dry. Lantern "bat" hangs on a hook. In the evening I light it and even read it in a tent, but I usually don’t read for long - there are too many interferences on Prorva: either a corncrake will start screaming behind a neighboring bush, then a pood fish will strike with a cannon rumble, then a willow rod will deafeningly shoot in a fire and scatter sparks, then over a crimson glow will begin to flare up in thickets and a gloomy moon will rise over the expanses of the evening earth. And immediately the corncrakes will subside and the bittern will cease to buzz in the swamps - the moon rises in watchful silence. She appears as the owner of these dark waters, hundred-year-old willows, mysterious long nights.

A small digression from the topic

Tents of black willows hang overhead. Looking at them, you begin to understand the meaning of old words. Obviously, such tents in former times were called "canopy". Under the shade of willows...

The sun is rising. Frost is melting. Coastal sands turn dark with dew.

I boil strong tea in a smoked tin teapot. Hard soot is similar to enamel. Willow leaves burnt in a fire float in a teapot.

I have been fishing all morning. I check from the boat the ropes that have been placed across the river since the evening. First there are empty hooks - ruffs have eaten all the bait on them. But then the cord stretches, cuts the water, and a living silver shine appears in the depths - this is a flat bream walking on a hook. Behind him is a fat and stubborn perch, then a little pike with yellow piercing eyes. The pulled fish seems to be ice cold.

Aksakov's words relate entirely to these days spent on the Prorva:

“On a green flowering shore, above the dark depths of a river or lake, in the shade of bushes, under the tent of a gigantic oskor or curly alder, quietly trembling with its leaves in a bright mirror of water, imaginary passions will subside, imaginary storms will subside, self-loving dreams will crumble, unrealizable hopes will scatter. Nature will enter into its eternal rights. Together with the fragrant, free, refreshing air, you will breathe into yourself serenity of thought, meekness of feeling, indulgence towards others and even towards yourself.

A small digression from the topic

There are many fishing incidents associated with Prorva. I will tell about one of them.

The great tribe of fishermen who lived in the village of Solotche, near Prorva, was excited. A tall old man with long silver teeth came to Solotcha from Moscow. He also fished.

The old man was fishing for spinning: an English fishing rod with a spinner - an artificial nickel fish.

And right next to him, Lenka, the son of a shoemaker, dragged fish not on an English fishing line worth a hundred rubles, but on an ordinary rope. The old man sighed and complained:

Cruel injustice of fate!

Even with the boys he spoke very politely, in "vy", and used old-fashioned, long-forgotten words in conversation. The old man was unlucky. We have known for a long time that all anglers are divided into deep losers and lucky ones. For the lucky ones, the fish bites even on a dead worm. In addition, there are fishermen - envious and cunning. Tricksters think they can outsmart any fish, but never in my life have I seen such an angler outsmart even the grayest ruff, let alone a roach.

So the old man was out of luck. In one day, he broke off at least ten expensive spinners on snags, walked all over in blood and blisters from mosquitoes, but did not give up.

Once we took him with us to Lake Segden.

Guilty! - said the old man, apologizing to the jug.

What a flavor, folks! What a delightful scent!

What a wonderful, charming morning!

My God, what a beauty!

Looks great like a crocodile! - said Lenka.

Dove! - exclaimed the old man and bent even lower over the pike.

Alas! shouted the old man, but it was already too late.

Aha! Got! Don't catch, don't catch, don't catch when you don't know how!

Meshcherskaya side

stories

ordinary earth

In the Meshchera region there are no special beauties and wealth, except for forests, meadows and clear air. Nevertheless, this region has a great attractive force. He is very modest - just like Levitan's paintings. But in it, as in these paintings, lies all the charm and all the diversity of Russian nature, imperceptible at first glance.

What can be seen in the Meshchersky region? Flowering or sloping meadows, pine forests, floodplain and forest lakes overgrown with black mounds, haystacks smelling of dry and warm hay. Hay in stacks keeps warm all winter.

I had to spend the night in stacks in October, when the grass at dawn is covered with hoarfrost, like salt. I dug a deep hole in the hay, climbed into it and slept all night in a haystack, as if in a locked room. And over the meadows there was a cold rain, and the wind swept in oblique blows.

In the Meshchersky Territory, you can see pine forests, where it is so solemn and quiet that the “chatterbox” bell of a lost cow can be heard far away, almost a kilometer away. But such silence stands in the forests only on windless days. In the wind, the forests rustle with the great oceanic rumble and the tops of the pines bend after the passing clouds.

In the Meshchersky Territory, one can see forest lakes with dark water, vast swamps covered with alder and aspen, lonely huts of foresters, charred from old age, sands, juniper, heather, shoals of cranes and stars familiar to us from all latitudes.

What can be heard in the Meshchersky region, except for the hum of pine forests? The cries of quails and hawks, the whistle of orioles, the fussy clatter of woodpeckers, the howl of wolves, the rustle of rain in red needles, the evening crying of the harmonica in the village, and at night - the discordant singing of roosters and the beater of the village watchman.

But so little can be seen and heard only in the first days. Then every day this region becomes richer, more diverse, dearer to the heart. And, finally, there comes a time when each willow above the dead river seems to be its own, very familiar, when amazing stories can be told about it.

I broke the custom of geographers. Almost all geographical books begin with the same phrase: “This region lies between such and such degrees of east longitude and northern latitude and borders in the south with such and such a region, and in the north with such and such. I will not name the latitudes and longitudes of the Meshchera region. Suffice it to say that it lies between Vladimir and Ryazan, not far from Moscow, and is one of the few surviving forest islands, the remnant of the "great belt of coniferous forests". It once stretched from Polissya to the Urals. It included forests: Chernigov, Bryansk, Kaluga, Meshchersky, Mordovian and Kerzhensky. In these forests, ancient Russia sat out from the Tatar raids.

First meeting

For the first time I came to the Meshchersky region from the north, from Vladimir.

Behind Gus-Khrustalny, at the quiet Tuma station, I changed to a narrow-gauge train. It was a Stephenson train. The locomotive, resembling a samovar, whistled like a child's falsetto. The locomotive had an offensive nickname: "gelding". He really looked like an old gelding. At the curves, he groaned and stopped. Passengers went out to smoke. Forest silence stood around the panting "gelding". The smell of wild cloves, heated by the sun, filled the carriages.

Passengers with things sat on the platforms - things did not fit into the car. Occasionally, on the way, sacks, baskets, carpenter's saws began to fly out from the site onto the canvas, and their owner, often a rather ancient old woman, jumped out for things. Inexperienced passengers were frightened, and experienced passengers, twisting the "goat's legs" and spitting, explained that this was the most convenient way get off the train closer to your village.

The narrow-gauge railway in the Mentor forests is the most leisurely Railway in the Union.

The stations are littered with resinous logs and smell of fresh felling and wild forest flowers.

At Pilevo station, a shaggy grandfather climbed into the car. He crossed himself in a corner where a round cast-iron stove rattled, sighed and complained into space.

- Just a little, now they take me by the beard - go to the city, tie up your bast shoes. And that is not in the consideration that, perhaps, their business is not worth a penny. They send me to a museum where the Soviet government collects cards, price lists, and everything else. Send with an application.

- What are you doing wrong?

- You look - here!

Grandfather pulled out a crumpled piece of paper, blew off the terrycloth from it and showed it to the neighbor woman.

“Manka, read it,” the woman said to the girl, rubbing her nose against the window. Manka put on her dress on her scratched knees, drew up her legs, and began to read in a hoarse voice:

- “It is believed that unfamiliar birds live in the lake, of huge striped growth, only three; it is not known where they flew from - they should be taken alive for the museum, and therefore send catchers.

- Here, - said the grandfather sadly, - for what business now the bones of old people are broken. And all Leshka is a Komsomol member. An ulcer is a passion! Ugh!

Grandpa spat. Baba wiped her round mouth with the end of her handkerchief and sighed. The locomotive whistled in fright, the forests hummed to the right and to the left, raging like a lake. The west wind was in charge. The train with difficulty broke through its damp streams and was hopelessly late, panting on empty half stations.

- Here it is our existence, - grandfather repeated - Summer year they drove me to the museum, today again!

- What did you find in the summer year? the grandmother asked.

- Torchak!

- Something?

- Torchak. Well, the bone is ancient. She lay in the swamp. Like a deer. Horns - from this car. Straight passion. They dug it for a whole month. In the end, the people were exhausted.

Who did he give up on? the grandmother asked.

- The guys will be taught on it.

The following was reported about this find in the "Research and Materials of the Regional Museum":

“The skeleton went deep into the bog, not giving support for the diggers. I had to undress and go down into the bog, which was extremely difficult because of ice temperature spring water. Huge horns, like the skull, were intact, but extremely fragile due to the complete maceration (soaking) of the bones. The bones broke right in the hands, but as they dried, the hardness of the bones was restored.

A skeleton of a gigantic fossil Irish deer was found with a span of two and a half meters of antlers.

From this meeting with the shaggy grandfather, my acquaintance with Meshchera began. Then I heard many stories about mammoth teeth, and about treasures, and about mushrooms the size of a human head. But this first story on the train stuck in my memory especially vividly.

vintage map

With great difficulty, I got a map of the Meshchera region. There was a note on it: "The map was compiled from old surveys made before 1870." I had to fix this map myself. River courses have changed. Where there were swamps on the map, in some places a young pine forest was already rustling; swamps appeared in place of other lakes.

But still, using this map was more reliable than asking local residents. For a long time, it has been so customary in Russia that no one will confuse so much when explaining the way as a local resident, especially if he is a talkative person.

“You, dear man,” shouts a local resident, “do not listen to others!” They will tell you such things that you will not be happy with your life. You listen to me alone, I know these places through and through. Go to the outskirts, you will see a five-walled hut on your left hand, take from that hut on your right hand along the stitch through the sands, you will reach the Prorva and go, dear, the edge of the Prorva, go, do not hesitate, right up to the burnt willow. From it you take a little to the forest, past Muzga, and after Muzga go steeply to the hill, and beyond the hill there is a well-known road - through the mshary to the lake itself.

- And how many kilometers?

- Who knows? Maybe ten, maybe all twenty. There are kilometers, dear, unmeasured.

I tried to follow this advice, but there were always a few burnt willows, or there was no noticeable hillock, and I, having given up on the stories of the natives, relied only on my own sense of direction. It almost never fooled me.

The natives always explained the way with passion, with furious enthusiasm. At first this amused me, but somehow I myself had to explain the way to Lake Segden to the poet Simonov, and I found myself telling him about the signs of this tangled road with the same passion as the natives.

Every time you explain the way, it’s as if you are walking along it again, through all these free places, along forest lanes dotted with immortelle flowers, and again you feel lightness in your soul. This lightness always comes to us when the path is long and there are no worries in the heart.

A few words about signs

In order not to get lost in the forests, you need to know the signs. Finding signs or creating them yourself is a very exciting experience. The world will accept infinitely diverse. It is very joyful when the same sign is preserved in the forests year after year - every autumn you meet the same fiery bush of mountain ash behind Larin's pond or the same notch you made on a pine tree. With each summer, the notch becomes more and more solid golden resin.

Signs on the roads are not the main signs. The real signs are those that determine the weather and time.

There are so many that one could write a whole book about them. We do not need omens in cities. The fire rowan is replaced by an enameled blue street name plate. Time is recognized not by the height of the sun, not by the position of the constellations, and not even by cock crows, but by the clock. Weather forecasts are broadcast by radio. In cities, most of our natural instincts go dormant. But it is worth spending two or three nights in the forest, and hearing becomes sharper again, the eye becomes sharper, the sense of smell is thinner.

Signs are connected with everything: with the color of the sky, with dew and fog, with the cry of birds and the brightness of starlight.

Signs contain a lot of exact knowledge and poetry. There are simple and complex signs. The simplest sign is the smoke of a fire. Now it rises in a column to the sky, calmly flows upwards, above the highest willows, then spreads fog over the grass, then rushes around the fire. And now, to the charm of a night fire, to the bitter smell of smoke, the crackling of branches, the running of the fire and the fluffy white ash, there is also the knowledge of tomorrow's weather.

Looking at the smoke, one can definitely say whether tomorrow it will rain, wind, or again, like today, the sun will rise in deep silence, in cool blue fogs. Evening dew predicts calmness and warmth. It is so abundant that it even shines at night, reflecting the light of the stars. And the more abundant the dew, the hotter tomorrow will be.

These are all very simple clues. But there are complex and precise signs. Sometimes the sky suddenly seems very high, and the horizon shrinks, it seems close, to the horizon as if no more than a kilometer. This is a sign of future clear weather.

Sometimes on a cloudless day the fish suddenly stops taking. Rivers and lakes are dying, as if life had gone from them forever. it sure sign near and prolonged bad weather. In a day or two, the sun will rise in a crimson, ominous haze, and by noon, black clouds will almost touch the ground, a damp wind will blow, and languid, heavy rains will fall.

Return to the map

I remembered the signs and digressed from the map of the Meshchera region.

Exploring an unfamiliar land always starts with a map. This occupation is no less interesting than the study of signs. You can wander on the map just like on the ground, but then, when you get to this real land, the knowledge of the map immediately affects - you no longer wander blindly and do not waste time on trifles.

On the map of the Meshchersky Territory below, in the farthest corner, in the south, a large bend is shown deep river. This is Oka. To the north of the Oka stretches a wooded and swampy lowland, to the south - long-settled, inhabited Ryazan lands. The eye flows along the boundary of two completely different, very dissimilar spaces.

Ryazan lands are grainy, yellow from rye fields, curly from apple orchards. The outskirts of the Ryazan villages often merge with each other, the villages are scattered densely, and there is no place where one, or even two or three still surviving bell towers are visible on the horizon. Instead of forests, birch groves rustle along the slopes of the dens.

Ryazan land is the land of fields. Steppes are already beginning to the south of Ryazan.

But it is worth crossing the Oka by ferry, and behind a wide strip of meadows near the Oka, the Meshchersky pine forests already stand like a dark wall. They go to the north and east, round lakes turn blue in them. These forests hide in their depths huge peat bogs.

In the west of the Meshchersky Territory, on the so-called Borovaya side, among pine forests, eight forest lakes lie in the undergrowth. There are no roads or paths to them, and you can only get to them through the forest using a map and compass.

These lakes have one very strange property: the smaller the lake, the deeper it is. The large Mitinsky lake is only four meters deep, and the small Udemnoye lake is seventeen meters deep.

Mshara

To the east of the Borovoye Lakes lie the huge Meshchera swamps - "msharas" or "omsharas". These are lakes overgrown for thousands of years. They cover an area of three hundred thousand hectares. When you stand in the middle of such a swamp, the former high shore of the lake - the "mainland" - with its dense pine forest is clearly visible on the horizon. In some places, sandy mounds, overgrown with pine and fern, are visible on the mshars - former islands. locals Until now, these hillocks are called “islands”. Moose spend the night on the islands.

Somehow, at the end of September, we walked by mshars to Poganoe Lake. The lake was mysterious. The women said that along its banks grow cranberries the size of a walnut and filthy mushrooms "a little more than a calf's head." From these mushrooms the lake got its name. The women were afraid to go to Poganoe Lake - there were some “green bogs” near it.

- As soon as you set foot, - the women said, - so the whole earth under you will hoot, buzz, sway like a shaking, the alder will sway, and the water will hit from under the bast shoes, splash in your face. By God! Just such passions - it is impossible to say. And the lake itself is without a bottom, black. If any young wench looks at him, she immediately becomes stunned.

- Why do you hesitate?

- From fear. So you fear and tearing on the back, and tearing. As if we stumbled upon Poganoe Lake, we run from it, run to the first island, and there we can only catch our breath.

The women provoked us, and we decided to definitely reach Poganoe Lake. On the way we spent the night at the Black Lake. The rain pounded the tent all night. The water murmured softly in the roots. In the rain, in the impenetrable darkness, the wolves howled.

The Black Lake was filled flush with the shores. It seemed as if the wind would blow or the rain would intensify, and the water would flood the msharas and us, together with the tent, and we would never leave these low, gloomy wastelands.

All night long the msharas breathed the smell of wet moss, bark, and black snags. By morning the rain had passed. The gray sky hung low overhead. From the fact that the clouds almost touched the tops of the birches, the earth was quiet and warm. The layer of clouds was very thin - the sun shone through it.

We rolled up the tent, put on our backpacks and went. Walking was difficult. Last summer, there was a ground fire in the msharams. The roots of birches and alders were burned, the trees fell down, and every minute we had to climb over large rubble. We walked over hummocks, and between the hummocks, where the red water was sour, the roots of birches stuck out, sharp as stakes. They are called pegs in the Meshchersky region.

Mshara are overgrown with sphagnum, lingonberries, gonobobel, cuckoo flax. The leg sank in green and gray mosses up to the knee.

In two hours we walked only two kilometers. An island appeared ahead. With the last of our strength, climbing over the rubble, tattered and bloodied, we reached a wooded hillock and fell on warm earth, in a thicket of lilies of the valley. The lilies of the valley were already ripe, hard orange berries hung between the broad leaves. The pale sky shone through the branches of the pines.

The writer Gaidar was with us. He went around the whole "island". The “island” was small, it was surrounded on all sides by msharas, only two more “islands” were visible far on the horizon.

Gaidar shouted from afar, whistled. We reluctantly got up, went to him, and he showed us on the damp ground, where the "island" turned into mshary, huge fresh traces of an elk. The elk, obviously, was walking in big leaps.

- This is his path to the watering hole, - said Gaidar ...

We followed the moose trail. We had no water, we were thirsty. A hundred paces from the "island" footprints led us to a small "window" with a clear, cold water. The water smelled of iodoform. We got drunk and went back.

Gaidar went to look for Poganoe Lake. It lay somewhere nearby, but like most lakes in the Mshara, it was very difficult to find. The lakes are surrounded by such dense thickets and tall grass that you can walk a few steps and not notice the water.

Gaidar did not take a compass, said that he would find his way back by the sun, and left. We lay on the moss, listening to old pine cones fall from the branches. Some beast sounded dully in the distant forests.

An hour has passed. Gaidar did not return. But the sun was still high, and we did not worry - Gaidar could not help but find his way back.

The second hour passed, then the third. The sky above the Msharas became colorless; then a gray wall like smoke crept in slowly from the east. Low clouds covered the sky. A few minutes later the sun disappeared. Only a dry haze hung over the msharas.

Without a compass in such darkness it was impossible to find a way. We remembered the stories about how on sunny days people circled in m'shars in one place for several days.

I climbed a tall pine tree and started screaming. Nobody responded. Then a voice came from far away. I listened, and an unpleasant chill ran down my back: in the mshars, just in the direction where Gaidar had gone, the wolves howled dejectedly.

What to do? The wind blew in the direction where Gaidar had gone. It was possible to kindle a fire, the smoke would be drawn into mshars, and Gaidar could return to the “island” by the smell of smoke. But this could not be done. We did not agree on this with Gaidar. There are often fires in swamps. Gaidar could have mistaken this smoke for an approaching fire and, instead of coming towards us, he would have started to leave us, fleeing from the fire.

Fires in the dried marshes are the worst thing to experience in these parts. It is difficult to escape from them - the fire goes very quickly. Yes, and where will you go when mosses dry as gunpowder lie to the horizon, and you can save yourself, and even then not for sure, only on the “island” - for some reason, the fire sometimes bypasses the wooded “islands”.

We shouted all at once, but only the wolves answered us. Then one of us went with a compass to the mshary - to where Gaidar had disappeared.

Twilight descended. Crows flew over the "island" and croaked frightened and ominously.

We shouted desperately, but then we still kindled a fire - it was getting dark quickly - and now Gaidar could go out to the fire.

But in response to our cries, no human voice was heard, and only in the dull twilight somewhere near the second "island" did the car horn suddenly hum and quack like a duck. It was absurd and wild - where could a car appear in the swamps, where a person could hardly pass?

The car was clearly approaching. It hummed insistently, and half an hour later we heard a crack in the rubble, the car grunted for the last time somewhere very close, and a smiling, wet, exhausted Gaidar got out of the mshar, followed by our comrade - the one who left with the compass.

It turns out that Gaidar heard our cries and answered all the time, but the wind blew in his direction and drove away his voice. Then Gaidar got tired of screaming, and he began to quack - to imitate a car.

Gaidar did not reach Poganoe Lake. He met a lonely pine tree, he climbed it and saw this lake in the distance. Gaidar looked at him, cursed, got down and went back.

- Why? we asked him.

- A very terrible lake, - he answered - Well, to hell with it!

He said that even from afar you can see how black, like tar, the water in Poganoe Lake. Rare diseased pines stand along the banks, leaning over the water, ready to fall from the first gust of wind. Several pine trees have already fallen into the water. There must be impassable bogs around the lake.

It was getting dark quickly, like autumn. We did not spend the night on the "island", but went by mshars towards the "mainland" - the wooded shore of the swamp. Walking through the rubble in the dark was unbearably difficult. Every ten minutes we checked the direction with the phosphorus compass, and only at midnight did we get out onto solid ground, into the forests, stumbled upon an abandoned road and, late at night, reached Lake Segden along it, where our mutual friend Kuzma Zotov lived, a meek, sick man, a fisherman and collective farmer.

I told this whole story, in which there is nothing special, only to give at least a remote idea of \u200b\u200bwhat the Meshchera swamps - msharas are like.

Peat extraction has already begun on some mshars (in Krasnoe Bog and Pilnoe Bog). The peat here is old, powerful, it will last for hundreds of years.

Yes, but we need to finish the story about Pogany Lake. The following summer, we nevertheless reached this lake. Its shores were floating - not the usual hard shores, but a dense plexus of calla, wild rosemary, grasses, roots and mosses. The banks swayed underfoot like a hammock. Bottomless water stood under the thin grass. The pole easily pierced the floating shore and went into the bog. With every step, fountains of warm water spouted from under their feet. It was impossible to stop: the legs were sucked in and the footprints were filled with water.

The water in the lake was black. Swamp gas bubbled up from the bottom.

We fished for perch on this lake. We tied long lines to wild rosemary bushes or young alder trees, and we ourselves sat on fallen pines and smoked until the wild rosemary bush began to tear and rustle, or the alder tree bent and cracked. Then we lazily got up, dragged by the fishing line and dragged fat black perches ashore. So that they would not fall asleep, we put them in our tracks, in deep pits filled with water, and the perches beat their tails in the water, splashed, but could not go anywhere.

At noon, a thunderstorm gathered over the lake. She grew before our eyes. The small storm cloud turned into an ominous anvil-like cloud. She stood still and didn't want to leave.

Lightning lashed at the m'sharas next to us, and our hearts were not feeling well.

We didn’t go to Poganoe Lake anymore, but nevertheless we earned the glory of women inveterate people, ready for anything.

- Absolutely desperate men, - they said in a singsong voice, - Well, so desperate, so desperate, there are just no words!

Forest rivers and canals

Pra flows from the lakes of northern Meshchera to the Oka. There are very few trees along the banks. In the old days, schismatics settled in Pre, in dense forests.

In addition to rivers, there are many canals in the Meshchera region.

Even under Alexander II, General Zhilinsky decided to drain the Meshchersky swamps and create large lands near Moscow for colonization. An expedition was sent to Meshchera. She worked for twenty years and drained only one and a half thousand hectares of land, but no one wanted to settle on this land - it turned out to be very scarce.

Zhilinsky spent many channels in Meshchera. Now these canals have died out and are overgrown with swamp grasses. Ducks nest in them, lazy tenches and nimble loaches live.

The sweet smell of water lilies is mixed with the smell of resin. Sometimes high reeds block the canals with solid dams. Calla grows along the banks. Its leaves are a bit like the leaves of a lily of the valley, but on one leaf a wide white stripe is traced, and from a distance it seems that these are huge snow flowers. Ferns, brambles, horsetails and moss lean in from the banks. If you touch a tuft of moss with your hand or an oar, bright emerald dust flies out of it in a thick cloud - spores of cuckoo flax. Pink fireweed blooms with low walls. Olive swimming beetles dive in the water and attack schools of fry. Sometimes you have to drag the boat by dragging through shallow water. Then the swimmers bite their legs until they bleed.

The silence is broken only by the ringing of mosquitoes and splashes of fish.

Swimming always leads to an unknown goal - to a forest lake or a forest river that carries clear water over a cartilaginous bottom.

On the banks of these rivers, water rats live in deep holes. There are rats completely gray with old age.

The woods

Meshchera is a remnant of the forest ocean. Meshchera forests are as majestic as cathedrals. Even an old professor, not at all inclined to poetry, wrote the following words in a study about the Meshchera region: “Here, in mighty pine forests, it is so light that a bird flying hundreds of steps deep can be seen.”

You walk through dry pine forests like you walk on a deep, expensive carpet – for kilometers the land is covered with dry, soft moss. Sunlight lies in the gaps between the pines in oblique cuts. Flocks of birds with a whistle and a slight noise scatter to the sides. Forests rustle in the wind. The rumble passes over the tops of the pines like waves. A lone plane floating at a dizzying height appears to be a destroyer seen from the bottom of the sea.

In addition to pine forests, mast and ship forests, there are forests of spruce, birch and rare patches of broad-leaved lindens, elms and oaks. There are no roads in the oak copses. They are impassable and dangerous due to ants. On a hot day it is almost impossible to pass through the oak thicket: in a minute the whole body, from heels to the head, will be covered with red angry ants with strong jaws. Harmless ant-bears roam in oak thickets. They pick open old stumps and lick ant eggs.

The forests in Meshchera are robbery, deaf. There is no greater rest and pleasure than walking all day through these forests, along unfamiliar roads to some distant lake.

The path in the forests is kilometers of silence, calmness. This is mushroom prel, the careful fluttering of birds. These are sticky oils covered with needles, tough grass, cold porcini mushrooms, wild strawberries, purple bells in the clearings, trembling of aspen leaves, solemn light and, finally, forest twilight, when dampness pulls from the mosses and fireflies burn in the grass.

The sunset burns heavily on the crowns of the trees, gilding them with ancient gilding. Below, at the foot of the pines, it is already dark and deaf. Bats fly silently and seem to look into the face of bats. Some incomprehensible ringing is heard in the forests - the sound of the evening, the burnt out day.

And in the evening the lake will finally shine like a black, obliquely placed mirror. The night is already standing over it and looking into its dark water, a night full of stars. In the west, the dawn is still smoldering, in the thickets of wolfberries the bittern is crying, and the cranes are muttering and fussing on the mshars, disturbed by the smoke of the fire.

Throughout the night, the fire of the fire flares up, then goes out. The foliage of birches hangs without moving. Dew flows down the white trunks. And you can hear how somewhere very far away - it seems, beyond the edge of the earth - an old rooster cries hoarsely in the forester's hut.

In an extraordinary, never-heard silence dawn dawns. The sky is green in the east. Venus lights up like blue crystal at dawn. This is the best time of the day. Everyone is still sleeping. Water sleeps, water lilies sleep, sleep with their noses buried in snags, fish, birds sleep, and only owls fly around the fire slowly and silently, like clods of white fluff.

The cauldron gets angry and mumbles on the fire. For some reason, we speak in a whisper - we are afraid to frighten off the dawn. With a tin whistle, heavy ducks rush by. Fog begins to swirl over the water. We pile mountains of boughs into the fire and watch how the huge white sun rises - the sun of an endless summer day.

Once we spent the night on the Black Lake, in high thickets, near a large pile of old brushwood.

We took a rubber inflatable boat with us and at dawn we rode it over the edge of coastal water lilies to fish. Decayed leaves lay in a thick layer at the bottom of the lake, and snags floated in the water.

I mentioned the Meshchersky Chelny. They look like Polynesian pies. They are carved from a single piece of wood. Only at the bow and stern they are riveted with forged nails with large hats.

meadows

In the meadows, the old channel of the Oka stretches for many kilometers. His name is Provo.

It is a dead, deep and motionless river with steep banks. The shores are overgrown with tall, old, three-girth, blackberry, hundred-year-old willows, wild roses, umbrella grasses and blackberries.

We called one stretch on this river “Fantastic Abyss”, because nowhere and none of us have seen such huge, two human height, burdocks, blue thorns, such a tall lungwort and horse sorrel and such gigantic puffball mushrooms as on this reach.

The tent must be pulled so that it buzzes like a drum. Then it must be dug in so that during rain the water flows into the ditches on the sides of the tent and does not wet the floor.

I boil strong tea in a smoked tin teapot. Hard soot is similar to enamel. Willow leaves burnt in a fire float in a teapot.

Aksakov's words relate entirely to these days spent on the Prorva:

“On a green flowering shore, above the dark depths of a river or lake, in the shade of bushes, under the tent of a gigantic oskor or curly alder, quietly trembling with its leaves in a bright mirror of water, imaginary passions will subside, imaginary storms will subside, self-loving dreams will crumble, unrealizable hopes will scatter. Nature will enter into its eternal rights. Together with the fragrant, free, refreshing air, you will breathe into yourself serenity of thought, meekness of feeling, indulgence towards others and even towards yourself.

A small digression from the topic

There are many fishing incidents associated with Prorva. I will tell about one of them.

And right next to him, Lenka, the son of a shoemaker, dragged fish not on an English fishing line worth a hundred rubles, but on an ordinary rope. The old man sighed and complained:

So the old man was out of luck. In one day, he broke off at least ten expensive spinners on snags, walked all over in blood and blisters from mosquitoes, but did not give up.

Once we took him with us to Lake Segden.

We went with the old man to Prorva. The meadows have not yet been mowed. A camomile the size of a palm lashed her legs.

The old man walked and, stumbling over the grass, repeated:

There was a calm over the Abyss. Even the leaves of the willows did not move and did not show the silvery underside, as happens even in a light breeze. In the heated herbs "jundel" bumblebees.

- My God, what a beauty!

The pike did not take his angry narrowed eyes from the old man.

The pike squinted at Lenka, and he jumped back. It seemed that the pike croaked: "Well, wait, you fool, I'll tear off your ears!"

Then the failure happened, which is still talked about in the village.

The pike tried on, blinked his eye, and hit the old man with his tail on the cheek with all his might. Over the sleepy water there was a deafening crack of a slap in the face. The pince-nez flew into the river. The pike jumped up and flopped heavily into the water.

Lenka danced to the side and shouted in an impudent voice:

More about meadows

Old men

- Eat, do not hesitate.

Grandpa sighed.

- How far? the girl asked.

Home of talent

On the edge of the Meshchersky forests, not far from Ryazan, lies the village of Solotcha. Solotcha is famous for its climate, dunes, rivers and pine forests. There is electricity in Solotch.

- Sings? Grandma asked.

Yes, poet.

Once the artist and Vasya were caught on the shore by a thunderstorm. I remember her. It was not a thunderstorm, but a swift, treacherous hurricane. Dust, pink from lightning, swept across the ground. The forests were noisy as if the oceans had broken through dams and were flooding Meshchera. Thunder shook the earth.

My house

The little house where I live in Meshchera deserves a description. it former bathhouse, log hut, sheathed in gray boarding. The house stands in a dense garden, but for some reason it is fenced off from the garden by a high palisade. This palisade is a trap for village cats who love fish. Every time I return from fishing, cats of all colors - red, black, gray and white and tan - take the house under siege. They snoop around, sit on the fence, on the roofs, on the old apple trees, howl at each other and wait for the evening. All of them are staring at the kukan with fish - it is suspended from the branch of an old apple tree in such a way that it is almost impossible to get it.

Furnaces are crackling, it smells of apples, cleanly washed floors. Tits sit on branches, pour glass balls in their throats, ring, crackle and look at the windowsill, where there is a slice of black bread.

I rarely sleep at home. I spend most nights on the lakes, and when I stay at home I sleep in an old arbor at the back of the garden. She's overgrown wild grapes. In the morning the sun hits it through the purple, purple, green and lemon foliage, and it always seems to me that I wake up inside a lit Christmas tree. Sparrows peer into the gazebo with surprise. They are mortally occupied by hours. They're ticking on dug into the ground round table. Sparrows get close to them, listen to the ticking with one or the other ear, and then peck the watch strongly on the dial.

It is especially good in the gazebo on quiet autumn nights, when a leisurely sheer rain rustles in an undertone in the garden.

Cool air barely shakes the tongue of the candle. Angular shadows from grape leaves lie on the ceiling of the gazebo. A night butterfly, resembling a lump of gray raw silk, sits on an open book and leaves the finest shiny dust on the page.

It smells of rain - a gentle and at the same time pungent smell of moisture, damp garden paths.

At dawn I wake up. Fog rustles in the garden. Leaves fall in the mist. I pull a bucket of water from the well. A frog jumps out of the bucket. I douse myself with well water and listen to the shepherd's horn - he still sings far away, at the very outskirts.

I go to an empty bathhouse, boil tea. A cricket starts its song on the stove. He sings very loudly and pays no attention to my steps or the clinking of cups.

It's getting light. I take the oars and go to the river. Chained dog Marvelous sleeps at the gate. He beats his tail on the ground, but does not raise his head. Marvelous has long been accustomed to my leaving at dawn. He just yawns after me and sighs noisily.

I'm sailing in the fog. The East is rosy. The smell of the smoke of rural stoves is no longer heard. Only the silence of water, thickets, centuries-old willows remains.

Ahead is a deserted September day. Ahead - lostness in this vast world of fragrant foliage, herbs, autumn wilt, calm waters, clouds, low sky. And I always feel this loss as happiness.

Unselfishness

You can write a lot more about the Meshchersky region. It can be written that this region is very rich in forests and peat, hay and potatoes, milk and berries. But I don't write about it on purpose. Should we really love our land only because it is rich, that it gives abundant harvests and that its natural forces can be used for our well-being!

Not only for this we love our native places. We love them also because, even if they are not rich, they are beautiful for us. I love the Meshchersky region because it is beautiful, although all its charm is not revealed immediately, but very slowly, gradually.

At first glance, this is a quiet and unwise land under a dim sky. But the more you get to know it, the more, almost to the point of pain in your heart, you begin to love this ordinary land. And if I have to defend my country, then somewhere in the depths of my heart I will know that I am also defending this piece of land, which taught me to see and understand the beautiful, no matter how unprepossessing it may be, this forest pensive land, love for who will never be forgotten, just as first love is never forgotten.

We landed, made a fuss, drove the she-wolf out of the brushwood and moved the bivouac to another place.

Black Lake is named after the color of the water. The water is black and clear.

In Meshchore, almost all lakes have water of different colors. Most lakes with black water. In other lakes (for example, in Chernenkoe), the water resembles brilliant ink. It is difficult, without seeing, to imagine this rich, dense color. And at the same time, the water in this lake, as well as in Chernoye, is completely transparent.

In Lake Urzhensky, the water is purple, in Segden it is yellowish, in the Great Lake it is tin-colored, and in the lakes beyond the Proy it is slightly bluish. In meadow lakes, the water is clear in summer, and in autumn it acquires a greenish marine color and even the smell of sea water.

The prow is very narrow, light, agile, it is possible to pass through the smallest channels.

Between the forests and the Oka, water meadows stretch in a wide belt,

In the meadows, the old channel of the Oka stretches for many kilometers. His name is Provo.

It is a dead, deep and motionless river with steep banks. The shores are overgrown with tall, old, three-girth, blackberry, hundred-year-old willows, wild roses, umbrella grasses and blackberries.

Every autumn I spend on Prorva in a tent for many days. To get a glimpse of what Prorva is, at least one Prorva day should be described. I come to Prorva by boat. I have a tent, an ax, a lantern, a backpack with groceries, a sapper shovel, some dishes, tobacco, matches and fishing accessories: fishing rods, donkeys, slings, vents and, most importantly, a jar of leaf worms. I collect them in an old garden under heaps of dead leaves.

On Prorva, I already have my favorite places, always very remote places. One of them is a sharp turn of the river, where it overflows into a small lake with very high banks overgrown with vines.

The tent must be pulled so that it buzzes like a drum. Then it must be dug in so that during rain the water flows into the ditches on the sides of the tent and does not wet the floor.

The tent is set up. It's warm and dry. Lantern "bat" hangs on a hook. In the evening I light it and even read in the tent, but I usually don’t read for long - there are too many interferences on Prorva: either a corncrake will start screaming behind a neighboring bush, then a pood fish will strike with a cannon roar, then a willow rod will deafeningly shoot in a fire and scatter sparks, then over a crimson glow will begin to flare up in thickets and a gloomy moon will rise over the expanses of the evening earth. And immediately the corncrakes will subside and the bittern will stop buzzing in the swamps - the moon rises in watchful silence. She appears as the owner of these dark waters, hundred-year-old willows, mysterious long nights.

Tents of black willows hang overhead. Looking at them, you begin to understand the meaning of old words. Obviously, such tents in former times were called "canopy". Under the canopy of willows... And for some reason on such nights you call the constellation of Orion Stozhary, and the word "midnight", which in the city sounds, perhaps, like a literary concept, acquires a real meaning here. This darkness under the willows, and the brilliance of the September stars, and the bitterness of the air, and the distant fire in the meadows, where the boys guard the horses driven into the night - all this is midnight. Somewhere in the distance, a watchman strikes the clock on a rural belfry. He hits for a long time, measuredly - twelve strokes. Then another dark silence. Only occasionally on the Oka will a towing steamer scream in a sleepy voice.

The night drags on slowly; it seems it will never end. Sleep on autumn nights in a tent is strong, fresh, despite the fact that you wake up every two hours and go out to look at the sky - to find out if Sirius has risen, if you can see the strip of dawn in the east.

The sun is rising. Frost is melting. Coastal sands turn dark with dew.

I boil strong tea in a smoked tin teapot. Hard soot is similar to enamel. Willow leaves burnt in a fire float in a teapot.

I have been fishing all morning. I check from the boat the ropes that have been placed across the river since the evening. First there are empty hooks - ruffs have eaten all the bait on them. But then the cord stretches, cuts the water, and a living silver shine appears in the depths - this is a flat bream walking on a hook. Behind him is a fat and stubborn perch, then a little pike with yellow piercing eyes. The pulled fish seems to be ice cold.

Aksakov's words relate entirely to these days spent on the Prorva:

“On a green flowering shore, above the dark depths of a river or lake, in the shade of bushes, under the tent of a gigantic oskor or curly alder, quietly trembling with its leaves in a bright mirror of water, imaginary passions will subside, imaginary storms will subside, self-loving dreams will crumble, unrealizable hopes will scatter. Nature will enter into its eternal rights. Together with the fragrant, free, refreshing air, you will breathe into yourself serenity of thought, meekness of feeling, indulgence towards others and even towards yourself.

A small digression from the topic

There are many fishing incidents associated with Prorva. I will tell about one of them.

The great tribe of fishermen who lived in the village of Solotche, near Prorva, was excited. A tall old man with long silver teeth came to Solotcha from Moscow. He also fished.

The old man was fishing for spinning: an English fishing rod with a spinner - an artificial nickel fish.

And right next to him, Lenka, the son of a shoemaker, dragged fish not on an English fishing line worth a hundred rubles, but on an ordinary rope. The old man sighed and complained:

- A cruel injustice of fate!

So the old man was out of luck. In one day, he broke off at least ten expensive spinners on snags, walked all over in blood and blisters from mosquitoes, but did not give up.

Once we took him with us to Lake Segden.

- Guilty! said the old man, apologizing to the jug.

We went with the old man to Prorva. The meadows have not yet been mowed. A camomile the size of a palm lashed her legs.

The old man walked and, stumbling over the grass, repeated:

“What a scent, folks!” What a delightful scent!

There was a calm over the Abyss. Even the leaves of the willows did not move and did not show the silvery underside, as happens even in a light breeze. In the heated herbs "jundel" bumblebees.

What a wonderful, charming morning!

- My God, what a beauty!

The pike did not take his angry narrowed eyes from the old man.

- It looks like a crocodile! Lenka said.

The pike squinted at Lenka, and he jumped back. It seemed that the pike croaked: "Well, wait, you fool, I'll tear off your ears!"

- Dove! - exclaimed the old man and bent even lower over the pike.

Then the failure happened, which is still talked about in the village.

- Alas! the old man shouted, but it was already too late.

Lenka danced to the side and shouted in an impudent voice:

– Aha! Got! Don't catch, don't catch, don't catch when you don't know how!

More about meadows

There are many lakes in the meadows. Their names are strange and varied: Quiet, Bull, Hotets, Ramoina, Kanava, Staritsa, Muzga, Bobrovka, Selyanskoye Lake and, finally, Langobardskoe.

At the bottom of Hotz lie black bog oaks. Silence is always calm. High banks close the lake from the winds. Beavers were once found in Bobrovka, and now they are chasing fry. The ravine is a deep lake with such capricious fish that only a person with very good nerves can catch them. Bull is a mysterious, distant lake, stretching for many kilometers. In it, shallows are replaced by whirlpools, but there is little shade on the banks, and therefore we avoid it. There are amazing golden lines in the Kanava: each such line pecks for half an hour. By autumn, the banks of the Kanava are covered with purple spots, but not from autumn foliage, but from an abundance of very large rose hips.

How names are grafted! In the meadows near Staritsa there is a small nameless lake. We named it Langobard in honor of the bearded watchman - "Langobard". He lived on the shore of the lake in a hut, guarded the cabbage gardens. And a year later, to our surprise, the name took root, but the collective farmers remade it in their own way and began to call this lake Ambarsky.

In the meadows - in dugouts and huts - talkative old people live. They are either watchmen in the collective farm gardens, or ferrymen, or basket-makers. Basketmakers set up huts near the coastal thickets of willows.

Acquaintance with these old people usually begins during a thunderstorm or rain, when you have to sit out in huts until the thunderstorm falls over the Oka or into the forests and a rainbow over the meadows overturns.

Acquaintance always takes place according to a custom established once and for all. First we smoke, then there is a polite and cunning conversation aimed at finding out who we are, after it - a few vague words about the weather (“it started raining” or, conversely, “finally wash the grass, otherwise everything is dry and dry "). And only after that the conversation can freely move on to any topic.

Most of all, old people like to talk about unusual things: about the new Moscow Sea, “water aeroplanes” (gliders) on the Oka, French food (“they boil frogs’ soup and sip it with silver spoons”), badger races and a collective farmer from near Pronsk, who, they say he earned so many workdays that he bought a car with music on them.

Most often, I met with a grumbling basket-maker grandfather. He lived in a hut on Muzga. His name was Stepan, and his nickname was "Beard on the poles."

Grandfather was thin, thin-legged, like an old horse. He spoke indistinctly, his beard climbed into his mouth; the wind ruffled grandfather's furry face.

Once I spent the night in Stepan's hut. I came late. There was a warm gray twilight, and hesitant rain fell. He rustled through the bushes, subsided, then began to make noise again, as if playing hide and seek with us.

“This rain is rushing about like a child,” Stepan said. - Purely a child - it will stir here, then there, or even lurk at all, listening to our conversation.

By the fire sat a girl of about twelve, light-eyed, quiet, frightened. She only spoke in whispers.

- Here, the fool from the Fence has wandered! - said grandfather affectionately. - I searched and searched for a heifer in the meadows, and even searched until dark. She ran to the fire to her grandfather. What are you going to do with her.

Stepan pulled a yellow cucumber out of his pocket and gave it to the girl:

- Eat, do not hesitate.

The girl took the cucumber, nodded her head, but did not eat. Grandfather put a pot on the fire, began to cook stew.

“Here, my dears,” said the grandfather, lighting a cigarette, “you wander, as if hired, through the meadows, through the lakes, but you don’t have the concept that there were all these meadows, and lakes, and monastery forests. From the Oka itself to Pra, read for a hundred miles, the whole forest was monastic. And now the people's, now that forest is labor.

- And why were they given such forests, grandfather? the girl asked.

- And the dog knows why! Foolish women spoke - for holiness. They prayed for our sins before the mother of God. What are our sins? We didn't have any sins. Oh, darkness, darkness!

Grandpa sighed.

“I also went to churches, it was a sin,” my grandfather muttered in embarrassment. - Yes, what's the point! Bast shoes mutilated for nothing.

Grandfather paused, crumbled black bread into a stew.

“Our life was bad,” he said, lamenting. - Neither the peasants nor the women were happy. The peasant is still back and forth - the peasant, at least, will be beaten to vodka, and the woman completely disappeared. Her children were not drunk, not full. She trampled all her life with tongs by the stove, until the worms in her eyes started. You don't laugh, you drop it! I right word said about worms. Those worms started up in the woman's eyes from the fire.

- Terrify! the girl said quietly.

“Don’t be scared,” said the grandfather. - You won't get worms. Now the girls have found their happiness. In the early days, people thought that it lives, happiness, on warm waters, in the blue seas, but in fact it turned out that it lives here, in a shard, - the grandfather tapped his forehead with a clumsy finger. - Here, for example, Manka Malyavina. The girl was vociferous, that's all. In the old days, she would have cried her voice overnight, and now you look what happened. Every day - Malyavin has a pure holiday: the accordion plays, pies are baked. And why? Because, my dears, how can he, Vaska Malyavin, not have fun living when Manka sends him, the old devil, two hundred rubles every month!

- How far? the girl asked.

- From Moscow. She sings in the theater. Who heard, they say - heavenly singing. All the people are crying out loud. Here she is now becoming, a woman's share. She came last summer, Manka. So do you know! A thin girl brought me a present. She sang in the reading room. I’m used to everything, but I’ll say frankly, it grabbed my heart, but I don’t understand why. Where, I think, is such power given to man? And how it disappeared from us, peasants, from our stupidity for thousands of years! You’ll trample on the ground now, you’ll listen there, you’ll look here, and everything seems to die early and early - no way, dear, you won’t choose the time to die.

Grandfather removed the stew from the fire and climbed into the hut for spoons.

“We should live and live, Yegorych,” he said from the hut. We were born a little early. Didn't guess.

The girl looked into the fire with bright, shining eyes and thought about something of her own.

Home of talent

On the edge of the Meshchora forests, not far from Ryazan, lies the village of Solotcha. Solotcha is famous for its climate, dunes, rivers and pine forests. There is electricity in Solotch.

Peasant horses, driven into the meadows at night, stare wildly at the white stars of electric lamps hanging in the distant forest, and snort with fear.

For the first year I lived in Solotch with a meek old woman, an old maid and a country dressmaker, Marya Mikhailovna. She was called a century old - she spent her whole life alone, without a husband, without children.

In her cleanly washed toy hut, several clocks ticked and hung two old paintings by an unknown Italian master. I rubbed them with raw onions, and the Italian morning, full of sun and reflections of the water, filled the quiet hut. The picture was left to Marya Mikhailovna's father in payment for the room by an unknown foreign artist. He came to Solotcha to study local icon-painting skills. He was a man almost a beggar and strange. Leaving, he took the word that the picture would be sent to him in Moscow in exchange for money. The artist did not send money - in Moscow he suddenly died.

Behind the wall of the hut, the neighboring garden was noisy at night. In the garden stood a two-story house, surrounded by a blank fence. I wandered into this house looking for a room. A beautiful gray-haired old woman spoke to me. She sternly looked at Me with blue eyes and refused to rent a room. Over her shoulder, I could see the walls hung with paintings.

- Whose is this house? I asked the age-old.

- Yes, how! Academician Pozhalostin, famous engraver. He died before the revolution, and the old woman is his daughter. There are two old women living there. One is quite decrepit, hunchbacked.

I was puzzled. Engraver Pozhalostin is one of the best Russian engravers, his works are scattered everywhere: here, in France, in England, and suddenly - Solotch! But soon I ceased to be perplexed when I heard how the collective farmers, digging potatoes, argued whether the artist Arkhipov would come to Solotcha this year or not.

Pozhalostin is a former shepherd. Artists Arkhipov and Malyavin, sculptor Golubkina - all of these, Ryazan places. There is almost no hut in Solotcha where there would be no paintings. You ask: who wrote? Answer: grandfather, or father, or brother. Solotchintsy were once famous bogomazes.

The name of Pozhalostin is still pronounced with respect. He taught Solotsk to draw. They went to him secretly, carrying their canvases wrapped in a clean rag for evaluation - for praise or scolding.

For a long time I could not get used to the idea that nearby, behind the wall, in the darkish rooms of the old house, were rare books on art and copper engraved boards. Late at night I went to the well to drink water. Frost lay on the log house, the bucket burned his fingers, icy stars stood over the silent and black edge, and only in Pozhalostin's house the window shone dimly: his daughter read until dawn. From time to time, she probably raised her glasses to her forehead and listened - she guarded the house.

The next year I settled with the Pozhalostins. I rented an old sauna from them in the garden. The garden was dead, covered in lilacs, wild rose hips, apple and maple trees covered with lichen.

Beautiful engravings hung on the walls in the Pozhalostinsky house - portraits of people from the last century. I couldn't get rid of their looks. When I was mending my fishing rods or writing, a crowd of women and men in tightly buttoned frock coats, a crowd of the seventies, looked at me from the walls with deep attention. I raised my head, met the eyes of Turgenev or General Yermolov, and for some reason I felt embarrassed.

Solotchinskaya district is a country of talented people. Yesenin was born not far from Solotchi.

Once an old woman in a poneva came to my bathhouse - she brought sour cream to sell.

“If you still need sour cream,” she said affectionately, “so you come to me, I have it.” Ask the church where Tatyana Yesenina lives. Everyone will show you.

- Yesenin Sergey is not your relative?

- Sings? Grandma asked.

Yes, poet.

“My nephew,” the grandmother sighed and wiped her mouth with the end of her handkerchief. - He was a good poet, only painfully wonderful. So if you need sour cream, you come to me, dear.

Kuzma Zotov lives on one of the forest lakes near Solotcha. Before the revolution, Kuzma was an unrequited poor man. From poverty, he retained the habit of speaking in an undertone, imperceptibly - it’s better not to speak, but to keep quiet. But from the same poverty, from the “cockroach life”, he retained a stubborn desire to make his children “real people” at all costs.

In the hut of the Zotovs appeared behind last years a lot of new things - radio, newspapers, books. From the old time, only a decrepit dog remained - he does not want to die in any way.

“No matter how you feed him, he still gets skinny,” says Kuzma. - Such a poor factory remained with him for the rest of his life. Those who are cleaner dressed are afraid of those who are buried under the bench. Thinks gentlemen!

Kuzma has three Komsomol sons. The fourth son is still quite a boy, Vasya.

One of the sons, Misha, is in charge of an experimental ichthyological station on Lake Velikoye, near the town of Spas-Klepiki. One summer, Misha brought home an old violin without strings - he bought it from some old woman. The violin was lying in the old woman's hut, in a chest - left over from the landowners Shcherbatovs. The violin was made in Italy, and Misha decided in the winter, when there would be little work at the experimental station, to go to Moscow to show it to connoisseurs. He did not know how to play the violin.

“If it turns out to be valuable,” he told me, “I’ll give it to one of our best violinists.”

The second son, Vanya, is a teacher of botany and zoology in a large forest village, a hundred kilometers from his native lake. During the holidays, he helps his mother with the housework, and in his free time he wanders through the forests or along the lake waist-deep in water, looking for some rare algae. He promised to show them to his students, smart and terribly curious.

Vanya is a shy person. From his father, gentleness, affection for people, love for sincere conversations passed to him.

Vasya is still at school. There is no school on the lake - there are only four huts - and Vasya has to run to school through the forest, seven kilometers away.

Vasya is a connoisseur of his places. He knows every forest path, every badger hole, every bird's plumage. His gray narrowed eyes have extraordinary vigilance.

Two years ago, an artist came to the lake from Moscow. He took Vasya as his assistant. Vasya transported the artist on a canoe to the other side of the lake, changed water for paints (the artist painted with Lefranc's French watercolors), served lead tubes from a box.

The artist and Vasya barely made it home. In the hut, the artist discovered the loss of a tin box with watercolors. The colors were lost, the magnificent colors of Lefranc! The artist looked for them for several days, but did not find them and soon left for Moscow.

Two months later, in Moscow, the artist received a letter written in large clumsy letters.

“Hello,” Vasya wrote. - Write down what to do with your crashes and how to send them to you. After you left, I looked for them for two weeks, searched everything until I found it, only got a bad cold, because it was already raining, I fell ill and could not write to you earlier. I almost died, but now I walk, although still very weak. So don't get angry. Dad said that I had pneumonia in my lungs. Send me, if you have any opportunity, a book about all sorts of trees and colored pencils - I want to draw. We already had snow falling, but it only melted, and in the forest under the Christmas tree - you look - a hare is sitting! I remain Vasya Zotov.

The little house where I live in Meshchore deserves a description. This is a former bathhouse, a log hut, lined with gray boarding. The house stands in a dense garden, but for some reason it is fenced off from the garden by a high palisade. This palisade is a trap for village cats who love fish. Every time I return from fishing, cats of all colors - red, black, gray and white and tan - take the house under siege. They snoop around, sit on the fence, on the roofs, on the old apple trees, howl at each other and wait for the evening. All of them are staring at the kukan with fish - it is suspended from the branch of an old apple tree in such a way that it is almost impossible to get it.

In the evening, the cats carefully climb over the palisade and gather under the kukan. They rise on their hind legs, and with their front legs they make swift and deft strokes, trying to hook the kukan. From a distance it seems that the cats are playing volleyball. Then some impudent cat jumps up, clings to the hook with a death grip, hangs on it, swings and tries to tear off the fish. The rest of the cats beat each other on the mustachioed muzzles out of annoyance. It ends with me leaving the bathhouse with a lantern. Cats, taken by surprise, rush to the palisade, but do not have time to climb over it, but squeeze between the stakes and get stuck. Then they flatten their ears, close their eyes and start screaming desperately, asking for mercy.

In autumn the whole house is covered with leaves, and in two small rooms it becomes light, as in a flying garden.

I mentioned the Meshchora boats. They look like Polynesian pies. They are carved from a single piece of wood. Only at the bow and stern they are riveted with forged nails with large hats.