Boiler room in divanovskiy island. Boiler Island and FFI in contact. A closed-cycle military city is being built on Kotelny Island in the Arctic

BOILER, boiler room, boiler room (special). 1. adj. to the boiler. Boiler plant. || Going to the manufacture of boilers. Boiler iron (special grade of thick sheet iron). 2. in value noun boiler room, boiler room, wives. The room in which... Explanatory Dictionary of Ushakov

Boiler, boiler Dictionary of Russian synonyms. boiler adj., number of synonyms: 6 boiler (2) ... Synonym dictionary

The largest island in the archipelago of the New Siberian Islands, in m. Laptev, as part of the Russian Federation. 11.7 thousand km & sup2, height up to 374 m ... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary

BOILER, oh, oh. 1. see boiler. 2. boiler room, oh, female. The place where they are steam boilers, boiler installations. Explanatory dictionary of Ozhegov. S.I. Ozhegov, N.Yu. Shvedova. 1949 1992 ... Explanatory dictionary of Ozhegov

KOTELNY, the largest island in the archipelago of the New Siberian Islands, in the Laptev Sea. 11.7 thousand km2, height up to 374 m. Source: Encyclopedia Fatherland ... Russian History

See boiler. * * * Kotelny is the largest island in the archipelago of the New Siberian Islands, in the Laptev Sea, as part of Russia. 11.7 thousand km2, height up to 374 m. encyclopedic Dictionary

The largest of the group of New Siberian Islands in the Arctic Ocean. It lies between 74°37 and 76°10 N. sh. and 155° and 158°20 in. e. The space of the island is not precisely defined; consider 377 sq. miles or 18250 sq. V. According to the latest data, the length of about wa, between ... Encyclopedic Dictionary F.A. Brockhaus and I.A. Efron

App. rel. with noun. cauldron I 2., the associated Explanatory Dictionary of Efremova. T. F. Efremova. 2000... Modern Dictionary Russian language Efremova

Boiler room, boiler room, boiler room, boiler room, boiler room, boiler room, boiler room, boiler room, boiler room, boiler room, boiler room, boiler room, boiler room, boiler room, boiler room, boiler room, boiler room, boiler room, boiler room, boiler room, boiler room ... Forms of words

The largest island in arch. Novosibirsk Islands. Pl. 11.7 thousand km², hilly relief with heights up to 374 m. Faddeevsky, forming a single landmass. Arctic… … Geographic Encyclopedia

Books

• Diary of Sokolov, founder of the polar station on Kotelny Island, V. I. Sokolov. What to expect from the diaries of a twenty-three-year-old man? - feelings, thoughts about the future path. So our author is on his way. Only knows exactly where - on a desert island. Knows why...

The construction of the Arctic infrastructure on the northern borders of Russia has been carried out at an accelerated pace for two years now. However, until now the life of military personnel on remote islands is oversaturated with "hardships and hardships", and transfer to the mainland seems to be an unrealistic prospect for them. After a wide public outcry that arose around the material about the service of the military from the Arctic island of Kotelny, the site decided to find out how the base on the New Siberian Islands arose and what tasks it will perform as part of the Arctic Military District.

38,000 kilometers of tundra

There is formally no permanent civilian population here, but employees of polar stations and hunters-traders spend on the islands most calendar year. In difficult Arctic conditions, people hunt for polar fox, fish and look for scarce mammoth ivory, from which Yakut craftsmen create unique art products.

The quantitative composition of animals living on the islands is also unstable. For the summer period, reindeer come from the mainland, polar bears wander over the ice. Walrus, seal, white whale live in coastal waters.

The largest island of the archipelago is Kotelny - its area is 23,200 kilometers. It is believed that the island was discovered back in 1773 by merchant Ivan Lyakhov while observing wandering herds of wild deer.

The beginning of the scientific development of the islands dates back to the 19th century. In 1912, the icebreakers Taimyr and Vaigach made an expedition to them, and by 1928 a geophysical observatory appeared on one of the islands - the first stationary station on this earth.

Capital "Temp"

They lived on "Tempe", despite the unofficial status of the capital, modestly, in a northern way. Here was a common hut, where all the workers of the airfield, headed by his chief, spent the night, a dining room, an office for meteorologists and a small bathhouse. And, of course, a garage for repairing equipment and storing the GAZ-47 caterpillar transporter at the disposal of the polar explorers. As elsewhere in the North, this car, which received the slang name "Stepanida", was the "workhorse" of the "Temp".

The then completely new AN-2‚ LI-2 and IL-14 landed on the Kotelny. Planes flew to the island no more than twice a month with regular delays due to bad weather. As eyewitnesses of those polar years recall, the aircraft at the Kotelny always waited impatiently. Together with them fresh news, correspondence, products came from the mainland. The planes took back the replaced workers, the prey of hunters and fishermen, as well as the data of meteorologists.

The heavy tread of war communism

In the 1970s, the USSR Ministry of Geology took an active interest in the New Siberian Islands. It was decided to create an expeditionary camp for seismic exploration specialists in the immediate vicinity of the Temp airfield, and seismic laboratories themselves appeared throughout the archipelago. According to the official version, they were supposed to monitor natural earthquakes in the Arctic Ocean. Taking into account the difficult political situation of that time, it cannot be ruled out that the geologists at Kotelny were, as they say, "dual-purpose" and were engaged, among other things, in applied military seismology.

Moreover, a lot of attention was riveted to seismic exploration at that difficult time. Suffice it to recall the resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU of May 13, 1958, which literally said the following: "In connection with the urgent need to expand and improve in the shortest possible time the permanent system for the early detection of nuclear explosions, to oblige the USSR Ministry of Defense to create during 1958-1959 a permanent control service for nuclear weapons tests, including in its composition the existing special monitoring units. At the same time, in 1959, the "Special Control Service" was formed, under the auspices of which the so-called "early warning system for nuclear tests" functioned.

With the collapse of the USSR, in the development of the Novosibirsk Islands, if not a dot, then certainly an ellipsis was put. In 1993, against the background of a large-scale curtailment of activities in the Arctic, the polar infrastructure at Kotelny was abandoned by people.

Rise from the Ashes - Boiler House

The following year, military sailors set off to examine the boiler room. The flagship of the Northern Fleet, the nuclear-powered missile cruiser Peter the Great, approached the shores of the New Siberian Islands. One of the tasks then was called "working out actions for landing troops." It was during this operation that a Ka-27 carrier-based helicopter made a hard landing at Kotelny. The crew was not injured as a result of the incident, but the course of the expedition was disrupted.

In 2013, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the return of the military to Kotelny. "Our military left there in 1993, and yet this is a very important point in the Arctic Ocean. I mean a new stage in the development of the Northern Sea Route. We agreed that at this point we would not only recreate the military base, but also we will put the airfield in order, make it possible for representatives of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, hydrologists, climate specialists to participate in the joint work to ensure the safety and efficiency of work on the Northern Sea Route, so that Russia can effectively control this part of its territory," the Russian leader said. at a meeting at the Department of Defense.

Words were not far from deeds, and already in October of the same year, the military department reported on the restoration of the Temp airfield. The debut of the revived runway at the Kotelny was the reception of the An-72 military transport aircraft with the working group of the Ministry of Defense on board.

Six months later, large-scale exercises of the Airborne Forces were held at the Tempa base, which involved the parachute landing of 350 people and military equipment. At the same time, the construction of a temporary field camp on the island began, and equipment and building materials were brought in.

Terrible flower of the north

“This will be a modular town, which we are building using modern technologies. Personnel will only go outside to keep watch and on duty - this is living in a closed cycle city,” said Oleg Golubev, commander of the Northern Fleet warship detachment, about the construction. .

At the initial stage, more than 440 workers and about 120 units of construction equipment were involved in the construction of the town, which from a height resembles a shamrock, painted in the colors of the Russian flag.

In December 2014, the fifth Arctic Military District was created in Russia. It included submarine and surface forces, naval aviation and air defense of the Northern Fleet. The event was also marked by the announcement of the commissioning of the "Northern Clover".

Unsightly life of the island army

In the course of preparing another material about the life of ordinary soldiers and officers in the Russian army of the 21st century, the correspondents of the site talked to more than 10 military personnel from the Kotelny and found out what the development of the Arctic actually turns out to be.

Poor quality food and rusty tap water, lack of stable communication with relatives, delays in payment of monetary allowances, the inability to transfer to the mainland - these are just a few of the problems that the fighters faced at Kotelny.

"Lord, we're just tired of all this already ..." - the wife of one of the servicemen says in despair, waiting for the return of her husband from the island for more than a year.

The denouement is near

Whether the life of the servicemen themselves, who work daily in the harshest conditions, will change after the construction is completed, time will tell. After all, no one will say how many billions will be spent on people.

In 2013, in the context of building infrastructure in the Arctic, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu expressed himself unambiguously:

I really don’t want someone to have to perform feats because of someone’s laxity.

Continues to follow developments.

The boiler house was opened in 1773 by the merchant I. Lyakhov. The eastern part of the island, now called the Faddeevsky Peninsula, was once explored by the famous Yakov Sannikov.

Where the name of the island came from is not known for certain. One of the versions claims that the Cossacks, landing on the island for the first time, found a cauldron on the shore, left earlier by no one knows. According to another version, on the contrary, they forgot on the shore, leaving the island in a hurry, their own boiler.

The relief of the island is hilly, in the south is its highest point - Mount Malakatyn-Tas, 361 meters high. The composition of the earth's crust is mainly limestone and shale. Inland waters represented by small rivers and lakes. The largest lake is Evsekyu-Kyuel. The climate is arctic and harsh. The animal and plant world is typical of the arctic tundra.

During the Soviet Union, the island housed a military base, mothballed after the collapse of the USSR. In 2013, the restoration of the base began and runway Temp airfield. In the future, it is planned to build a full-fledged military camp here.

Kotelny Island: photo review

Kotelny Island: where is it located

Kotelny Island is located between the East Siberian and Laptev Seas and is the largest in the archipelago of the New Siberian Islands, as well as in the small archipelago of the Anjou Islands. According to the administrative division, the island is part of the Bulunsky ulus of Yakutia, Russian Federation.

The area of ​​the island is 23.200 square kilometers, highest point- Mount Malakatyn-Tas, raised above sea level by 361 meters. Kotelny Island is part of the Ust-Lensky nature reserve.

Kotelny Island on the world map

How to get to Kotelny Island

From Moscow to Kotelny - 13 hours of flight. Almost 7 - to Yakutsk - on a regular scheduled flight. Then you need to fly to An to Tiksi. From there - already on the Mi-8 - after a three-hour flight over the sea with refueling on Stolbovoy Island, you can get to the boiler room itself. According to forecasts, air communication between Kotelny Island and the Big Earth will be carried out all year round, in any weather.

Kotelny Island: video

Military equipment and base on Kotelny Island

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Hourly archived data for 30 years regarding Kotelny Island can be activated by purchasing the history+ package. You will be able to download CSV files for weather parameters such as temperature, wind, cloudiness and precipitation relative to any point on the globe. The last 2 weeks of past weather data for Ostrov Kotelny are available for free evaluation of the package.

Average temperature and precipitation

The "mean daily maximum" (solid red line) shows the maximum temperature of an average day for every month for Kotelny Island. Similarly, the "Minimum Mean Daily Temperature" (solid blue line) indicates the minimum average temperature. Hot days and cold nights (The dotted red and blue lines indicate the average temperature on the hottest day and coldest night of each month for 30 years. When planning your vacation, you will be aware of the average temperature and prepared for both the hottest and the coldest nights. cold days The default settings do not include wind speed readings, however you can enable this option using the button on the graph.

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The graph indicates the number of sunny, partly cloudy and foggy days, as well as days of precipitation. Days when the cloud layer does not exceed 20% are considered sunny; 20-80% of the cover is considered partly cloudy and more than 80% is considered overcast. While in Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland, the weather is mostly cloudy. Sossusvlei in the Namib Desert is one of the sunniest places on earth.

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Maximum temperatures

The chart for maximum temperature in Ostrov Kotelny shows how many days per month reach certain temperatures. In Dubai, one of the hottest cities on earth, the temperature is almost never below 40°C in July. You can also see the chart of cold winters in Moscow, which shows that only a few days in the month the maximum temperature barely reaches -10°C.

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The precipitation chart for Ostrov Kotelny indicates how many days in a month a certain amount of precipitation is reached. In areas with a tropical or monsoonal climate, rainfall forecasts may be underestimated.

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wind rose

The wind rose for Ostrov Kotelny shows how many hours per year the wind blows from the indicated direction. An example is a southwesterly wind: The wind blows from the southwest (SW) to the northeast (NE). Cape Horn, the southernmost point in South America, is characterized by a characteristic powerful westerly wind, which significantly impedes the passage from east to west, especially for sailing ships.

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Lev Lipkov

means of transport

On the island of Kotelny

Calgary, Canada, 1999-2000

Vadim Litinsky

…. Everything I want to talk about began on an April day in 1972, when the AN-2 turned around, doused us with a cloud of snow, slid to the far end of the runway, roared, and flew past us, gaining altitude. I followed him with my eyes until he melted into a whitish pale blue sky, and then looked around. Ahead of me lay a white frozen bay. Left and right‚ to the horizon - white rounded hills‚ with black strokes of stony placers. An even, forceful wind drove the snow over the frozen sand of the coastal spit and already swept up boxes and bags with our field equipment hastily thrown from the plane, ruffled the tarpaulins and hoods of our jackets. In the distance, the low barracks of the local airport were half-covered with snow.

There were six of us then, landed on the shore of Kotelny Island - the first landing of a large expedition, which was to begin the geophysical survey of the New Siberian Islands. Six people who have worked a lot in the taiga but have never been to the Arctic. In the taiga, when you are thrown out somewhere, you can take your time to set up a camp. There was time to walk around and, slowly, choose the best place where to put up tents - so that it was close to the water, but not too close, so that it would not flood suddenly, so that it was in the shade, and that there were firewood nearby, and that was closed from the wind. Here, on Kotelny Island, there was no choice and we had to hurry. It was cold here, very cold, and besides, windy and uncomfortable. It was necessary to put up a tent as soon as possible, at least one, not even according to all the rules, hastily, put up a stove in a tent, fill a tank with diesel fuel, light it up, fill a kettle with snow, put it on the stove and only then, inside, you can calmly light a cigarette and think about how how to be and what to do next.

It turned out that in the cold and in the wind a person works and thinks more slowly. It turned out that it takes a certain effort of will to force yourself to perform a trifling but necessary action - for example, fasten a hood to a jacket. It turned out that the tents given to us from the warehouse were intended for the hot summer taiga and had huge windows on the side walls covered with mesh for fresh air access and to protect against mosquitoes, and we immediately had to sew up these windows tightly. It turned out that the iron stakes for the tripwires were too short and did not drive deep enough into the frozen pebbles and did not allow the tents to be well tensioned. It turned out that three of us hate it all and are going back to the mainland with the very first plane. But in spite of everything, after two hours we were sitting around the stove and drinking tea. That's how it started. Then there was a lot...

Kotelny Island

No one really knows where this name came from. According to one legend, the Cossacks, landing on it for the first time three hundred and something years ago, found a cauldron on the shore, left by an unknown person before them. According to another, no less plausible, the Cossacks, on the contrary, forgot on the shore, leaving the island in a hurry, their own boiler. No one really knows how it happened, but it can be said quite confidently that two hundred years ago, the Cossack Lyakhov looked north from the coast and “saw a little land”, crossed the strait on dogs and discovered Bolshoy Lyakhovsky Island. And went one after another. From this island, someone else “saw” Maly Lyakhovsky Island in the north, and from it - Kotelny Island, north of Maly Lyakhovsky. This is where the chain stopped. But many people believed, as the musher Sannikov believed at the beginning of the last century, that there was land further north. He said that he saw distant blue mountains from northern end Boiler room. And he not only said, but also harnessed the dogs and rushed there, to the north, but he was not allowed to go there by the Great Siberian Polynya, a strip of almost constantly open water along the break in the seabed. After that, planes and airships flew, icebreakers broke the ice and nuclear submarines crept under it, but no one found anything. It's a pity... But did Sannikov the musher see something!? These people don't lie...

So Kotelny Island remained on the map without its northern neighbor. But even what is called Kotelny Island on the map is not an island at all, but only a part of an even larger island. What is called Boiler Island is its western part. The eastern part is called Faddeevsky Island in honor of some unknown Faddey, and this Faddeevsky Island, as you may have guessed, is not an island either. And between them is Bunge Land - flat, like a table, a sandy beach a hundred kilometers long and wide, barely rising above sea level, so low that in winter, under the snow, it looks like a frozen sea. Because of this lowland, there was confusion with the islands, because the pioneers decided that this was a strait, and Kotelny and Faddeevsky were real islands. When they figured out what was what, it was already too late, because the names were established on the maps. Fortunately, I was smart enough (this was before the revolution) not to change anything. So everything remained - Kotelny Island‚ Bunge Land‚ Fadeevsky Island.

Everyone who lived or worked on the New Siberian Islands will say and not lie that Kotelny is the best island in the archipelago. And indeed, there was everything you need for a good life in the Arctic. Do you need an airport - please west coast‚ at Temp‚ where planes fly. Not very often‚ but fly. And that means letters‚ newspapers‚ movies‚ vodka and sometimes‚ but very, very rarely‚ even the highest delicacy in the Arctic - beer! You are tired of sitting alone in your smoky hut or tent and you want to communicate - there are two permanent polar stations - Sannikova and Temp, go there with a bottle, talk to all-knowing radio operators, exchange books, sleep on clean sheets, watch new films. You need ammo for hunting - there is an air defense company with a radar, so take a bottle of vodka and visit the commander of this company. You need fox skins - there are local hunters, again, take vodka, and - to them. If you need fish - take a box of vodka and move east to where Kotelny Island ends and Bunge Land begins and where the Balyktakh River flows, in which huge salmon are caught. The meat is over - get on the all-terrain vehicle, take as much vodka as you have, and - go hunting, thank God, there are a lot of deer on the island.

But you have probably already noticed what I always emphasize - in order to enjoy all the benefits and delights of Kotelny Island, you need to have two things: vodka and a means of transportation. And if vodka on the island, at the very least, having tried, it was possible to get it, then the situation with transport was very bad. This is what I want to talk about.

All more or less permanent settlements in the Soviet Arctic, whether they be polar stations, military posts or airports, have a few permanent signs. These are huge pyramids of empty iron barrels of fuel, abandoned windmills with forever frozen blades and gnawed skeletons of cars, tractors and all-terrain vehicles. The airport of Kotelny Island was no exception to this rule. The runway on a pebbly spit that separated the shallow lagoon from the bay, two low barracks, a garage, a workshop, antennas with braces and the signs indicated above - that's the whole airport. It was called Temp‚ from the nearby polar station‚ which, in turn, picked up the name from the neighboring Yakut hunting settlement Tempa.

The airport led a quiet life, receiving and sending all three types of aircraft operating in the North: AN-2, LI-2 and IL-14, flying there quite infrequently, maybe twice a month, if there was weather, so that each landing was an event . Airplanes delivered mail, vodka, rested tanned shift workers, week-old newspapers and films, taking polar explorers and hunters on vacation to the mainland, fish from the Balyktakh River and carcasses of local deer. After the plane flew back to the mainland, the hectic activity caused by the arrival quickly gave way to familiar calm. Every evening‚ after dinner‚ in the dining room‚ blame‚ in the wardroom‚ according to the sacred tradition of polar explorers‚ a sheet was unfolded and a film was played. Bad weather closed the airport for weeks in a row, and sometimes the crews of the planes got stuck there, went crazy from idleness and drank hard.

In those early post-war years, there was only one tractor in Tempe, which pulled and dragged cargo on a steel sheet to the planes and barrels of fuel for refueling. Then a second one appeared, bigger and more powerful. The presence of two cars already made it possible for the population of the airport, with the approval and on behalf of the chief, to go hunting for deer. These trips required iron health and nerves - try to shake for three days in a cramped iron box with a suspension slightly softer than that of a cart, sleep under the roar of a diesel engine, breathe its own fumes, and in between, crawl on your belly along the damp tundra, sneaking up on cautious animals. However, a persistent hatred for stewed meat, which any polar explorer developed very quickly, made them endure any difficulties.

Once, in early spring, the head of the airport sent two people on a large tractor - a tractor driver and a worker - to reconnoiter whether deer had appeared. The peasants crossed the lagoon on the ice, climbed the nearby hills and dangled along them for about twelve hours and, not noticing any deer, moved back home. Most short cut again lay across the lagoon, which they crossed on their way to the fells, but on the way back they had no luck and, about half a kilometer from the airport, the tractor fell through the ice. The lagoon was not deep, - a meter and a half from the force, so the tractor sat on the bottom and peacefully stalled - it was deep enough to flood the engine. The unlucky hunters put the gearbox in neutral so that they could later pull the car in tow, climbed out onto the ice and trudged to the airport, dragging carbines and sleeping bags on themselves. Having reached the barracks, they reported the incident to the chief and proposed their plan for solving the problem - the chief, on the one hand, as an interested party and an official who sent them for reconnaissance, gives them half a box of vodka (six bottles), and they, as performers , on the other hand, undertake to pull out that tractor and bring it back to life. However, negotiations quickly stalled. The chief, on the one hand, was, for some reason, in a nasty and stubborn mood and said that he would not give vodka. The men, on the other hand, were also not in a radiant frame of mind and said bluntly that without vodka they would not pull the tractor out of the lagoon. And, as sometimes happens in life, both sides rested on their own and rested for a long time, throughout the winter. And then spring came and the water rose in the lagoon. And then summer came, the ice melted altogether, the tractor sank deeper into the thawed bottom silt, and the problem of extracting the tractor from the lagoon disappeared by itself.

In short, a few years later, when we first arrived at Tempe on a windy April afternoon, the tractor was still stuck in the lagoon. He was already a nobody and was written off according to the act and removed from the account of the airport. Our drivers attached a long cable to it, and when the ice melted, they pulled it onto the spit with all-terrain vehicles, over the course of a week they sorted out the engine and replaced the electrical wiring, and then, after short negotiations, exchanged it for the head of the airport for a case of vodka and the necessary spare parts for our all-terrain vehicles.

For a long time, Temp Airport, as the center of polar life on the island, did not know competition. However, at the height of the Cold War‚ in the late sixties‚ the military appeared on the island. They chose the saddest place on an already not very joyful island‚ in a gap between two hills and built barracks there for an air defense company (air defense)‚ a radar was hoisted on top of one of the hills‚ and on a cliff near the sea they piled up everyone iron and electronic trash and stuck an iron mast into it. This heap was called a "false target", and it was created to deceive the enemy and bring him into complete confusion. After that, a company of young soldiers was landed on the shore for navigation and locked in these barracks for two years. No holidays. As in a strict regime prison, only not by sentence, but by the call of the Motherland .... The officers' wives also arrived and settled in a barrack next to the barracks, where the lieutenant and his wife relied on a twelve-square-meter cell with a tiny front room, which is also a pantry, with a common kitchen at one end of a long corridor and a shared lavatory at the other.

... I often visited this air defense company, which the population of the Boiler began to call only "warriors" ("...Let's go to the warriors ...", or "... The warriors have spare parts .."). And every time I was painfully sorry for these pale young guys who knew only three hundred meters of tundra from the barracks to the locator, who saw the sun for three months a year and ate only cereals and canned food all these two years of service. They even ate bread half-baked - the company commander forbade giving out sugar to the baker, because he was afraid that he, having access to yeast as well, would put mash. It is possible that the commander did not know that yeast would not work without sugar and the dough would not be lush and spongy and would not be baked in their primitive oven. Possibly, but unlikely. And most likely - he knew and still didn’t give it, since bread raw inside was a lesser evil for military service than mash ...

Of the means of transport, at first the commander also had at his disposal only a tractor, so that the military did not have any special advantages over the competing organization - the airport. However, in the year 1970, after numerous reports to the higher command, the warriors got a ZIL-150 truck for transporting goods from the airport in winter - in the summer no car would have passed even five meters across the thawed tundra. In addition, there was another problem. The fact is that, as I said, the air defense company was located on the northern side of the lagoon, four kilometers from the airport. Like any normal lagoon, it is separated from the sea by the already mentioned spit. The spit was long, straight, like a dam, and pebbly, so that even by car it was possible to drive famously along it. But, unfortunately, the braid was not continuous. In its northern part there was a “breakthrough”: an opening about twenty meters wide, through which all the excess water from the lagoon went into the sea - sleepily and calmly in summer, with a weak current, and in spring, in high water - with a roar, foam and whirlpools. Because of this “breakthrough”, it was impossible for anyone, neither the soldiers to the airport, nor the airport workers to the soldiers, to drive directly in the summer. And since the warriors needed the airport more often, they built a raft from barrels and boards, pulled a cable across the gap and reached the other shore, sorting the cable with their hands. This crossing had an interesting feature - almost every year it had to be built anew, because someone, in the late autumn, the last to cross a gap ready to freeze, was always too lazy to pull the raft ashore, it froze into the ice, and in the spring he was carried away into the stormy sea. and unexpected, as always in the Arctic, floods.

But in winter there were no problems. The lagoon had only to freeze, and it quickly froze to the very bottom, as the warriors, on the one hand, and the airport workers, on the other, quickly rolled up the winter road with tractors and marked it with poles with red flags - in case of a snowstorm. And there were no longer any serious obstacles, except for very bad weather, so as not to go to visit each other and drink a bottle - another - the fifth tenth.

After long negotiations and writing a lot of papers, it was the airport's turn to get its own car. In the next navigation, another ZIL-150 was removed from the dry cargo ship and delivered on a barge to the airport, but now in the form of a gas tanker, that is, with a tank instead of a body. Airport workers were very proud of this car and liked to famously fly up to a plane that had just landed and, as required by aviation laws, first of all quickly refuel it. What a relief it was from this car to the airport workers, anyone who had to pump a hand pump for hours will understand - and this is at best, and at worst - to serve up a bucket of gasoline, in the cold and with the breeze, while, of course, spilling gasoline on themselves. hands and collar, and knowing that gasoline spilled on your hand in winter is the surest way to severe frostbite. So the tanker came in very handy and was loved and protected by everyone.

One winter, about a year before us, a radiogram arrived at the airport that a plane had left Temp. In the jargon of the polar explorers, this simply meant that a plane had taken off for Temp and that we had to prepare to meet it. The board, that is, the Li-2 plane, the Russian version of the immortal DC-3 (the last Li-2 still flew in the Arctic in the early eighties), arrived safely and brought the usual set of mail, old newspapers, films, three soldiers in a company and vodka, of course. There was a lot of vodka - they stocked up for the New Year. Therefore, having called the soldiers to send a car to pick up everything that was due to them, the head of the airport discussed the situation with the pilots and closed the airport for weather conditions“up to twenty-four Moscow”, that is, for a day. And the airport buzzed.

Seriously buzzed mostly elected, the most important people: the boss, chief mechanic, radio operator and pilots. The rest of the proletarians - drivers, cooks and a couple of workers, buzzed so-so, a bottle on the snout and under the entry in the fence book (this is such a book where everything taken by the worker from the warehouse was entered - boots, overalls, padded jackets, smoking, etc., with subsequent payroll deductions). The elite, on the other hand, did not experience restrictions in quantity, and the chief then very cunningly distributed the expenses for drinking in such a way that the chief mechanic and radio operator either did not pay anything, or paid little, much less than what was actually drunk. And the pilots in general always drank for nothing. It was so common in the Arctic that pilots were considered the most important people on whom so much depended that only an idiot or a green newbie could ask them for money for vodka or generally ruin relations with them in any other way. If this did happen, then the planes to such an idiot began to fly badly, because the crew commander in the Arctic, despite strict rules, ultimately decided for himself when and where to fly. And if the flight plan for the day, drawn up by the commander of his detachment, included a flight to geologists, from whom he always received fish and deer thighs as a gift, and then to the drillers, where he once spent the night and was not invited to the table, then woe to the drillers - after flight to geologists, or the weather deteriorated, or the co-pilot fell ill, or minor problems were found in the plane ... But we must pay tribute - “sun flights”, when someone became seriously ill, broke bones or began to give birth, these same pilots performed without fail and immediately took off anywhere, to anyone, at any time and in any weather.

So, everyone was buzzing, and in the midst of the buzzing they remembered that they had forgotten to call the company commander. They called, but he said that his car had already left. The chief mechanic said that he would not leave a friend in trouble and would bring him himself in his tanker, dressed quickly, pulled the tanker out of the warm garage and rushed along the winter road along the spit to the north, to the warriors.

One of the pilots, not yet staggering, but already not quite firm on his feet, soon left the smoky cabin for a latrine, to take a piss, and then decided to look outside and take a breath of fresh air. The night was beautiful and crystal cold, a frosty ring crossed out by a cross shone around the moon, four false moons were blurry at the intersection of the cross with the ring. Over the northern hills, the ghostly bands of northern lights slowly grew and shimmered.

The pilot followed the red taillights of the gas tanker as they jumped towards the bright headlights of the oncoming combat vehicle, and turned, shivering, back into the house. Opening the door, he heard a thud from the north, looked around, and no longer saw headlights or tail lights.

Like this. Two cars, the only ones on the island with a total area of ​​​​7 thousand square kilometers, collided head-on in clear weather (as pilots in the Arctic used to say - “the visibility is a million in a million”). The shouting and cursing that followed the collision was terrible and did not subside for several hours, accusations flew back and forth. But then they decided that the drinking should continue no matter what, and everything else later.

A day later, filled with a dead sleep, then waking up from a headache and repeated hangovers, the booze subsided by itself. After drinking milk, which a wise cook, who went through it many, many times, diluted from powder specifically for this purpose, the interested parties drew up two acts, one for the airport, the other for the warriors, and dragged the crippled cars with tractors to the respective garages.

Hot on the heels of this unfortunate accident, the airport manager and the mechanic were still full of good intentions to fix the car as soon as possible. But then, as in the story with the tractor in the lagoon, labor enthusiasm quickly dried up. Either the damage was too serious, or they didn’t want to arouse the suspicions of the authorities on the mainland with a long list of necessary spare parts, or the problem of overtime pay for vodka again arose - the exact reason for the decline in interest in repairing the car is unknown. Most likely they just didn't care. But one way or another, the crumpled gas tanker stuck out at the garage for a long time, gradually losing the parts, seats, instruments and other things needed for other purposes.

This incident, as it were, marked the end of the automobile period in the history of transport on Kotelny Island and the beginning of another period that can be called cross-country.

The name of Gerasim Zharikov, or simply Gerka, as he was known on the island, is closely connected with the recent history of Kotelny Island in general, and with the cross-country period in particular. Actually, this period began with him.

Under what exact circumstances Gerka appeared on the island somewhere in the sixty-eight, no one really knew. He told me that he was from Baku, grew up there, and from there he thundered into the army. As you know, the units of the Soviet army were never replenished with conscripts from the place where these units were located, but, on the contrary, soldiers came to Tajikistan from Arkhangelsk, and soldiers, for example, to Belarus, from the Tyumen region. This was done not because of the desire of the army to better acquaint young people with the geography of their native country, but for purely humanitarian reasons: if there is an uprising or other civil unrest, if possible, save young people from having to shoot at their family members or acquaintances - after all, soldiers can and refuse (while it was assumed that no one would refuse to shoot at strangers). So it was quite logical that Gerka, originally from Baku, ended up in Tiksi, on the shores of the Arctic Ocean, where he spent all two years in aviation, flying as a gunner-radio operator on strategic bombers.

Then he was demobilized, received all the necessary papers and money in Tiksi, and, as is often the case in the north, found drinking companions and buzzed loudly in the only Tiksinsky restaurant. So hard that three days later he woke up the devil knows where, in some barracks, with some whores, in the dirt and, of course, without a penny of money. There, fate brought him together with some half-drunk Yakut, who staggered around the barracks and molested whores. They brushed him off, but he did not let up and tried to interest them in sex, saying: “Do you think no? Kui is. Tokko sibko soft onnako…”. This Yakut turned out to be a hunter from Kotelny Island. He brought a bunch of foxes to sell. He sold everyone and, as is often the case in the north, roared and ended up in the same position and in the same barracks as Gerka. Yakut had no choice but to drag himself to the airport and fly back to Temp with the first plane. And then Gerka turned up ...

... In my youth, I categorically denied the role of providence or predestination and believed that everything in my life depended on myself. Having lived a little longer and faced with some things and coincidences that were incomprehensible to me, I was forced to admit to myself that there are still some secret forces, fate, or, generally speaking, some kind of direction of events. But not wanting to completely abandon my own role, I began to believe that all this only works up to a certain moment, up to some point in space and time, and then fate, or whatever it is, as if says, “That’s it, I brought you to this fork. And where to go next and what to do is up to you. Now everything depends on you, and as you decide, so be it.” So it was with me on an autumn day twenty years ago, when I had to decide whether to stay in Russia or throw everything to hell and run away without looking back. I realized that the moment had come when fate brought me to a crossroads, patted me on the shoulder, and left me alone. And it was no longer possible to hope that everything would somehow work out by itself or that someone else would decide for me. No, I had to decide for myself and take matters into my own hands. And I decided and ran without looking back. To Canada...

So it was with Gerka. When that Yakut suggested that he fly to Kotelny Island and become a hunter, Gerka realized that he was at a fork in the road. Half an hour later they were already catching a leftist at the airport, and the next day they flew with a passing An-2 to Temp.

To his surprise, Gerka joined the new life very easily and quickly. At first, he was, as it were, an assistant to that Yakut and gained experience. I had to learn three very important things. First, how to ride dogs. Secondly, how to build traps for arctic foxes (the so-called “graze”). And thirdly, how not to get lost in the monotonous tundra and not freeze. He comprehended all these three wisdoms during the first winter. In the summer, he himself signed up in Tiksi as a hunter, received a plot and collected everything necessary for life and hunting in the local trading post - food, traps, tools, carbines with cartridges, fishing nets, medicines, a walkie-talkie, and so on. He took all this without money, on credit, for future fox skins, which he had to hand over to the same trading post. Everything was recorded in the debt book, and it was clear to any sane person that it was impossible to pay for all this good in a lifetime, even if the hunt was very successful. But Gerka did not care at all, for summing up the results and repaying debts were still in the very distant future. In addition, all the hunters, both Russians and Yakuts, lived in the same way, deep in debt, and no one was especially killed about this, and every year they recruited all the newest and most expensive again.

Gerka decided to hunt alone. First of all, he had to build a hut in order to live. He found a dry place at the mouth of a stream flowing into the sea, where a lot of fin was applied - the main building and heating material on the island and worked around the clock, since the sun did not set at all. The finished Gerka's hut rose a little above the ground and generally resembled a dugout from the time of the war - rows of logs inclined towards the center, a rolling roof, a plywood door that opens into the hut (all doors in the Arctic are made this way - less digging outside after a blizzard), a window the size of a palm and layers of clay and turf to keep warm. Gerka, as a person who served in aviation and attached to technical progress, decided to use the acquired knowledge for the arrangement of his life. So, his stove, although it was made from a cut iron barrel, was universal and could devour all types of fuel available on the island: firewood, diesel fuel, old rubber boots, TNT checkers and coal (by the way, there was a coal deposit on the island and there were even plans to develop it to maintain navigation). The stove was placed so low that it barely protruded above the floor, but it quickly heated the hut. The process of lighting this stove was not for the faint of heart. First, half a liter of bezin was poured inside, on dry firewood prepared in advance. Then a lit newspaper was thrown there. After that, it was necessary to jump away from the stove to the side, because a deafening explosion was heard and the flame beat into all the cracks. The flame of the explosion, flying into the chimney, carried away the air from the hut, creating a temporary vacuum there, due to which the door itself opened inward, and then, when the vacuum was filled, it slammed back with a roar. After that, outside, as if on cue, longing for the warmth they could not reach, dogs began to howl outside. And only then, under the vibrating buzz of the flame, heat quickly began to spread through the hut, and it was possible to put a kettle of snow, throw back the hood and light up ...

In addition, Gerka set up a walkie-talkie and put a high antenna on guy ropes, so that he had at least some connection with the outside world and he could let them know about himself if something happened to him. On top of this, on the top of the antenna, he hung a red lantern, taken quietly from the runway at Tempe, soldered a primitive flashing light, connected it to the battery and connected it to the lantern. The lantern blinked and showed Gerka the way home in the darkness and cold of the polar night.

In addition to the hut, Gerka had to scatter traps and build a dozen fox traps. The trap, or mouth, as it was known throughout Siberia, was always placed on hillocks, because lemmings, the main food of arctic foxes, only dug their minks there and arctic foxes, running across the tundra in search of food, did not miss a single hillock. Hunters invented mouths even before the advent of steel traps, so they were made entirely of wood. It was possible to build a mouth in the Arctic only in summer, when the earth thaws. In addition, the entire building must be weathered over the summer from the slightest smell of a person - otherwise the arctic fox, a curious, but very cautious animal, will not go into the mouth.

First, a narrow blind groove was dug on the tubercle with walls inclined inward. The walls were strengthened with sticks or planks, and from above along the groove, a heavy log was placed unbalanced at one end on a transverse stick outside the groove so that, without being supported at the other end, it would fall into the groove. Therefore, when the hunter “charged” his mouth, he propped up the other end of the log with a peg, and tied a bait from frozen meat to the peg.

Pasti was charged in January, when the fox skin became thick and white, while the hunter had to do everything possible not to leave a smell behind - he wore a special robe and gloves that always hung outside, in the wind. The fox sensed the bait, and in order to get it, he climbed his head inside the mouth, pulled the bait, pulled the peg out of the nest and a heavy log fell on him. Since along the bottom the groove was made barely wider than the log, the animal could not get out from under the log and, after half an hour of a frantic but hopeless struggle, got tired and froze. The hunter on dogs went around the pasture, took out the dead polar foxes and loaded the pasture again. That's all wisdom.

Trap hunting was less troublesome - in summer he threw a trap into the tundra, tied it with a chain to a peg driven in nearby, remembered the place, loaded the bait in winter - and collect foxes for yourself. However, arctic foxes, as a rule, were worse in traps than in the mouth. In addition, traps spoiled the skin.

Summer in the Arctic is a brief flash of light, water and life when the sun doesn't set and no one sleeps. In six to eight weeks, a new generation of birds must learn to fly, deer cubs - to get stronger on their feet, wolf cubs - to learn to kill, lemmings - to spawn two litters of small furry rodents. And the hunter, if, of course, he is serious about hunting - set up herds, scatter storehouses (as temporary food warehouses are called in Siberia, located so as to carry less with him), stock up on fuel. I didn’t have time - at the end of August, the bright day is shortened to five hours, at the beginning of September the tundra freezes to reinforced concrete strength, and in mid-September, wait for a blizzard, and winter hunting is gone.

And Gerka did not sleep for days, along with the entire Arctic. He saw how the entire tundra was dotted with thriving colonies of lemmings and knew that, as a result, there would be many arctic foxes. He wasn't wrong. The hunt was successful and by the spring he had about a hundred first-class skins, with a theoretical value of about twenty thousand rubles - at that time, quite a decent amount. At the same time, closer to spring, Gerka, as a practical person, began to ask himself the question: is there an easier way than this horse labor to make money on Kotelny Island? Unlike his fellow Yakut hunters, Gerka loved to read and often took books from the libraries of the polar stations. One day he read a book about the Yukon gold rush—the Klondike, Dawson City, Carmack, Eldorado—and quickly discovered that far more people got rich back then making coffee on the Chilkoot Pass and frying pancakes in Dawson City than digging holes in the permafrost and washing tons dirt in search of gold. Gerka quickly narrowed down the options to one - he needed transportation. Having a vehicle at his disposal, Gerka would immediately turn into a very important person, a kind of king of the tundra, because he could offer the hunters to do the most hard work- deliver logs for pastures, deliver food for them, scatter storehouses across the tundra, hunt deer all year round and supply hunters with meat. For all these services, the hunters would pay him with arctic foxes, which he, Gerka, already as a real hunter, would hand over to the trading post to the state.

Then in the Soviet Arctic there existed, and continues to exist now, only two main types of land transport - a tractor and an all-terrain vehicle. . It was in the north of Canada that I was able to see a wide variety of cars - from giant Foremost or Nodwell trucks to tiny caterpillar buggies for one or two people, capable of driving anywhere in winter (any driving on the tundra is prohibited in Canada in summer). The tractor did not suit Gerka because of the slowness of the course and the need to drag the sled behind him - otherwise there would be nowhere to carry the loads intended for the hunters. No, Gerka was satisfied only with an all-terrain vehicle, which could provide him with fast and comfortable movement around the island all year round. However, unfortunately, there were no all-terrain vehicles on the island at that time, and the warriors also had tractors in Tempe, at the airport. Therefore, a sober looking at things, Gerka decided to deal with what is, and began to look for approaches to the head of the unit and to the head of Temp, offering complex schemes for joint ventures and the division of income. To his disappointment, none of the potential partners agreed with Gerka. Both chiefs, listening to Gerka's sweet speeches, felt in their guts that, if they agreed with him, their tractors would disappear often and for a long time on Gerka's mysterious trips throughout the archipelago, and they themselves would have to invent excuses when there was nothing to carry cargo from aircraft or ships to navigation. The frustrated Gerka was already in the mood to fly to Tiksi, where he was going to hand over the foxes, take a good walk, and at the same time ask knowledgeable people about some kind of decommissioned all-terrain vehicle, rusting in someone's backyard, which could be transported to the navigation to the island and then, repaired, put into action. He was already completely packed, as he came here. interesting news: an expedition of topographers arrives on the island with their own transport and the head of the airport was instructed to clear an ice landing strip two kilometers long in the bay to receive large transport aircraft An-12 in the ski version. Gerka realized that events were taking an interesting turn and that it was better for him not to fly to Tiksi yet.

He himself took a very active part in clearing and marking the runway and was standing with all the workers at its beginning when a silver plane with four engines, resembling a pot-bellied seagull, broke through low stratus clouds over the sea, made a circle over Tempo, aimed and smoothly landed on the ice. short paws growing from the belly. The plane skidded to the far end of the runway, turned around and rolled into reverse side where he was expected. Those who arrived introduced themselves to the head of the airport - they had to build a whole network of iron pyramidal towers on the island and accurately determine their coordinates, for which a helicopter would arrive later on the island, but for now they brought two all-terrain vehicles with them. And indeed, the rear doors of the aircraft opened, an inclined ladder descended and two GAZ-47 all-terrain vehicles, painted in a protective greenish color, rolled out onto the ice, one by one ...

Now I would not look at these machines without laughing, which, as hopelessly outdated, were abandoned by the army and removed from service. Small, cramped, with a frail engine with a capacity of only sixty horsepower, they could accelerate to thirty kilometers per hour on a paved road, and even then downhill, and over the tundra and snow, for which they were intended, with a strained roar crawled at a speed of six or seven. According to the instructions, only eight people could hardly sit in the iron and unheated box, on two side benches. But this is now, and then ...

And then it was for the population of Kotelny Island in general, and for Gerka in particular, a miracle of technology. This car could go anywhere, anytime. For two there was a place in a warm cabin. In the body, for all its tightness, it was possible to fill more than a ton of all kinds of good, and if you remove the canvas roof, then more. In addition, the all-terrain vehicle could float on the water if there were no holes in its hull, and it was possible to cross streams, rivers and lagoons on it. In a word, all the problems of life and work in the Arctic were solved. And Gerka decided that by hook or by crook, but one all-terrain vehicle would be his.

His dream was destined to come true sooner than he thought. In May, a helicopter flew to the topographers and they began to fly around the island, landing construction teams that were building iron pyramids on the tops of the hills. The authorities settled in Tempe and directed all work from there by radio, as befits the Administration. Gerka, of course, was spinning around, setting the right connections and preparing the ground for negotiations on the fate of one of the all-terrain vehicles. At the end of June, it suddenly became warmer, the snow began to melt quickly, the lagoon began to fill with water and on one sunny day and, as always, unpredictably, the “breakthrough” broke through and the water roared into the Laptev Sea, once again taking the long-suffering raft with it and breaking communication between the air defense company and the airport. And just then the topographers needed something from the warriors, and Gerka offered to drive his services to the warriors on an all-terrain vehicle, assuring that he would cross the gap without problems. The all-terrain vehicle with the driver and Gerka in the cab famously flew up to the gap along the crippled spit and slid into the water, following Gerka's commands. Gerka correctly calculated where the strong current would take the car when it crossed the gap. But Gerka could not foresee that the strong current washed away the pebbly shore and it became so steep that the all-terrain vehicle, although it managed to cling to the shore with its caterpillars, could not get out on it. The situation quickly became very bad: a strong current turned the all-terrain vehicle and, rotating clockwise, carried it to the exit from the lagoon into the sea.

Gasping to the limit and churning the water with furiously flying caterpillars, they managed to once again stick the all-terrain vehicle to the shore and they realized that if even now it was not possible to get ashore and the all-terrain vehicle would carry again, then with the next full turn they would already be in the sea. The all-terrain vehicle roared, but it was all in vain - the coast was too steep. And when the car began its fatal turn, both - both the driver and Gerka - without saying a word, jumped ashore. The completely uncontrollable all-terrain vehicle, helplessly spinning, swam out of the lagoon, bumped into the edge of the ice field, tilted under the pressure of water going under the ice, scooped up water and slowly sank. Gerka realized that his finest hour had come. He quickly noted in his mind the place where the all-terrain vehicle dived in relation to coastal signs, and they trudged to the warriors to report the incident by phone to Temp and at the same time find a way to get back across the gap.

As in the case of two colliding cars, the phone conversation resulted in half an hour of obscene barking, mutual accusations and threats to withhold the cost of the all-terrain vehicle from the salary of these two unfortunate gouges. But two days later, when Gerka and the all-terrain vehicle built a new raft and moved to the airport side of the breach, Gerka had a long conversation with the head of the topographical party and soon a commission was drawn up to write off the all-terrain vehicle, about which an act was drawn up, which began with the sacramental phrase of all Soviet acts "The present act is drawn up in that ...". The meaning of the act was that the all-terrain vehicle drowned and rests at the bottom of the sea, from where it is impossible to get it, and therefore the all-terrain vehicle no longer belongs to the party. And it doesn't belong to anyone. This is what Gerka wanted.

Topographers honestly worked on the island all summer and built about ten pyramids. In early September, a large helicopter came for them and took them all to Tiksi, leaving two hard workers to spend the winter in Tempe to guard what was left there until the next summer. It became quiet again in Tempe and Gerka set about making his dream come true.

The Laptev Sea in this part is freed from ice by mid-August and remains clear until November, after which it gradually freezes again. The water in the sea does not heat up above ten degrees in the warmest time, and in September it is somewhere around five or six. Gerka prepared everything very carefully. He swam up and down with his partner on an inflatable rubber boat, saw the outlines of an all-terrain vehicle through the water, marked the place with a buoy, determined the depth, which did not exceed four meters there, and the distance from the coast - thirty meters. Having chosen a calm, windless day, Gerka drove a tractor with a long thick rope from the warriors to the spit, lit two fires on the shore, loaded a bottle of vodka and the end of the rope onto the boat and swam to the buoy, supported by parting shouts of spectators on both sides of the abyss. There he stripped naked, rubbed himself with lard, put on underpants and a shirt, previously soaked in the same lard, took the end of the rope with a loop and rushed into the icy water with a cry. He was gone for about thirty seconds, during which he found the tow hook, opened the latch, put on the rope loop and slammed the latch back, after which he flew to the surface, was pulled into the boat, treated to a glass of vodka and covered with a blanket. Having reached the shore, Gerka gave a command and the tractor began to back away. The rope was pulled tight and, to the joyful cries of Gerka, shaking from the cold, an all-terrain vehicle was pulled onto the scythe.

For three months, Gerka worked on the all-terrain vehicle, not getting out of the garage around the clock, changing electrical wiring, completely corroded by salty sea water, sorting out the engine, gearbox and onboard transmissions. And the day came when Gerka carefully drove out of the garage, roared the engine, turned on the spot, tried the work of the onboard clutches and clattering with steel tracks, rushed into the tundra to test his own all-terrain vehicle. So his dream came true and he became the king of the tundra.

As befits a king, the first thing he did was to get acquainted with the territory subject to him outside the narrow coastal strip to which he was tied, having only dogs as a means of transportation. Now the whole huge island was at his disposal. Gerka was already so curious, like a cat, always trying to climb into the remote corners of the island in search of something unusual, but here there were no restrictions for him. For the rest of the daylight hours, he rushed around the island like a madman, scattering storehouses and delivering fuel to those very diverse points on the island that Gerka considered strategically important. And he did know what he was doing. One of his warehouses arose in the center of the island, not far from the exit to the surface of the coal seams, so that if he decides to stay there, he could burn coal in the stove without sparing. He threw out another storehouse on the Balyktakh River, where the hills of the island suddenly broke off to the flat sandy desert of the Bunge Land, silver salmon were well caught here. The third place was chosen in such a way that not a single herd of deer would pass by. And so on.

And when winter began, our king was already spending quite a bit of time with his dog team, checking his own mouths. He spent much more time going around hunting huts and concluding agreements with hunters for the delivery of firewood, food and other necessary things, accepting snow-white skins of arctic foxes as payment for hard work. And when there was nothing to carry, then Gerka simply came to visit the hunters, but not to everyone in a row, but preferring Yakut hunters.

Guests are always welcome in the Arctic. It is worth sitting in a cramped and dark hut for two or three months in the polar haze, seeing no one except your dogs and your wife, if you have one, in order to appreciate the moment when the dogs suddenly get worried and start squealing, and the hunter will come out of the hut to figure it out ‚ what's what ‚ and in the dead frosty silence he will distinguish the distant strained howl of the engine ‚ and then the headlights of the all-terrain vehicle will dance on the horizon, so dazzlingly bright in the blackness of the polar night. And the Yakut will shout to his wife to get ready for the guests, and she will rush to kindle the stove, and then, with an ax, into the cold passage - chop frozen venison and get frozen fish out of bags. And he himself will still stand outside, looking at the hills, ghostly illuminated by the polar lights, greedily sipping a cigarette, shouting at the dogs and wondering how much more time the all-terrain vehicle will need to get here.

Gerkin's typical visit began with dignity and nobility. The hostess was fussing around the stove, throwing meat into the pan, planing the planed meat and running with the kettle outside for snow. The host and guest sat sedately at the table and exchanged news and plans, moreover, the host usually emphasized that foxes are now in a price and that he, the hunter, is not going to give them away for free. Then Gerka, as if by chance, took out a bottle of alcohol and diluted it exactly in half with water, so that from one bottle of alcohol with a strength of ninety-six degrees two bottles of vodka with a strength of forty-eight degrees came out. The first glass went sedately under the planina, until it melted (because everyone knows that there is nothing worse than a melted frozen fish), and then the meat ripened, which, according to the northern rules, is boiled in boiling water for five minutes and served half-baked, although hot, and further everything went under the meat. After the first bottle, the second one was approved on the table, and when it came to an end, Gerka pretended that, they say, that was all, the holiday was over and sat, calmly smoking, talked and waited for the alcohol to be absorbed into the body of the Yakut host and begin its destructive work.

Gerka knew perfectly well, as everyone in the Arctic knew, that all northern peoples, including the Yakuts, do not have any protective organisms against "fire water". And the Evens‚ and the Chukchi‚ and the Khanty‚ and the Nenets‚ all of them, having taken a sip of vodka, cannot stop until they drink everything they have, and if there is a lot of vodka, then a lot will be drunk. And when there is no vodka, everything will be drunk that smells remotely of alcohol, as happened at one trading post in Kolyma, where the Evens drank all the bottles of Czech mosquito repellent, and when we came to this trading post from the taiga, its chief was lying in our feet, begging him to share our supplies with him - the mosquito season was coming in a week. Because of this, along the entire northern coast of Siberia, Chukotka and Kamchatka, dry law was declared for the whole summer, when navigation and fishing season were going on - otherwise the whole North would have stood up. Vodka delivered on ships was immediately locked up in warehouses under seven locks and at that time it was possible to get it only through a very large pull. But when the last caravan left and the dry law was canceled, absolute hell began on the coasts. I remember how we got out of the tundra to the coastal Chukchi village and walked between the houses through the mud, in which drunken Chukchi were lying. A disheveled Chukchi woman with saliva on her chin crawled out of one house, holding on to the lintel, and staggering, looked at us for a long time, as if we were aliens from another world. "...Speedy has arrived..." she muttered. “They brought Ebas ...” - and settled at the doorstep ....

So Gerka sat and waited. Yakut‚ of course‚ couldn't stand it first and said that we need to drink a little more‚ however. To which Gerka objected that he had alcohol, however, but he still had to go to the hunter Efim, and then to Nikolai's Belkovsky Island, so it was necessary to calculate in such a way that everyone would have enough, however. But his drinking buddy, already inflamed, and knowing that Gerka had vodka, argued that "don't give alcohol at another stoubis, let him eat, don't eat him." And Gerka shook his head negatively and beat the bone on the table, shaking out his brain. But the Yakut was already hobbled on crooked legs in the canopy, dug in the bags there and, returning, threw a snow-white lush fox skin on the table. Gerka skillfully passed the skin through his fingers‚ estimating the quality of the fur and climbed into the cabin of the all-terrain vehicle for a bottle. And already, in the corner of the hut, the half-drunk Yakut wife began to cry quietly, knowing in advance what was to come and how the matter would end. And the matter will end, of course, with a long booze, during which the Yakut hunter will be tearfully and snotty drunk, will already give two foxes per bottle, will climb for a rifle to shoot bad people, will hit his wife trying to stop him in the eye, will sell Gerka the skin of a white a bear for a canister of gasoline and a bottle of alcohol, and in the end, he will fall asleep in a corner on the floor, both Gerka will fall asleep, and the hunter's wife, the stove will go out, and it will become cold and dark in the hut, it will smell of alcohol, smoke and vomit ...

One way or another‚ but Gerka's business went up steeply. Tens of thousands of rubles appeared on his account in Tiksi, his debt book at the trading post was replenished with many expensive things - batteries, an electric generator for charging them, hunting carbines with optical sights and a rather powerful radio station. He even managed to bargain with the polar station for a quite decent prefabricated house belonging to it on the northern side of the lagoon, not far from the warriors, and settled there with European comfort. From here he went on long trips throughout the archipelago and brought his prey there. In addition to foxes, in his house one could see a huge mammoth tusk, which Gerka cut down with an ax from permafrost, which took, according to his stories, two whole days. According to his stories, he also found an old cellar in which, even before the revolution, hunters folded tusks before sending them to the "mainland" - then there were so many tusks on the island that they were taken out by barges and sold for good money - and what is stored in this cellar hundreds of tusks‚ but the cellar is flooded with water and now there is ice‚ and only a couple of pieces of tola are needed‚ to blow up the ice and then it will be possible to get rich on tusks alone. And he also claimed that in his house he kept a bottle of Soviet Champagne, filled to the brim with golden sand and nuggets, which he lathered in one of him famous place and he suggested to many to organize a gold-mining artel. He left these plans only after it was explained to him that the sand in his bottle is not gold, but pyrite that no one needs - the so-called "fool's gold". Gerka was very disappointed, but not for long, and went with a partner to the island of New Siberia, from where he returned a couple of months later, full of stories about miracles on the island, where there were many arctic foxes, underground layers of coal were burning, warming the earth so that you could warm your feet and hands in the most terrible cold, how his partner still managed to frostbite his toes, gangrene began and he had to chop a couple of fingers with an ax. Gerka was happy, returning after wanderings and adventures to his house, washing in hot water By listening to the radio and reading books from the airport library by electric light. This went on for a couple of years.

And then the vehicle burned down. At night, when Gerka was drinking with the company commander. Both were so drunk that none of them remembered or heard anything. Only in the morning, opening his eyes, Gerka saw with horror next to the house, on a hillock, a smoking frame.

After darting and cursing for half an hour, he realized that the all-terrain vehicle was set on fire by one of the Russian hunters, who had harbored anger at him for a long time, envied him, beat him a couple of times in a drunken case and, in the end, decided to appease the successful competitor purely in Russian - fire. Gerka realized that the all-terrain vehicle could no longer be restored, and that the reign of the king of the tundra had ended irrevocably. He also realized that there was a blessing in disguise and a couple of days later drew up an act on the fire. The commission, consisting of the head of the airport, the chief mechanic and the commander of the air defense company, testified with their signatures that three carbines, a radio station, batteries, a generator, down sleeping bags, tents, a myriad of products burned down along with the all-terrain vehicle. The act was sent to Tiksi and the cost of these expensive items, which, in fact, did not even think to burn, but lay in Gerka's house, was written off from Gerka's account. The members of the Commission took what they wanted - some carbine, some sleeping bag. And Gerka himself, like a fisherman by the blue sea, returned again to his dogs and became a simple hunter, as before. And again it became quiet at the boiler room. Until we showed up.

We are geophysicists from the Scientific Research Institute of Arctic Geology‚ or‚ simply NIIGA‚ on the Moika, house 120‚ in St. Petersburg‚ then Leningrad. To work on the island, we needed three all-terrain vehicles, but there was no money for a large aircraft to transfer them to Temp, as topographers did, at the Institute. This meant that all-terrain vehicles had to be driven to the island on their own. From the village of Chokurdakh along the tundra, then across the strait to Bolshoi Lyakhovsky Island, past Maly Lyakhovsky, through another strait to the southern end of Kotelny and already along Kotelny to Temp. Just 700 kilometers...

Our caravan left Chokurdakh in the middle of May, when it was not so cold anymore and it was bright day and night. In the morning it was clear and the snow sparkled under the sun, but as soon as we left behind the last shacks of Chokurdakh and its vast dump and rolled out into the open tundra, a thick fog fell on us. It was very inopportune, because it is very important to accurately find your place on the map and take the right course right at the very beginning of the journey, and I saw only stunted bushes of a dwarf polar birch under the very nose of the all-terrain vehicle, and then everything disappeared into the fog. I led the caravan by speedometer and compass. This meant that every fifteen or twenty minutes I stopped the all-terrain vehicle, wrote down the speedometer numbers, jumped out of the cab, moved ten meters away from the all-terrain vehicle, so that its iron mass would not affect the compass needle, and determined the direction where to go. In clear weather, it was only necessary to look where the compass was pointing and notice some sign in the distance, a mound, a bush, a cloud in the sky, and press on this sign without stopping. I couldn't do it in the fog, so between stops I had to keep the course using all the tricks I knew. It helped that in the Arctic the wind blows for weeks with enviable constancy and drives the snow in the same direction, and I tried to direct the all-terrain vehicle at the right angle to the snow. Sometimes it was possible to make out through a foggy veil a ghostly faded solar circle, and then I held it, again, at the right angle, mentally moving the sun at fifteen degrees per hour to the west. Sometimes he simply trusted the ability, honed over many years of his field life, to feel some kind of inconvenience and anxiety when he walked or drove the wrong way. From constant peering into the fog and the lack of a clear horizon line, at times it seemed to me that the all-terrain vehicle was turning over on its back and going upside down. Then I poured myself more coffee in the lid of a thermos and lit another, uncounted, cigarette.

A shadow of something alive flashed by, then another. I decided that these were deer, about fifty meters from us, and with a sign ordered the driver to freeze - no one in the north, if not crazy, would not miss the opportunity to kill a deer, because this is meat, which means life. Grabbing the carbine, I rolled out of the cab into the snow and began to aim from my knee. Something about these deer confused me: they looked somehow abnormal. I peered intently - two partridges, not moving, were sitting on a hummock three meters from me. I spat and climbed back into the cockpit, once again marveling at how you can make a mistake with the dimensions and distances in the fog.

We reached the shore of the Laptev Strait three days after we left Chokurdakh. We stopped at the very edge of the coastal cliff. It was early morning and everything around was covered, not with fog, no, but with that special arctic frosty haze, when the air is densely saturated with tiny ice crystals. We had nowhere to hurry, and I decided to wait, hoping that the rising sun would disperse the frosty haze and improve visibility. We gladly kindled a good fire from driftwood and, sitting around it, according to the holy tradition of every wandering and field people, drank tea, smoked and talked. Two hours passed. Suddenly, the darkness parted, turned into a low-hanging cloud cover, and gaps suddenly appeared in it, through which a pale blue sky was pierced. The rising sun burst through one of these windows to the right of us and, by some optical magic, flooded everything - the snow of the tundra, the ice of the strait, and the lower edges of the clouds - with densely saturated pink light. Everyone fell silent. This ghostly pink world existed for about ten minutes, then slowly disappeared along with the clouds melting in the sky.

The pink light went out, but the icy plain of the strait opened before us, all the way to the horizon, pierced by toothy hummocks.

And there, far to the north, where the ice merged with the sky, we saw our goal - the rounded snowy peak of the high mountain on Bolshoi Lyakhovsky Island, growing ghostly out of the trembling mirage air. Probably, somewhere here, or in another very similar place, two hundred years ago, the free Cossack Lyakhov stood with his gang of dashing people and stared at the same strait and at the same peak, knowing that it was not a mirage, that there unknown new land. Everything was the same as now - the same steep ledge of the tundra plain, the same snow-covered beach with fin logs, the same strait, the same hummocks. Only, instead of the restrained rumbling of all-terrain vehicles, draft dogs squealed nervously next to them. And these people were dressed differently. Better than us. Not in quilted jackets‚ felt boots with galoshes or eternally non-drying heavy fur boots‚ but light and warm furs. And, probably, just like that Cossack then, I waved my hand, and the cars carefully descended onto the ice.

We had to cross a strait about sixty kilometers wide. We were spinning on the ice in search of a passage between the hummocks, but now, in clear weather, it was much easier for me, because I always saw this snowy peak in front of me and I didn’t have to jump out of the all-terrain vehicle with a compass, but simply, having crossed the next ridge ‚ turn the machine with the nose in the desired direction. Now the difficulties were different - to find flat ice, or at least such a place in the ridges of broken blue ice, through which our all-terrain vehicles could get through. But no matter how hard I tried, either one or the other car's steel caterpillars came off the guide rollers and they, as they say, "take off their shoes." Sometimes the steel links of the caterpillars could not withstand the load and burst when the all-terrain vehicle hung on the sharp edge of the ice floe, as if on a knife edge. Sometimes cars got stuck in deep snowdrifts between hummocks. But, having escaped onto the flat ice, the drivers, with a sigh of relief, stuck into fourth gear and flew forward at a speed of as much as thirty kilometers per hour until they ran into another ridge. Be that as it may, but after eight hours we rolled out onto the southern coast of Bolshoi Lyakhovsky Island, right at the houses of the polar station, at the foot of that same snowy mountain.

We spent the whole day at the polar station, sleeping on soft beds with bed linen‚ dining in the wardroom, playing backgammon (after chess, the most popular game in the North) and looking through old newspapers and magazines. The drivers fiddled a little with the cars, but found no serious troubles, so that "in the morning" we were on the road again. We rounded the mountain from the east and, crossing the island obliquely to the northwest, literally raced across the tundra, choosing the most marshy places, in which, fortunately, there was no shortage on the island, and which, almost impassable in summer, were for us now, as concrete highway. Any self-respecting navigator should know at any moment where he is, so I, despite excellent visibility, kept my finger on the map and only managed to write down the speedometer readings at the most noticeable landmarks in a notebook.

A few hours later we stood on the northern coast of the island and again looked at another strait, now named after the musher Sannikov, which separated Bolshoy Lyakhovsky Island from Kotelny Island. This strait looked exactly the same as the one we crossed yesterday - the same bluish-green hummocks, the same snow and the pale blue sky above it. Probably all the frozen straits in the Arctic look the same. Another fire, another teapot with strong tea leaves, bread with stewed meat, another look at the compass - from this low-lying coast, the hills of Kotelny were not visible on the horizon, and I wanted to get exactly to the southernmost tip of the island, where there was another polar station - and we moved north again, just as cautiously, but still a little faster than the day before - nevertheless, we learned something, gained some experience and better understood where you can go and where you can’t. The clear weather also helped because I could use the sun as a compass. Although the sun no longer sets at this time of the year, it still sinks low at night, it becomes noticeably colder and fog almost always thickens. It happened to us too‚ but not far from the island. The drivers got nervous because of the driver's innate hatred of driving in the fog‚ but I was calm - my internal compass told me that we were on the right track, and when the speedometer showed that there were five kilometers to the coast, I stopped the cars and told everyone about it . The people are happy.

We reached the coast of the island with an error of five hundred meters. But the fog was so thick that I could not decide exactly where exactly we got ashore and in which direction the Sannikov polar station was located, where I was going to give everyone, including myself, a rest for a couple of days. In order not to burn gasoline in vain, shying away in the fog on an unfamiliar island, I ordered to turn off the engines and, under the gaze of the men, who already guessed what was what, climbed into the back, where, in terrible crowding, among barrels of gasoline, I managed to open the padlock on my commander's pack-box and took out four bottles of vodka. Bread and stew immediately appeared and vodka gurgled into mugs. The hardest part - crossing the icy straits - was over.

After that everything was simple. After sleeping on the beds of the polar station and eating normally cooked soups and venison stew, I paid off the stationmaster for his hospitality with the most expensive gift on the island: I allowed him to photograph my five-kilometer topographic map, sticking a stupid stamp "Secret" in the upper right corner. To us, geophysicists and geologists, these maps were issued by the secret department of the institute against the strictest receipts and prohibitions not to show them to anyone, but ordinary mortals, who constantly lived and worked on the islands, in the tundra, never had such maps and how did they manage without them ‚ I still can't imagine. Then we moved along the coast to the north.

I stopped my all-terrain vehicle on a rocky cliff, near a high black cross on the grave of the expedition doctor Toll, who died at the Kotelny.

I stood next to the cross and looked west, into the hazy icy eternity of the frozen sea. As then‚ at the beginning of the haul to south coast Laptev Strait‚ I thought about those people who were here‚ in this place‚ but already only seventy years ago‚ laid stones over the body of a doctor‚ and then, having approved a cross on the grave, stood, took off their hats for a short time or threw back their hoods and looked there too ‚ in the same darkness. I didn't know who they were, how they looked, how they were dressed. I only knew for sure that just as now‚ then it blew not strong‚ but forcefully cold. wind. I could be quite sure of this because the wind always blows in the Arctic. And if, as in that game in the association, when they name something and you need to quickly name the word associated with it in memory, ask me - "Arctic", I will answer - "Wind". Not snow, not ice, not cold - wind. The wind in the Arctic always blows in the same direction for days and weeks, in summer and winter, sometimes moderately, sometimes strong, sometimes hurricane-like, but always. As soon as we set up camp, the wind began its whistling, mournful song in the tent poles, in the antenna masts and in the chimneys, clapped tarpaulins and spread black-brown smoke from the diesel fuel burning in the stoves along the tundra. The sounds born of the wind and associated with it became such a familiar accompaniment of the polar life that they ceased to be noticed, but when the wind suddenly subsided and the sounds died, it became a little uncomfortable from the ensuing silence. But this usually did not last long - maybe an hour or two, then the wind blew with the same force, but from the other side, and the sounds arose again. Such changes in the winds, as a rule, did not lead to anything good and ended either in snow, or in lingering fogs and rains.

And now, on this ordinary polar May day in 1973, the wind whistled in the crossbars of an Orthodox funeral cross and along the way brought to me the muffled rumbling and heat of an all-terrain vehicle engine running at idle. It brought me back to the present. We had to move on. The pace was already close. Relatively close, compared to what we have already passed.

Many times I caught myself on the fact that it is worth putting a point on the map and, thereby, designating a place where you need to get by any available method, whether on foot, on horseback, on deer, on an all-terrain vehicle, how this point acquired a mysterious force of attraction and I I tried to get to this point, knowing full well that it was just a point on the map and there was nothing special there - no hut, no tents, no food. But still, you are already involved in the process of achieving the goal, you look at the map and note the decreasing distance with pleasure. So now. I knew perfectly well that nothing of the kind awaited me in Tempe, except for the hard work of settling in a camp that had been abandoned since autumn, but still, when the hills suddenly parted and I saw in front of me the white plane of the frozen lagoon, traced by a dark strip of pebble spit, the barracks buried in the snow , radio towers and a stationary airport windmill, I breathed a sigh of relief. In front of me was the very point on the map to which I aspired. The run was over and all was well.

Before we had time to dig out the entrances of the tents from two-meter snowdrifts and kindle the stoves, guests rolled into our camp, and not just anyone, but the head of the airport himself and the captain, the commander of the air defense company, already informed about our transfer by radio operators from Chokurdakh. I was flattered and surprised by such attention to simple geophysicists and at first attributed it to the deadly boredom of the polar night and winter, when I am happy with anyone and anything. But after a short acquaintance and exchange of news, two bottles of vodka appeared on the table, and I realized that it was not the joy of the appearance of new people on the island and the contemplation of my person, but something more serious. And so it turned out.

Spring was coming and the inhabitants of the Arctic were entering the most difficult time, when the nerves were stretched to the limit from the monotony of the polar night, constant contemplation of the same faces, listening to the same stories, watching the same films and eating the same food. And then, at this very time, following the eternal call, hundreds of herds of deer approached Temp and everyone so wanted bloody chops three fingers thick, quickly fried tenderloin, fresh liver with onions in a stinging pan, and fatty fragrant soup with pieces of tender boiled venison and brain bones. Yes, and just break out into the tundra and ride on fresh, untouched, clean snow, not polluted by fuel oil and dogs! But, as follows from everything already said in this story, this required means of transportation, and with them, as already mentioned .... In short, my guests were delighted not with my personal appearance on the island, but with the fact that I I managed to bring all-terrain vehicles here, and they needed not so much me as my two best cars with drivers. That's why there was vodka on the table.

It was impossible to refuse, and it would be simply unwise - in the Arctic it is impossible to neglect connections with people who have access to aviation, fuel and spare parts, and I could not know in what position I would find myself and what I would need at least in a week. So, having slept off the day after the haul and superficially checking the condition of the cars and the levels of various liquids in them, we picked up two men at the airport appointed by the chief to hunt and, under their guidance, slipped past a tractor frozen in ice, crossed the lagoon and climbed to the opposite shore . There we drove past an abandoned house, next to which stood the skeleton of a burned-out all-terrain vehicle - the remains of Gerka's glory - rolled out onto a well-worn road and after two kilometers stopped at the Checkpoint of the Air Defense Company of Kotelny Island. I have never seen anything more stupid than this checkpoint in my life. In the middle of the hilly tundra on the white snow stood a striped booth with a long sloping black-and-white striped stick, obliquely sticking out over a bumpy road, and nothing else - no fence, no barbed wire, to somehow mark the border of the company's territory, which should be guarded. Just a booth in the middle of the tundra. But in the booth, as befits any self-respecting checkpoint, there was a young sentry soldier in a sheepskin coat. He asked us who we were and after consulting a piece of paper on the wall of the booth, he waved his hand at us. We obediently moved towards the barracks that could be seen in the distance.

At the longest hut, in which all the officers lived, the commander of the unit, already familiar to me from a recent visit, and two more, one with a mustache, the other with a gold tooth, all dressed in spotted pea jackets, were waiting for us. Each had an SKS sticking out under his arm - Simonov's self-loading carbine, the object of my dreams. We, field workers, were given out old, wartime, carbines with shot down sights and barrels so worn out that sometimes a bullet could simply be thrust into the muzzle. And here, in the hands of the officers, brand-new, fresh from the pyramid and licked by conscripts, reliable and comfortable machines for shooting and killing, sparkled with blued steel. Probably, my envy was written on my face, because the commander nodded to the officer, the officer nodded to someone else, he ran away somewhere, and they handed me the SCS.

They commanded the hunt‚ as the most knowledgeable‚ men from the airport. They huddled together in the cabin, and I, gladly yielding responsibility, huddled in the back with the rest of the hunters. We smoked, grabbed each other on turns, flew up to the ceiling on potholes and tried not to talk for fear of biting our tongues.

Suddenly, the engine roared even louder and the driver took a sharp turn to the right, from which we all collapsed to the port side, then rushed steeply upwards, sending us to the back wall, and then, with a screeching change in gear, leaned forward and rushed down the slope, throwing us on front wall that separated the body from the engine. At the end of these bone-breaking maneuvers, the all-terrain vehicle suddenly braked sharply and the agreed horn sounded in the back. Throwing back the canvas canopy, we, as quickly as we could, fell out of the body into the snow.

The all-terrain vehicle stood in a gentle ravine between two hills‚ in the floodplain of a small brook marked by pitiful shoots of a low-growing polar birch. Among these bushes, about fifty meters from us, a small herd of deer stood motionless, ten or fifteen heads, staring at us in complete confusion. With a clang, the hatch in the roof of the cab opened, from where the first shot thundered, strangely muffled, as if in an undertone - as I understood later, that's how all these carbines sounded - and the firing began. The deer rushed first to the left, then to the right. Something in their behavior seemed unusual to me - they did everything too slowly. Something was wrong in them too, they looked somehow not quite like that ... And then it dawned on me that they were all women, pregnant women, on demolitions, who found this decay with bushes, to give birth here - it was already time, spring was coming ...

I shot along with everyone, like crazy, without releasing the trigger and moving the barrel from left to right, noting to myself the next hit, when the bullet hit the woman in the side and the reindeer hair flew up in a gray cloud into the air, until suddenly someone appeared in the slot of my sight then a hat with earflaps. Somehow, my finger froze on the trigger. Another second, and I would have blown to shreds that head on which this hat was worn. As it turned out later, out of the entire clip, I had just one cartridge left. Vazhenki rushed from one side of the ravine to the other and fell one after another. There was no salvation for them. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that one of the survivors rushed up the slope, trying to jump out of this trap. I moved the barrel and with a shot broke her front left leg. Vazhenka collapsed on her face into the snow, but immediately jumped up and, on three legs, rushed further, and her broken leg dangled on the run like a rag. The gold-toothed officer laid her down on the slope from his knee. The shooting stopped. Not a single important woman, and there were only twelve of them, left.

We walked among the dead bodies and finished off the still living - officers and airport workers - from carbines, and the driver and I, out of habit to save cartridges - in the old faithful hunting way - with a knife edge at the base of the skull, where it connected to the neck. Only a slight tremor, then convulsions in the outstretched legs, and the animal's eyes stopped and were quickly covered with a cloudy film. The excitement of hunting, as always in such an environment, quickly subsided and we drank tea from thermoses, smoked, and discussed what to do next. I insisted that it was necessary to peel and butcher the carcasses right now while they were warm and the skin was removed easily, because I knew from experience how hard it would be to do later when the frost soldered it all into a hardened ice cream block. Two carcasses per person - it wouldn't have taken us more than two hours. But the captain just shrugged.

What is there ... soldiers in kitchen attire will butcher. And we'll just get the fawns. It's necessary‚ so lucky are all the ladies with wads. -

Genuine joy was written on the captain's face. Then, suddenly, as if a cloud floated on his happy face, and he asked if we ourselves needed wads, on which I and the all-terrain vehicle, as participants in the hunt and owners of the all-terrain vehicle, had full rights. I looked questioningly at the driver. He shook his head negatively.

No, I said, we don't need wads, but let's take meat. Two carcasses. And one more thing - if you already flog the belly, then you must now take the tenderloin and the liver at the same time. Otherwise, while your soldiers will cut everything, my guys will salivate. -

The captain and the other two officers were clearly pleased that we had abandoned the fawns - they obviously wanted to get them all.

We got down to business. The bellies were quickly incised at the very hind legs, two fingers were inserted into the incision with the back side up, a knife was placed on them with the point up, so as not to pierce the intestines and not stain the meat with droppings, and with a quick movement along the midline, the entire abdomen was ripped up to the solar plexus, then‚ with effort, the soft brisket was cut up to the throat, it was exposed, the esophagus was cut and tied in a knot, the carcass turned on its side and smoking insides fell out onto the snow. Then, with a quick movement, the uterus ripped open and the already dead, but still warm, fawn flew into the snow - a deer completely ready for independent life, with neatly folded legs, ready to stand, awkwardly walk and even run three hours after birth, covered with thick silky light brown wavy fur, which, if he were born, would protect him from frost and wind, and which was now intended for hats, - in a word, already quite ready to be born, and would be born, if we were late with the hunt for a day or if we missed this gully ‚ but instead, murdered along with his mother...

Then, along both sides of the ridge, a most tender and delicious tenderloin was separated from the inside of the carcass, and a maroon liver was removed from a pile of warm intestines, from which I immediately cut off a piece and sent it to my mouth. Having learned this from the Evens and Chukchis, I did not miss the opportunity to eat raw liver on every hunt, making up for the lack of vitamins in a typical field diet, which consisted of cereals, canned food and dried fruits. I also liked splitting the leg bone and sucking out the raw bone marrow, but now there was no time for that.

Half an hour later, all the work was completed and all the snow in the gorge was stained with blood and littered with already frozen giblets. Reindeer carcasses, now thin and flat, without round swollen bellies, with glazed eyes and protruding tongues, were thrown into the all-terrain vehicle, we sat outside on the engine grills, clung to what we could and rushed back. Shaking on the frozen tundra, I felt for some short time weak pangs of conscience caused by our barbarism and this massacre of defenseless women. But all this quickly passed, buried by considerations about the benefits of established contacts with the military and the inevitability of such a disgrace, which I didn’t care, even if I wanted to, I couldn’t stop, and which would have happened sooner or later without my participation. Reassuring myself in this way, I concentrated on how to light a cigarette during such a shaky ride and at the same time not fall under the tracks, because both hands were needed to protect the match from the wind.

I, naively, expected that we would quickly unload the carcasses, take our share and return to the camp. But I was very wrong and I got to the camp only a day later. Everything was ready in the officer's barracks, the table had already been laid, the stove was blazing with fire, they were just waiting for us. The tenderloins and livers flew into the basins, the officers' wives picked them up, the frying pans with onions sizzled, bottles grew with a clatter on the table and the first one for a successful hunt, then the second for geophysicists, then the third for the valiant Soviet Army, then the fourth for beautiful ladies, then fifth for all-terrain vehicles, then .... I remember that I got drunk catastrophically quickly. It was so unlike me‚ I have always been very strong on hops. But here, whether the multi-day journey with its constant tension, or hunting, or all together, had an effect - I just relaxed and, as they say, swam. I remember that the alcohol ran out and a precocious brew was used, which was prepared in a washing machine, where a few hours before use water, sugar and yeast were loaded in the right proportion, a button was pressed, the machine began to spin and produced a seemingly weak product, but which connecting with the previously drunk, led to a quick and completely ugly intoxication, which, by the way, was required from this product. The drink strongly reeked of unfermented yeast, but it was intended that the process of fermentation and processing of sugar into alcohol would take place slowly in the stomach of the consumer. The swill was terrible, but that didn't stop anyone and we lashed him mug after mug. After that, everything went crazy in a drunken mess - we yelled songs, proved something to each other, someone squeezed someone's giggling wife, someone climbed up to kiss me, my driver suddenly fell silent during a showdown and crawled under the table ‚ the captain, holding on to a chair and barely standing on his feet, announced that the enemy was advancing on the location of the air defense company, and we were on the defensive, why should everyone go to shoot from quadruple anti-aircraft machine guns, and someone really went with him and I heard short machine guns queues and wild laughter in the intervals between them, then something came into my head myself, and I suddenly got ready to go somewhere on an all-terrain vehicle and they hung on me to hold me, but I was torn, and carried everyone out into the corridor ...

... I woke up in some kind of closet, covered with a sheepskin coat, with a dull headache and a strong thirst in my mouth, so strong that my jaw cramped, like a cramp. I went along the dark, icy corridor, bumping into piles of some rubbish and, in search of water, pushed the doors at random, but they were all locked - probably family officers lived there, whom their wives managed to drag from the table and lock them in their rooms. The only unlocked door was the door to the smoky room, where three or four people were sleeping on the floor, and my all-terrain vehicle, two from the airport, and someone else were sitting at the table, choking down yesterday's early brew. Seeing me, everyone was terribly happy and handed me a mug of mash, but from one of its fusel spirits my intestines turned inside out, and I grabbed a liter jar of snow water that was on the table. The quenching of thirst had, in addition to the direct one, also a side effect - the water diluted the blood that had thickened and saturated with alcohol, it ran faster, got to the head - and without drinking a drop, I got drunk again. My appetite woke up and I clung to the cold remnants of yesterday's meat feast. Then the front door rattled and the company commander rushed in to us in an embrace with the head of the airport, who had just arrived across the lagoon, who also wanted fried liver and tenderloin, and who brought alcohol, and everything started all over again ...

The booze dragged on, as it should be in the Arctic, then calming down, then flaring up with renewed vigor. I realized that if I stay, I will be buzzing with everyone already to a dead state, which I have not achieved for a long time, since my student years. But my defense mechanisms, which never let me down and separated me from my inevitably drunken friends, worked even now, and after waiting for the people to become a little sour and quiet again, I pushed the driver and we moved back to our camp on the spit . It was necessary to start what I came here for - a geophysical survey of Kotelny Island.

Our job seemed surprisingly simple. We had to carry gravimeters around the island - such very sensitive and expensive devices for measuring gravity, similar to narrow tall milk cans with three legs. I had to, giving instructions to the driver, drive the all-terrain vehicle strictly in a straight line or, as it was scientifically called, “along the profile”. Every two kilometers I stopped the car and pressed the signal button in the back. Having heard the signal, two of my assistant operators with gravimeters fell out from there, put them on stands, twisted various screws and looked through the microscope, measuring deviations in gravity. This took about five to ten minutes. Then the guys climbed back into the body and gave a signal to me in the cab that everything was ready and you could go further, to the next stop in two kilometers .. Having thus reached the end of the intended profile, it was necessary to turn at a right angle, drive five kilometers, and start go in the opposite direction along another profile, which ran parallel to the previous one, again strictly in a straight line, and again stopping every two kilometers. That seems to be all the simple work. According to the plan, it was necessary to make 700 measurements, and if you do twenty to twenty-five measurements a day, then there will be only a month of work without drinking and days off - and home, to the mainland, to wives, women and friends. In fact, everything was not so simple.

Everyone knows that everywhere, and especially in the Arctic, in order to successfully fly from one place to another by plane, it is necessary that at the same time, and in the same place, three necessary and sufficient conditions converge in the presence of the aircraft in operation. condition, the pilot is sober and the weather is in minimally acceptable condition. Most often, it turns out as one Yakut hunter told about his return from the mainland to the island: “Sizu in Tiksi. A day of shizu, two sizu, a week of sizu - the plane is eating, the cap is eating, the weather is not. Esse week sizu - the weather is eating, the cap is eating, the plane is not. Then shizu - the weather is eating, the plane is eating, there is no cap - she went to drink alcohol, there was such bilyad, he was very drunk, onnako ... ". And we, too, as this hunter, needed the coincidence of three conditions for successful work.

Firstly, the weather was also important. Not because we were going to fly our ATVs, but because I had to, during the ride, at any moment know exactly where I was, so that when I gave the command to stop, I could put it on the map with accurate to fifty meters, otherwise all our measurements would be worthless. To do this, it was necessary to drive the all-terrain vehicle strictly along a predetermined course, which, in turn, required unerring orientation on the ground, so even in good weather I did not take my eyes off the map or aerial photograph, all the time I wrote down the speedometer readings and every now and then jumped out of the cab to check compass direction. Thick fogs, slanting rains and snowballs made all this impossible and we often had to sit in the camp, waiting out the bad weather.

Secondly, it was necessary that our extremely capricious devices work properly, which, like people with an unstable psyche, losing their temper over the slightest trifles, reacted strongly to any external changes. For example, because of their sensitivity, they did not like the wind, and the wind, as I said, always blows in the Arctic. In addition, they did not like shaking. And if we could somehow protect them from fluctuations in temperature or from the wind, then we could not save them from shaking. As a result, the instruments now and then began to show some kind of nonsense, and it was necessary to stop all work and put them in order. On top of that, during each working day, it was necessary to measure the pressure, temperature and humidity of the air every fifteen minutes, otherwise all our work would have gone down the drain.

And, although thirdly, but most importantly, it was necessary for our all-terrain vehicles to work, because, as you already understood, all our work came down to bringing devices to all right places, for which it was necessary to wave around the entire island of Kotelny, in total, somewhere around two and a half thousand kilometers. This is where all our problems began, because our cars broke down every now and then. As we later calculated, for each working day, on average, there were three days of repairs, checks, waiting for spare parts and other good reasons, so we quickly realized, already in the first weeks of work, that our field season would be much longer than that theoretically calculated month .

All-terrain vehicles written off by age from the army, before falling into our hands, had already worked out all conceivable and unimaginable terms and had long been subject to complete destruction. But there was no replacement for them, and therefore, at the beginning of each season, they were patched up, leaky hulls were welded, engines were sorted out and wires crumbling from old age were replaced. But the cars still broke down, and the further, the more often. And at the same time, breakdowns, according to a well-known fundamental law, happened unexpectedly and, of course, in the most inappropriate places.

We were afraid of these breakdowns like fire. And when, amid the hysterical howl of a low-powered and constantly overloaded engine, some alien mechanical knocks and crunches were suddenly heard, or when the engine began to sneeze, go astray and then completely fell silent, and when the driver stuck the neutral gear, turned off the ignition and, spitting with annoyance, said something like: “That's it, fuck it, we've arrived! “, - we all immediately understood that we had to walk back to the camp. For one simple reason - none of our all-terrain vehicles had a radio. Therefore, we could not in any way let our other detachment or those who remained in the camp know where we were and what had happened to us. And instead of sitting in an all-terrain vehicle, where we could at least shelter from the wind, fry reindeer meat in a pan, brew strong tea, smoke and tell various field stories while waiting for the arrival of another all-terrain vehicle, we rewound footcloths, lightened clothes, they hung instruments on their backs (they had to be dragged back to the camp, otherwise all the work done before the breakdown would have been in vain) and dejectedly trudged back along the tracks of their own caterpillars.

It was noticed that both of our all-terrain vehicles rarely broke down closer than ten kilometers from the camp. It took at least three hours to walk even these ten kilometers in the tundra, on a hummock or viscous loam, with a constant cold wind, without stopping (there is still nothing to sit on, and it’s dangerous - you can doze off and not wake up), it took at least three hours. The camp cook and the pressure and temperature monitor usually knew approximately when to expect us back. And when a few hours passed after the designated hour, they already knew that another nasty thing had happened and that they had to wait until the outlines of exhausted geophysicists weaving one after another appeared on the horizon, who, unlike geologists, were unaccustomed to walking work and, seeing them, inflated stove and brew fresh tea.

Once I was extremely lucky. We climbed to the top of the hill, where topographers had built a steel tripod a year before us, under which I had to take measurements with our instruments. Getting closer, I saw at the foot of the tower, against the background of the darkening pre-snowy sky, a bright spot of the tent and a black thread of smoke creeping from the chimney along the frosty tundra. When only about a kilometer was left to the tent, my all-terrain vehicle suddenly “lost the spark” (emphasis on “u”, if in a driver's way) and stood up, as if rooted to the spot. But after fifteen minutes we were sitting warm and drinking tea with the guys from Moscow, who were thrown here a couple of weeks ago to determine the coordinates of these pyramids. They, of course, had a radio and we quickly contacted Temp and informed our base about another breakdown. The caretaker, cursing, promised to fall at the Muscovites' feet and beg them to send a helicopter with a spare "distributor", which, as the driver found out, simply crumbled to pieces from old age. Soon there were those who wanted to paint the “pulka”, just like that, for interest. I declined the offer, found Solovyov's volume about the era of Biron and began to read, lounging on a cot, but very soon, exhausted by the warmth and lulled by the monotonous mumbling of the preferentialists: “... pass ... in tambourines .... whist… pass… open… sticking out like a crowbar in shit…” – slowly sailed away into oblivion, far away, and for a long time… By the way, there were twenty kilometers from this tent to our camp, and if there weren’t Muscovites there, we would have to stomp these kilometers along tundra. So that's how lucky.

I didn't have that kind of luck. Two weeks later, at the very end of August, when it was already clear that autumn was ending and winter would soon come, I moved the camp to the east, to where Kotelny Island ended and Bunge Land began. The all-terrain vehicle, as always on crossings, was so full of our field junk, food and fuel that our unfortunate cook, nicknamed Asthmatic - he smoked nonstop, wheezed and could hardly walk - could hardly fit in the back in a very twisted state. I decided to go along the passing river, the water in which dropped sharply with the onset of cold weather and it was possible to run forward quite briskly in fourth gear, even along pebbly spits and small rifts. It was longer than straight along the tundra, but it was faster and easier for the car and me, because it was easier to navigate along the river. I relaxed, settled myself comfortably in a cramped booth, smoked for myself and calmly looked around.

The adventure began shortly after we passed the conspicuous limestone cliffs, painted pinkish-gray by the low sun, at the foot of which geologists used to stand in the summer, and now littered with tin cans and other rubbish of abandoned camps. I put a dot on the map and, out of habit, wrote down the speedometer readings. Looking at the driver Vasya, I noticed that he was somehow unusually pale. After a while the driver turned green and sweated all over. Ten minutes passed and he turned blue, stopped the all-terrain vehicle, rolled out of the cab and crouched down, opening his mouth and bulging his eyes at me. I looked at him anxiously, turning over in my mind my miserable knowledge of medicine and remembering what medicines I have in my first-aid kit.

Then, when the poor fellow let go a little, the following became clear. The day before the move, when I arranged a day of rest and preparation, Vasya also decided not to waste time and brewed early-ripening mash in a can, using his own “stash” of sugar and yeast. He did not sleep almost all night, kept the fire in the stove to keep the mash warm, turned the can from side to side and, to speed up the process, vigorously shook it. But all the same, the mash did not ripen and by the time of departure it was a cloudy sweet liquid with a strong smell of yeast. But my all-terrain vehicle Vasya was not like that to let such a product with a potential alcohol content disappear. Not knowing where else the opportunity would come, he drank the whole can. And then we had to go. And the inevitable happened - from shaking and heat, the process of fermentation and fermentation of alcohol from sugar and yeast began, and very actively, in his belly. It is known that in this case a lot of carbon dioxide is released (under normal conditions, mash lovers divert these gases through a tube into the water, where they boil and gurgle, from where it came from - chatter). But he didn’t have a tube and the gases opened up his stomach and intestines and severe pain began. So the diagnosis was established - chatter gases. Of the medicines closest to such a diagnosis, I had only a laxative - purgen .. And since I could not wait much time, I fed poor Vasya a whole handful of this purgen and we sat down to drink tea, which should also alleviate his suffering.

About twenty minutes later, Vasya, as they say in the driver's jargon, "punched the gasket." He threw down the mug and, on half-bent legs, trotted with small steps into the tundra, where he sat like an eagle with his pants down on a bump and sat there for half an hour. Then he said that he was feeling better, but that he was so weak that he could not drive an all-terrain vehicle. The asthmatic rinsed the mugs and, groaning and bubbling with his lungs, climbed into his cramped nest in the back, Vasya took my place, I sat in the driver's seat, started the engine, put in gear and we drove further east.

Two more hours passed after Vasya's attack, and we all cheerfully clicked trucks along the river valley, and I recorded the speedometer with satisfaction at every noticeable landmark, noting our stubborn progress. The motor hummed reliably and evenly. Vasya dozed off in relief. Suddenly the car swerved to the left. I pulled the right lever and stepped on the gas to turn the car to the right. Instead, the rover just stood up. Vasya woke up and looked at me attentively. I checked the gear - the lever was in third gear. I put in first gear and started the car forward. She was pulled to the left again. I opened the door, and looking at the left track, I pulled the right lever again. As soon as I did this, the left track froze and did not move. The motor worked, but the caterpillar did not move. “Everyone, fucker, have arrived! “I said and climbed out of the cab.

The so-called left final drive flew off - such a box with gears that transmit rotation from the motor to a large gear, which pulls a steel caterpillar with these teeth. This box, though intact, was hot to the touch and reeked of singed metal. In it, as it turned out later, there was not a drop of oil. Vasya, busy with early maturing mash, forgot to check and top up. So simple. The all-terrain vehicle could now only move in a circle, counterclockwise.

I sat in the cockpit and walked with a compass on the map, measuring distances. There is no radio in my car, I can't call for help. Need to go. Parts are only available at Tempe. There, to the west, one hundred and twenty kilometers. To the destination point, to the east, where we were going and where our seismic surveyors were stationed - fifty kilometers. There are no spare parts, but there is a radio and you can contact Temp. Decision is made. You have to go alone, in violation of all safety rules, but Asthmatic would not have walked even a kilometer, and Vasya will be needed here - to install a new onboard one when they bring him. You have to go light - a sleeping bag made of dog fur weighed five kilograms, the smallest tent in our equipment - twelve kilograms, and still there would be nothing to stretch it on, not to drag wooden frames and stakes with you. Map, compass, matches, knife, carbine, two spare clips, a couple of cans of stew, a can of condensed milk, a loaf of bread, a piece of butter, a pack of tea, two packs of cigarettes. No one has a thermos, mine - it also crashed on the haul. We set up a tent on a spit, lit the stove and ate bread and canned food. I rested on a cot for half an hour, then drank the strongest tea, put on a backpack, threw a carbine on my back, and walked along the river with an unhurried geological step to the east, into the thickening twilight. I had to walk at this pace for at least fifteen hours, so there was no hurry.

For the first twenty kilometers, I walked along the valley of the same river, gradually getting closer to its sources. The hard floodplain was easy to walk and I covered about four kilometers in an hour. The day was ending and the twilight was getting darker. I knew that it would not be completely dark at the end of August, but with almost complete sunset, we must definitely wait for the weather to worsen. And so it turned out. When the sun fell behind the hills, a translucent fog floated in half an hour, and then, with a headwind, a drizzle began. My canvas-top padded jacket and pants began to get wet and noticeably gained weight. But, fortunately, it soon got colder and my clothes were covered with an ice crust and I became much warmer.

So, crunching my icy clothes, I measuredly walked kilometers up the river, which, approaching its sources, gradually turned into a narrow stream. Then he disappeared and I began to climb the watershed. It became more difficult to walk - underfoot there was no longer hard pebbles, but loamy tundra, not yet hardened from frost, and boots sank in it and overgrown with a lump of yellowish mud. Seven hours of non-stop walking passed, and I felt it was time to rest, eat and smoke before I was completely tired. In the bare tundra, where it is impossible to make a fire and warm yourself by the fire, one should try, as far as possible, not to bring oneself to exhaustion - an exhausted person no longer has internal energy to resist the external cold. There comes drowsiness, then sleep, then death. Ten years ago, in Chukotka, after two days of searching, we found the body of a lost geologist three kilometers from the camp. He was sitting on his backpack by a rock on the slope of a hill, with an extinct cigarette in his hands. From this place, he could clearly see the tents and, most likely, after two days of wandering in the fog, he was delighted and sat down to rest. It happened in mid-August and the temperature was just above zero. It just rained all day...

Half-sitting on a carbine and half-standing on my feet (so as not to be too comfortable and not to relax), I took shelter from the wind behind an earthen mound bulging from permafrost, and ate cold stew and bread, thickly poured with condensed milk, and then lit a long-awaited cigarette with pleasure . I was pleased with my progress. Everything went according to plan. The only thing that made my further way- I did not have a map for this piece and I only knew approximately where the seismic camp was located. But this did not frighten me - the compass and the sun would lead me to the valley of another river flowing to the east, and this river would lead me to the camp. It began to brighten. An assertive breeze swayed the icy pale yellow polar poppies on an earthen mound and whistled in the muzzle of a carbine. A polar fox, starting to turn white, jumped out from behind a neighboring hillock. Arching his back, he somehow ran sideways to me at a safe distance, in his opinion, and stared sideways at me, obviously assessing his chances for a hearty meat lunch. I clicked my cigarette butt into it and the arctic fox, jumping up, ran over the hillock. It was time for me to move on.

Three hours later, when the sun rose above the horizon and turned the fog into low-hanging clouds, I crossed a gentle watershed and walked along the swampy floodplain of the Precious River, which separated Kotelny Island from Bunge Land. The river was named so by local hunters, who found on its banks spiral shells of Jurassic ammonites, about a hundred million years old, but so well preserved that craftsmen made beautiful mother-of-pearl jewelry from them. It became much warmer, the ice crust on my padded jacket melted and steam poured from it. I didn't feel very tired, but after a sleepless night, in the warmth of the day and to the measured rhythm of walking, I was drawn to sleep. I drove him with cigarettes and willpower, knowing that I still had at least four hours of walking ahead of me.

Soon, after a couple of hours, more and more often I began to come across fresh traces of an all-terrain vehicle, which I was delighted with, as a person rejoices, who stepped onto the railroad tracks after a long wander in the forest. For me, these footprints were, as it were, a sure sign of close housing and that I was on the right track. Then I stumbled upon a wooden box of dynamite, which our seismicists were blowing up to get a reflected echo from the deep layers of the Earth. It was a real gift. I settled down in a cozy recess on the bank slope, smashed the box with the butt of a carbine, took out a matchbox from a condom, kindled a neat fire and boiled a mug of water in which I brewed the long-awaited tea, which in strength approached the legendary camp "chifir" - (a pack of tea per mug of cold water, and slowly boil, covered with a hat or mitten, until it boils). At this point, I allowed myself to relax, threw some more planks into the fire, and dozed off under the crackle of the fire, putting my backpack under my head.

A cold breeze woke me up half an hour later. The fire burned out. Fog stretched from somewhere into the valley, through which a yellow, cool solar circle shone through. I put the rest of the boards and half-eaten canned food in a backpack, rolled a condom over a matchbox, hid it in my bag and moved on along the river. Five minutes later, the fog cleared and a kilometer away from me I saw something thin, dark and straight, like a twig, sticking out over a distant hillock. I took a closer look. It was a radio antenna. There was a camp there. I lit a fire, brewed tea and dozed a kilometer away from it ...

As I later determined, I covered forty kilometers in twelve hours. At the end of August, this was the record of our expedition. A week later, my achievement was almost beaten by my partners on Bunge Land.

Land Bunge

I have never seen anything more strange and mystical than this Earth, anywhere on the globe. About ten thousand years ago, the shallow sea between Kotelny Island and Faddeyevsky Island receded and exposed its bottom, which turned into a completely flat sandy desert a hundred kilometers wide from north to south and from west to east. The only noticeable signs on it were only miserable tufts of grass growing on hummocks no higher than the knee, and this desert was so flat that even these hummocks could be seen for several kilometers. Many years later, I worked in the desert in the south of the Arabian Peninsula and even looked out of the corner of my eye into the infernal hell of the famous Rub al-Khali, the most terrible desert on Earth. But I never experienced there such a feeling of utter isolation from the rest of the panet, helplessness and naked defenselessness, as I felt then, sticking out like a louse on a sheet, exposed to all winds, in the middle of the sands of Bunge Land.

There were four of us in the all-terrain vehicle, except for me and my all-terrain vehicle Vasya Tuzov, when we set off to cross the Bunge Land. Vasya Tuzov liked to talk, but he always talked about only two subjects that he, to his credit, knew perfectly well: booze and whores. Moreover, the latter, according to him, did not give him either a pass or a ride, and because of them, he earned so little while working as a truck driver, because he spent more time lying on them than behind the steering wheel. By the way, at one time he cheated, gluing wallpaper at the Pulkovo Observatory, and there he charmed the Strugatsky brothers with his stories, who entered him, under the name of the driver Tuzik, in one of their novels. Borya, a subtle and educated intellectual, read Pasternak to us and internally suffered from the inconvenience and rudeness of field life, which he would have abandoned long ago if it were not for the regional wage coefficient and field allowances. The old polar wolf (seven years older than all of us) and the head of our party, the smartest and most witty Vadim, besides geophysics, was still a dissident and told us such things about all sorts of dark Soviet affairs that the hair stood on end on our unwashed heads and backs.

We left the same camp where I dragged myself on foot a week ago. In addition to the usual field things, our all-terrain vehicle was also filled with cans of water, because on Bunge Land, as it should be in a real desert, there was no water at all, even the smallest puddle, especially in its central part. We successfully, although more slowly than expected (because of the damp sand in which the caterpillars got stuck), crossed Bunge Land from west to east along a pre-marked profile, rested a little and, taking a little to the north, began the return journey west, home , To camp.

Suddenly, it got colder, the wet sand froze and, literally before our eyes, the Bunge Land was transformed. Instead of a dull yellowish-brown sandy plain, before us lay an immense ice mirror, sparkling under the setting sun in the west. The sand became as hard as concrete, and our caterpillars left no marks on it. It was possible to fly forward, and we flew, at a long-forgotten speed, as much as forty kilometers per hour, towards dark gray, with a gilded border, clouds hanging over a flat, sharply defined desert horizon. Looking in the rearview mirror, I found a lone bright star on the darkening eastern horizon and only corrected the driver, waving my hand left and right, trying to keep this star in the same position and annoyed at having to stop every two kilometers - the work was still far from finished.

After one of these stops, when Borya finished his measurements and climbed back into the truck, I signaled to Vasya that he could go on. Vasya started the engine, but before moving off, he suddenly knocked on the instrument showing the oil pressure, immediately turned off the engine and uttered the sacramental phrase: “That's it, fuck you, we've arrived! “. The oil pressure gauge was at zero. After a minute or two of operation, the engine would have become hot from friction and its rotating parts would have been wedged in a stranglehold with each other. Knowing that a worn-out old engine absorbs oil like a cat absorbs sour cream, Vasya prepared a spare can of oil, but forgot to take it with him and she stayed in the camp. From this place to the camp was exactly forty-eight kilometers.

The short meeting ended with an obvious decision. Need to go. Vasya cannot be left alone. Borya and Vadim were well aware that now, after I had just covered my forty kilometers, it was their turn to stomp along the desert. It was clear from them that they did not experience much pleasure from this, and, being geophysicists of pure water and not having the hardening that I received in geological work, when fifteen to twenty kilometers of walking a day in the taiga mountains was considered a common thing, deep down waiting for me to offer my services. But I had no desire to do so.

The action plan was simple. They needed to go west, and I insisted that they take a little to the left and get on our own tracks, which now, after a cold snap, were frozen in the sand until spring, and follow the tracks without turning anywhere. Then, even if something happens, they will be searched along fresh tracks. According to our calculations, taking into account the flat and hard road, it took thirteen or fourteen hours to reach the camp, fifteen at the most. Having thrown a couple of hours for rest and preparations, Vadim (Borya suffered from an acute form of topographic cretinism and could not navigate the terrain at all) will have to take the seismic all-terrain vehicle and return with oil to Vasya and me, which will take another two hours. In total, the proceeds could come for us in twenty hours, for a round account - in a day. In case of unforeseen circumstances, I said that I would sit with Vasya here in the all-terrain vehicle for three days until the meat ran out, warming myself with a gasoline stove and candles (I didn’t worry about water, hoping for a snowfall). If in three days no one comes for us, we will go ourselves, weather permitting. However, if the weather does not allow, we will go anyway, because there will be nothing to eat.

We fried Borya and Vadim thick pieces of venison for the journey, and they set off to the west. Vasya and I carefully stretched the loose tarpaulin over the body and tried to caulk all the cracks we could in order to keep as much heat as possible in the body, in which we now had to spend an unknown amount of time. It's been about an hour since Borya and Vadim started their journey, but the Bunge Land was so flat that I could still clearly see their silhouettes against the sunset.

We sat in the truck by candlelight and boiled tea on a gas stove. Vasya started a long story about how he drove KAMAZ to Kiev and how he took a fellow traveler, and how she had no money to pay, and how she offered herself instead of money, and how he turned onto a country road, and how ... The air in the back warmed up , but it was some kind of unhealthy, stale warmth, and I climbed outside, into the fresh air, and began to walk in circles around the all-terrain vehicle, airing my head. On the third lap, I saw two bright lights flash on the horizon. These were the headlights of an all-terrain vehicle coming towards us.

Then Borya said that, after walking ten kilometers already in his old footprints, Vadim began to rub his leg and they sat down to rest and rewind footcloths. It was there that they saw the headlights of an all-terrain vehicle coming towards them, which was led by our chief geophysicist Alexei, to finalize the third, and last, profile through Bunge Land. He rolled along the tracks we had left and was extremely surprised when at one moment in the beams of the headlights, instead of a monotonous sea of ​​frozen sand and rare bumps, two human figures suddenly jumped and waved their arms. Borya and Vadim were so lucky, and so my record remained unbeaten.

Our troubles with ATVs were not limited to the fact that they broke down. They still sometimes drowned when it was necessary to cross all sorts of rivers and lakes. Theoretically, like military vehicles, they could stay on the water and even move forward using, instead of a propeller, the rowing movement of the tracks. But, again, the polar law came into force here, requiring the simultaneous coincidence of several conditions. Only in contrast to aviation, where this law required the same weather, airplanes and caps, for a successful crossing on our all-terrain vehicles, we needed a non-leaky hull, calm and sloping banks.

It is not necessary to explain the importance of the absence of holes in the body, but rarely any of our all-terrain vehicles, especially after hauling and driving with a load three times more than allowed, would not have them. The wind, especially the transverse one, interfered because it made waves that swept the water into the body and also because if it blew along the river, then gradually but inexorably turned the all-terrain vehicle around the center of gravity so that the car eventually turned out to be floating with its nose against the wind and along the river, and not across, as it should be. If the coast was steep when launching, then the all-terrain vehicle immediately dived into the water with its nose and poured candles, from which the engine immediately stalled, with all the ensuing consequences.

The sloping exit to the opposite shore was important because the all-terrain vehicle, which on land could overcome various obstacles, became rather helpless on the water, became easier due to the law of Archimedes and could not cling well with caterpillars to the muddy bottom of the polar rivers.

In my case, and I drowned with an all-terrain vehicle twice, the shores failed. Once my all-terrain vehicle was to blame - it famously flew up to the river and, without stopping, fell into the water from the bank, which looked not so bad in appearance, but turned out to be steep, like a trench wall. Water gushed through the hood onto the engine, the engine naturally stalled, and the all-terrain vehicle landed with its nose on the bottom of a nameless river on Kotelny Island. In a few seconds I was already waist-deep in icy water. The second time it was my own fault, because I did not calculate the steepness of the opposite bank and carelessly waved my hand to the driver - they say, come on, boldly, go ahead. We safely crossed a river twenty meters wide, no more. However, as I approached the shore, I felt something was wrong - the shore surging on us turned out to be a steep clay slope. The all-terrain vehicle ran its nose into the shoal, sending the front wave of muddy water onto the clay slope, abundantly moistening the already slippery clay, the all-terrain vehicle stepped on the gas, but the tracks could not cling properly, but only spun and dug ditches for themselves. The nose of the all-terrain vehicle lifted higher and higher, and the rear part of the body, on the contrary, fell lower and lower, until the water, of course, gushed through the tailgate into the body, from where the heart-rending cries of my operators were heard.

The chief geophysicist Alexei, after meeting with us on Bunge Land, drowned more seriously. Having shared with us oil for the engine, he went to the third profile and began to move west in pursuit of us. In the oncoming darkness, he stumbled into the bay of the only freshwater lake on Bunge Land - the bay was two hundred meters wide, if across, but a couple of kilometers long, if you go around it. Aleksey decided that, judging by the flatness of the surrounding area, the lake would be shallow and the all-terrain vehicle would ford the creek. He gave the command forward and the car, clattering its tracks, slowly went into the water. They really walked along the bottom for a hundred meters without rising, but then suddenly the bottom went down and the all-terrain vehicle surfaced and swayed on the water, driven forward by running caterpillars. . "Back! ' Alexey yelled, clearly remembering that on the right side of the all-terrain vehicle, like on the Titanic, a half-meter gap gaped, pierced in metal even at the beginning of the season. The driver backed up and added gas, but while this forward movement went out and the all-terrain vehicle began to back off, the water had already weighed down the all-terrain vehicle so that it began to sink smoothly and by the time everyone, half wet, squelching in icy water, got out onto the roof, he sat on the bottom at a depth of about two meters.

In the morning, when the seismicists, who accidentally noticed a dark dot in the middle of the water surface, and at the risk of drowning their own all-terrain vehicle, swam up to the drowned car, they saw the following picture. On the roof of the all-terrain vehicle, twenty centimeters from the water, behind an icy roller made of wet sleeping bags and backpacks, lay, tightly embracing, three people half-dead from the cold in ice-covered clothes. Alexey later admitted that he had already said goodbye to life and estimated that they would freeze to death in six to eight hours if help did not come ...

But despite all the breakdowns, drownings, repairs, long forced walks on the tundra, waiting for bad weather and other troubles, we continued to rush along the tundra along a grid of two by five kilometers. We covered the entire island with caterpillar tracks and marked all our camps with empty barrels of gasoline and diesel fuel and everything that people who left the camp leave behind. We continued to do our job, despite the fact that winter had already taken over the island and the whole world accessible to us had again become black and white. The sun now very rarely peeped through the low-hanging stratus clouds, and there was less and less daylight. The mercury in the thermometer was confidently staying at the first ten degrees below zero, and the stoves in our tents, which separated us from the freezing Arctic with a thin layer of tarpaulin, burned non-stop. Only by heating these stoves red-hot, it was possible to warm the small space around them, but already three steps away, where our folding beds stood, we kept, hiding from hungry polar foxes, our stocks of frozen venison, and it did not thaw there. It was possible to heat the stoves only by fully opening the fuel cock so that diesel fuel would flow onto the flame in a continuous stream. Because of this, our reserves of diesel fuel were quickly depleted and by mid-September they ran out completely. Faced with a choice - either to freeze or risk burning out - we began to burn aviation gasoline in our stoves, several barrels of which had been scattered across the tundra since the spring, when we flew around the island in a helicopter. At first we were very careful, but then, when realized that in such cold weather gasoline does not form dangerous explosive fumes, they became bolder and began to burn it without looking back.

…. Having about twenty field seasons on my account in the Tien Shan mountains, in Kamchatka, in the Kolyma and in the Arctic, I did not stop, and still do not stop now, to be surprised at the mystery of turning an empty space into a habitable place. One has only to put up the tents, put up and fire the stove, drag inside the bags with “nits” (as we called our personal junk) and inflate rubber air mattresses, as a piece of tundra, completely no different from millions of other such pieces, suddenly suddenly acquires a completely different quality. It became home. And when the day's route ended, the last stop was taken and the last point was put on the map, I waved my hand to the driver in the right direction, leaned back in my seat and said: “Home!”. And we clanged caterpillars in the thickening darkness, knowing that we would soon see in the distance the translucent cube of the tent glowing from the inside and the moving silhouette of our partner, who is doing the thankless job of a cook today. It will be crowded in the tent, everything will be saturated with the mixed smell of diesel fuel, wet clothes and fried meat, but it will be warm and light, and you can take off your padded jacket and high fur boots and lie down on a cot with a mug of hot tea and smoke - in a word, you can do everything that do at home. But the next cold morning, the tent will be taken down and folded, everything will be packed in bags and boxes and thrown into the back of an all-terrain vehicle. Then the snow will quickly sweep over the square piece of land on which the tent stood and which yesterday I called home, and this place will again return to its eternally empty state. And we will move on to the next camp, where this sacrament of transformation will be repeated again ...

Every day the work became more and more difficult - by the end of September there were only four hours of daylight. In order to fulfill my daily quota, I left the camp early in the morning in total darkness. Even during the day it was very difficult to navigate the monotonously snow-covered tundra, but when it had to be done also in the headlights, the process of finding out where I was after all turned into a real puzzle. In addition, products were running out, especially tea and sugar, the stocks of which were undermined at the beginning of the season by increased brewing. But most importantly, we all felt that our all-terrain vehicle was close to literally falling apart. The welds that held everything together, from old age and strong overloads, came apart here and there, and there was nothing we could do about it. Sitting in the cockpit, I watched with dismay as the roof moved and creaked, and the floor buckled under my feet.

On one of the rare quiet and sunny days, we met with a detachment of seismic workers who had finished their work on Bunge Land and, according to them, were returning to Temp. This confused me a little, because, judging by where their all-terrain vehicle was looking with its nose, they were going in the opposite direction back to the east, to Bunge Land, about which I informed their chief Zhora. He was quite surprised, because he was completely sure that he was going to Temp, to the west. But a quick glance at the compass convinced him that I was right, and, turning one hundred and eighty degrees, the happy seismicists rushed in the right direction now, expecting to arrive at Temp in four hours, and I enviously followed them with my eyes until they disappeared behind the slope of the hill . It was the last all-terrain vehicle, besides mine, of the three that I brought to the island in the spring, which could still move independently. The car that Alexei drowned in was permanently parked in Tempe due to a lack of spare parts.

A day later it was the turn of my all-terrain vehicle. It was a cloudy day and the eternal polar wind drove the snow towards us. We were crossing a low rocky ridge, and when the all-terrain vehicle, hovering for a moment on a sharp ridge, pecked its nose down a slope, suddenly the windshield flew out with a crash and crumbled into small pieces. I knew that this would end sooner or later, because the cabin had been shaking at all seams for a long time and it was twisted at random at every tubercle, but all the same, out of surprise, at first I did not understand what had happened, and for some time I sat motionless strewn with shards of glass. Then I came to my senses and cursed for a long time from annoyance. I had to finish the day's work and then drive back to the camp at a distance of twenty kilometers, against a headwind with snow in my face in a frost of about fifteen below zero. After swearing to my fill, I calmed down and gave the command to move home. Vasya Tuzov looked at me with compassion, as I covered my face with my palm and looked for the necessary signs through spread fingers. It was warm enough in the cabin from the running engine and I was not afraid of frostbite, but the snow cut my face like sand and knocked tears out of my eyes.

As it turned out, this was only the beginning of our troubles. When we finished the last stop already in the thickening darkness and went out into the familiar valley, at the end of which our camp was, I relaxed a little, because Vasya already knew the way and would have found the camp without my help. I bent my head inside the cabin and hid my head in my hands, trying to soothe the pain in my snow-scarred eyes. Then Vasya patted me on the shoulder. I thought that he wanted to check if he was driving correctly and I began to stare into the snow again, now even more blinding in the headlights. But Vasya again patted me on the shoulder and jabbed his finger at the ammeter on the dashboard, showing the state of the battery and the operation of the generator, which provided current to charge this battery. The instrument needle fell to the left and sat there dead, not moving and not responding to an increase in engine speed. “The generator is fucked up, chief.” - the experienced Vasya diagnosed. I got cold. This meant that the motor was drawing current from the battery to keep it running, but no current from the dead alternator was going to the battery, and sooner or later the battery would die, the engine would lose ignition, and there would be a long silence...

I told Vasya to drive the car to the camp as quickly as possible, and he obediently stepped on the gas. Thank God that even though the engine was running normally, the tanks were full of gasoline and a spare canister of oil was with me this time. I again hid my face from the wind and began to think what to do next. The first step was to get to the camp. Then immediately, before everyone fell asleep there, it will be necessary to contact Temp by radio and tell them to tear off the generator in the morning, remove the glass from any inactive car and send Zhorin the all-terrain vehicle, which was supposed to come to Temp for a day, to us to the camp for help. If we can't contact now, we must contact in the morning, and the engine should not be turned off all night - no one knew how much life was left in the battery and we could start it later. If you can't get in touch in the morning - leave the camp and reap everyone at Temp until all the gasoline has been burned.

We got to the camp without incident and I immediately, leaving the engine at idle, rushed to the radio. It was ten o'clock in the evening. My entire detachment huddled around the microphone and listened attentively. Temp responded almost immediately. I quickly explained the state of affairs with the glass and the generator, and Temp was very sympathetic to us. Then I explained that where it was necessary to tear off, and Temp said that they would certainly do so. But when I ordered Zhorin's all-terrain vehicle to be sent to us early, very early in the morning, a painful silence fell on the air. And then we had a rather strange conversation:

Tempo, Tempo! Why are you silent? How can you hear me? Welcome! I asked.

I hear you well. Reception - without the slightest delight answered Temp.

I repeat. Tomorrow early in the morning, I repeat, early in the morning, send Zhorin all-terrain vehicle with spare parts to my camp. The camp is located on the Kamennaya River, ten kilometers up from the confluence of the Bolotny stream into it. How did you understand? Welcome! -

I understood you. The camp is located on the Kamennaya River, ten kilometers up from the confluence of the Bolotny stream into it. Reception. -

I repeat. Tomorrow early in the morning, I repeat, early in the morning, send Zhorin all-terrain vehicle with spare parts to my camp at the indicated place. How did you understand? Welcome! -

I understood you. But I can’t send Zhorin the all-terrain vehicle. He is not. Priem.- mysteriously responded Temp.

I don't understand, I don't understand! I met Zhora yesterday on the route. He walked to Temp. Not entirely accurate, but went to Temp. Reception. -

The rover came to Temp. But now he is gone. Reception. -

Didn't understand! Has he left Tempo?. If so, where and when will he return? Reception. -

Tempo paused for a moment and answered:

ATV in Tempe. But he is not. I can't send it to you. He is not. End of connection. -

Silence fell on the air. We all looked at each other dumbfounded and no one understood anything. It was clear that something so unpleasant had happened on Tempe that it was not necessary to speak openly on the air. Only one thing became clear to us - there would be no help from Tempe.

I sat down languidly on the cot. I suddenly felt that I had neither the strength nor the will to fight the problems that somehow suddenly began to attack me from all sides. I realized that everything that had happened was a sign that our work and our stay on the island were coming to an end. I had to make a decision. And I accepted it. We're getting out of here, and not in the morning, but right now, and get the hell out of here. That is - in Temp. It was impossible to work anymore.

Without turning off the engine, in the headlights, under the slanting snowfall, we rushed to collect the camp, mercilessly throwing into the snow everything superfluous and half-broken, which we had not dared to get rid of before, knowing that there would be no replacement for this. Everyone worked, except for Vasya, who was relieved of everything, sat in the cab and maintained the speed a little more than idle, so that, God forbid, the engine would not stall. Otherwise, it would be necessary to set up the camp again, sit in it and wait for the helicopter for emergency evacuation. It was impossible to walk on foot - fifty kilometers in snow and frost meant almost certain death. Around midnight, we poured the last gasoline from the barrels into the tanks of the all-terrain vehicle, the guys settled down as best they could - some in the back, some outside, clinging to the stretch marks and wrapping themselves in tarps and sleeping bags - and we set off west.

At dawn the next day, we rolled out onto the eastern shore of the lagoon. I looked at the still distant, but already accessible, cozy homely hazes of our tents and just physically felt how the tension of the last weeks was disappearing. Now everything was behind. We went down and, rounding the lagoon, came to the coastal spit.

On the way to the large tented seismic tent, I saw the skeleton of an all-terrain vehicle burned to the ground. At first I thought that someone with some mysterious purpose had dragged here the skeleton of Gerka's all-terrain vehicle, which burned down shortly before our arrival on the island, but then I distinguished the familiar, although distorted by fire almost beyond recognition, outlines of aluminum racks and blocks of a seismic station, which I myself helped install in the spring in the back. It turned out that this burnt iron skeleton was Zhorin's all-terrain vehicle, which is in Tempe, but which is not there, as they tried to explain to me on the radio.

As I was later told, Zhora arrived at Temp about six hours after meeting with us, having wandered insignificantly a couple more times along the way. They were looking forward to his arrival, because the mash, put by his guys, sitting all the time in Tempe, was already ripe and overripe and was becoming very strong, but bitter. Therefore, the table was set overnight and forty liters of mash went through mugs and sips without stopping. Everyone knows that even under normal conditions, drinking mash produces some kind of especially bad and heavy intoxication. And here, after a long abstinence, when the body is cleansed and weaned from alcohol, with a bad, canned and stewed snack and a lack of vegetables and vitamins, this fusel swill hit everyone on the brains with such force that everything turned into some kind of wild indecency. In less than an hour, a general showdown began, tearful declarations of love, claims to superiors, finding out who is an asshole and who is not, and all that, usual for a field booze. Already someone was beating someone in the corner of the tent, when a heart-rending cry was heard: “The all-terrain vehicle is on fire!!”. Everyone flew outside. A white dazzling flame was beating a candle vertically upwards, snatching a brightly lit circle from the arctic darkness, in which hopelessly drunk people rushed helplessly and fell into the snow, and someone continued to beat someone, but already in the snow. Then the gas tanks exploded and everyone rushed in all directions. Saving the all-terrain vehicle was out of the question. Everything that was inside burned down, the entire station, the photo lab, weapons, tents. Fortunately, before sitting down at the table, Zhora pulled all the folders with the results out of the all-terrain vehicle and brought them into the tent - otherwise they would have burned down and the work of the whole season would have been lost and Zhora would have been in serious trouble, even, quite likely, a trial.

No one ever found out who set fire to the all-terrain vehicle. Suspicion fell on the bomber, nicknamed Radish, who was accidentally found, dead drunk, in the snow behind the tent. He was lying face down, and in his quilted pants there was a smoking hole on his backside, and on the very backside there was a severe burn. It was decided that he, having drunk a beer to amazement, for some devil opened the cabin door, lit a cigarette, dropped his cigarette butt on the seat, climbed in there himself, sat on the cigarette butt and fell asleep, and when his pants were burned to the meat on his ass, he woke up in pain, and climbed out into the fresh air, where he calmly fell asleep almost to death, and the fire continued its work in the oil-soaked seat until it burst out.

So it was, or not, no one knew and will not know. All the same, our presence on the island, and along with the means of transport on Kotelny Island, came to an end.

I still completed the remaining routes, working from Tempe. I completed them only because it was necessary to fulfill the plan one hundred percent, otherwise the expedition would have lost the monetary bonus.

I returned from the last flight at the very end of September and someone took a picture of me with another geophysicist as soon as I got out of the cockpit.

That photo still hangs on my wall in my Canadian home—tired swollen eyes, a black beard, a bag over my shoulder, a carabiner under my arm, rubber boots, snow on a pebbly spit, and a tent in the background. I did not know then that this would be my last photograph on Kotelny Island, in the Soviet Arctic, in my country. Then I was just very tired and really wanted to go home to Leningrad.

And then Li-2 flew in after us and we all happily huddled in an empty cargo compartment where it was almost as cold as it was outside. But it didn't matter anymore - we were flying to the mainland. We settled as best we could on our bags and trunks, the plane took off from the ground, our abandoned tents flashed under the wing, the nearby hills of the island sank in frosty fog, and the icy water of the Laptev Sea blackened under the wing. With relief, despite the strict ban, we lit a cigarette together, marking the long-awaited end of the season and the beginning of a long, gradual return to civilization.

Looking at how incredibly quickly and easily the very places where I had dragged at a snail's pace in a strained roaring all-terrain vehicle a few days ago, I was sincerely glad that everything was already behind and did not feel the slightest regret that I was parting with this stranger and cold space where I managed to survive safely. But then I did not even suspect that this cold and unfriendly world imperceptibly, unpersistently and behind the scenes, infiltrated me and put down invisible, but tenacious roots in me. Only later, having warmed up in family warmth and comfort, returning to my desk at the institute and drawn into an orderly normalized city life, I began to catch myself on the fact that more and more often I remember everything that happened to me then on Kotelny Island, but already without bad, without fatigue, danger and helplessness, without cold and inconvenience. It was just that suddenly reality stepped aside and suddenly blue hummocks and snows of the Laptev Strait swam in, drowning in pink light, long, delicately colored sunsets or mirror sparkling frozen sands of Bunge Land. Gradually, I realized that I just love this inexplicably beautiful, semi-illusory, silent and shy world.

We did a lot of damage back then. We burst into this world with our roaring machines, rushed back and forth across the island, wounded the tundra with steel tracks, threw empty barrels, killed hundreds of deer and killed dozens of unborn ones, and, after breaking down our unfortunate all-terrain vehicles, disappeared as if we were not there. was. Almost thirty years have passed since then. Approximately as long as it takes to overgrow the tracks of our all-terrain vehicles on the tundra - my beloved Arctic heals wounds that are so easy to inflict for a very long time.

I don't know what's going on there now. Perhaps, due to a lack of money in an impoverished country, all polar stations were closed and there is nowhere to rest after a hard journey. Maybe, as unnecessary, they removed the air defense company from the island, maybe the barracks of the airport in Tempe were empty and frozen through and now there is no one to drink with in a warm wardroom and watch an old film under the howl of a snowstorm. Don't know. And I won't regret it at all if it's true. Because we are not needed there. There it is only necessary that it becomes quiet and everything returns to its original, eternal state. May my beloved Arctic sleep soundly and peacefully.

I don't know if I will ever return to those places. Most likely, I will never return. But it’s so close from Canada, just wave across the North Pole, but it still doesn’t work out, fate doesn’t let everything, and time is running out. But if it suddenly happens that I return, then I promise that everything will be different. I promise that I will not run around the tundra there, make noise and litter. I promise that I will enter carefully so as not to wake my beloved, and I will sit quietly somewhere in the corner. I don’t need anything special anymore, I’ll just sit and watch, hoping that that pink light is about to light up over the strait again, like many, many years ago. Most likely, I will not wait. Then I carefully, trying not to make noise, will go back to where I came from. And already forever.