Sylvain Tesson (Sylvain Tesson)
return to the woods - a drug all ills of life. In order to quench their thirst freedom, Sylvain Tesson found a radical solution: spend six months alone in a shack in the heart of the Siberian taiga. We represent your attention his diary
At six months, I settled down to live in a shack in southern Siberia, on the shores of Lake Baikal. Time is running out. I vowed that before I turn 40 years old, I know what it means to live in silence, cold and alone. Tomorrow in the world with a population of 9 billion people, these three states are valued more than gold. I lived in France in nature. On that day, when I read in the Ministerial pamphlet that hunters call "user-forested areas, I knew it was time to go into the forest. Escape life in the woods? Flight - a word that people stuck in a swamp routine, called a full life impulse. Game? How else called voluntary confinement near the most beautiful lake in the world? Extreme necessity? Absolutely! I dreamed of existence, a limited number of necessities of life. Simplicity so difficult to endure. My shack was built by Soviet geologists in the Brezhnev era. This log-cube, three three-meter, heated iron stove. The hut stands on a promontory on the right bank of Lake Baikal, in the Baikal-Lena Nature Reserve, in the four days of hiking paths from the nearest village and hundreds of miles of trails. It stands on the granite slopes of the height of 2000 meters. Cedar grove protects it from wind gusts. These trees gave the name of the area: Northern Cedars. Looking at a map, I thought that the "Northern Cedars" sounds like the name of the nursing homes. Ultimately, it is about this: I'm going to retire.
Until I can be reached only by air or water. I arrived here a February evening, having driven for two days on the ice on the truck. On four months a year freezing water of Lake Baikal. Meter-thick ice cover makes it possible to move on it at cars. Russian trucks allowed on it, train. Sometimes the ice cracks, the vehicle and its passengers fall through the silent water. Is there a tomb finer than break the age of 25 million years?
for shipwrecked there is nothing more painful than the sight of the fading away of sails. My friends from Irkutsk planted me on the shore and returned to the city, which is 500 km south of here. I watch as the truck disappeared over the horizon. On the street -33 ° C. Snow, frost, ice cracking. A gust of wind picks up in the air snow nibs. I live here six months. Finally, I will understand if I have an inner life.
Four boxes of stock, pasta sauce and Tabasco are under canopy. Mexican seasoning can swallow anything - with the feeling that you have something to eat. My list of purchases in Irkutsk was similar to the list of miner to the Klondike: rods, oil lamps, snowshoes. I also bought an icon of St. Seraphim of Sarov, the XIX century hermit, retiring to the woods and tame bears. Need books for life, fit for fishing, a few bottles and a lot of tobacco. Kills not smoking, and inability to live as you want.
first action on the threshold of the house: I throw the snow six bottles of vodka. When the snow melts, four months later, I find them. This will be a gift to spring from the winter. I always preferred meteorology, politics: the seasons gradually replace each other. And only a person sits, tightly vzhavshis in his chair.
Recipe for happiness: a window to the Baikal table by the window. I spend six months on the Russian manner: sitting with a cup of tea, looking out the window, resting his cheek with his hand, as Dr. Gachet with a picture of van Gogh. I came here to come to terms with time. I want to ask him to give me something I do not give a boundless space: the rest. I want to watch as the days pass through the window of my loneliness.
over the bed I nailed a pine shelf and put it on her fourth book of the box. I brought Michel Tournier (Michel Tournier) - to dream, Gray Oula (Grey Owl) [hunter and writer, pres. Belanov name Archibald (Archibald Belaney) - approx. trans.] - as an example to follow, Mishima - in case of piercing cold. I have three Shakespeare and the "Ode" Segal (Victor Segal, Victor Segalen, 1878 - 1919, French poet of the late symbolism - approx. trans.) Marcus Aurelius, Junger (Ernst Jünger, Ernst Jünger; 1895-1998, German writer - approx. per.) Yankelevich and detectives "Black Series" - because, after all, need a break too. Chinese poetry to the case of insomnia, Deon (Michel Deon, Michel Déon, French writer, member of the Academy - Approx. trans.) for the attacks of melancholy, Lawrence - to quench their sensuality. Memoirs of Casanova - because you should never travel with books about the country where you go. For example, in Venice should read Lermontov. Finally, what Schopenhauer - although I could not imagine that I never want to open it. Thousand pages of the World ... "in the end served as a support for a candlestick.
each day passes, starting at dawn, with a clean slate. Live in a shack - it's experience the emptiness: You do not evaluate any opinion, does not inspire any other person, you have no safety net measures. From Freedom's head is spinning. In some single cabins eventually turn into clochard lie dead drunk on a pile of cigarette butts and cans. To overcome the grief, you must force yourself to live in a certain rhythm. In the morning I read, write, smoke, teaching poetry, drawing and playing the flute.
then pulled the long hours of work at home: it is necessary to chop firewood, break frozen wormwood, to clear the snow, to place solar panels, to prepare a fishing rod, patch up that tainted the winter, and fry the fish. Work warms. I'm used to Life expectancy at minus 30 ° C. I do not hunt. I believe unprecedented incivility shoot inhabitants of the forest where you live as a guest. Do you like when you attack foreigner? In addition, my manhood in no way infringes upon the fact that the more beautiful, noble and graceful than I am, being free to live in the endless forest. In the afternoon I study their possession, or walk through the woods, looking for signs of deer, wolves, lynx and mink.
I often go to the mountains. There is Lake Baikal visible above the treetops. Lake - an entire country. Bays and headlands silhouetted against the ice in ivory. At 80 kilometers to the east are visible vertices Buryat mountains, beyond which guessed the steppes of Mongolia. I, which is enough for every second of life to roll her neck and squeeze the juice, I study for hours inseparably look at the sky, sitting near the fire, thinking about crucial issues: whether there are countries in the form of clouds?
Sometimes storm disperses snow. Then open the ice on the lake: a bright, clean, with turquoise stripes. You might think that this image tangles of neurons, enlarged under a microscope. When I slide on the frozen mirror, a runner goes through a psychedelic kaleidoscope: I slide on the dream of a thousand meters deep.
sometimes knocking on the glass tit. Tits do not have the snobbery of those birds that spend the winter in Egypt. They steadfastly hold and protect the frozen forest. I speak with them. I was talking with trees, lichens and with itself. Conversations with yourself - enjoy a hermit. Back in society, he can not stand when he was interrupted. Church Handbook I prefer a set of forest crowns. In life, you can select under a roof to live. I would really like to believe in ancient gods, to communicate with the nymphet dream of Undine. Alas, the clarity mad dried my heart: I can only play in the worship of fairies. Often believe - then pretending.
Loneliness I have not inconvenienced. It is fruitful: when you There is no one who you could tell his thoughts, a sheet of paper becomes a valuable confidant, who, moreover, is never tired. Notebook becomes replacing the polite interlocutor. Solitude imposes upon you certain responsibilities. When you are alone, you should try to behave virtuously, it was not necessary for myself blush. Six months of seclusion - a challenge to myself: if you can make myself? If you become his disgusting, you have no one to lean on, not be one person who could help you open your eyes: Robinson, began to doubt himself, ends his days in a pigsty. Forestry Inspector Shaburov took me to this beach on the first day, I knew about it. He mysteriously dropped, rubbing his temple: "Here a wonderful place to commit suicide."
Every 20-30 km is a post with a forest officer. My neighbors sometimes unannounced visit me. They were all named Vladimir. This Russian inhabitants of forests: they like Putin nostalgia for the Brezhnev and experience to the West the same distrust of what the farmer has for a philistine. They are for any wealth, even for the entire state oligarch Roman Abramovich, will not agree to return to the city. How could they survive the cramped and crowded, if every morning, opening the door, they see the water plain which live wild geese? They own their land as feudal lords, protecting them with a rifle on his shoulder, away from Moscow's laws. Freedom - the illegitimate daughter of the forest life.
Sometimes I spend the night fishermen. In the usual ritual: I uncork a bottle of vodka, we drink three cups. The first meeting for the second of the Baikal the third for love. Pour one drop on the floor - houses. My visitors bring me to the world news: oil spills, riots in the suburbs, financial crises and terrorist attacks. News came up with to convince the hermit to stay in their shelters.
passed frosty February; Slow March; quiet April. Russian winter like the ice palace: it is light and sterile. Once something has changed on the ground. Vzbuh ice from water that presaged an early break-up. May 22 spring forces crossed the offensive, bringing to naught the efforts of the winter and ordering the world. Ice cover started, the ice exploded, releasing a wave that buried the fragments of these stained glass. Rainbow stretched between the banks, which in the whole spirit of the first squadron flock of ducks. Winter kicked the bucket, the lake opened, the woods come alive. Awakened bears roam the shore of the larvae crawl out of humus, blooming rhododendrons and azaleas, ants streaming flows on the slopes of the needle anthills. Animals know that the heat does not last long and that urgently need to reproduce. Nature, unlike humans, does not think she has plenty of time ahead.
It then the inspector Reserve gave me Ike and Beck, two four-month Siberian Husky. Until now I was afraid of dogs and quoted Cocteau: "I love cats because that there are no police cats ". My new friends are barking at the approach of a bear. Twice we face to face encounter with the beautiful specimens of Ursus arctos, sought after mining on the coast. Bear knows that people bear - the wolf, and every time we looked into the eyes of a few seconds, the predators disappeared into the thicket of dwarf willows. Want to be happy - go your way.
My dogs are one step away from me to keep up. Within three months we went through the woods, running on the tops, lived, as the Norwegian trolls: climb to the plateau lichen in the tundra, warming themselves by the fire at the bivouac, dining on fish, caught me on a fishing rod. In the end, we have sleep the three of us embraced. I'll never make fun of old ladies, to lisp with their poodles, walking on the sidewalks of French towns.
When the water disappeared last pieces of ice, I went to the lake in the kayak. Swam past the harsh taiga color patina. Acceded bayonets, walked army pines. Broke the silence cry crow. Baikal seal raised its head from the water and watched as the boat cuts through water silk. The fog clung to the branches of the larches: Lake clambered ashore. Sandy slopes with golden spots scattered along the shore. The cliffs running down waterfalls: clear, they jumped into the water. The sky is tearing the July storm. When the top of the ridge the clouds linger, you need to return to shore, because here the storm could begin within ten minutes. Each of my neighbors in waves died friend, son or brother.
genius of the place confirms its effect as my eyes will know its every corner. The old principle homebody: you do not get tired to admire the magnificence of the place where you live. The light helps to shade all aspects of this beauty. It develops, opened with new parties. Only hurrying travelers do not notice it. In the end, along with vodka, bears and storms Stendhal syndrome - the only danger that threatens the hermit.
Once the day comes when I have to go back when I have to leave my animals, close the door, get their boxes in my boat waiting. I do not knew that the dog's fur is so well absorb tears. I am leaving his hut, where I managed to put up with the times, preferring to immobility Stylite fever vagrants, the truth since the deceptive hope. I would have had to realize that all the statues look peaceful.
If so, then we will finally want to move to the hut. As the world becomes less and less suitable for life - too noisy, too crowded, too confusing and too hot - some of us will go into the woods. Forest will be a refuge for the outcasts of his time. People in small communities will take refuge under the canopy of trees, meadows plowed, develop it a joyful life protected from the noise of modernity, far from the tentacles of the big city. In all historical periods each time when the world is ignited, the forests provide people protection. The thunder of technological progress, tremor war dokatyvayutsya to forest edges, but do not penetrate further. Municipalities, too, ends on the edge of the forest. A timber, used to the eternal return of spring, never wonder what melancholy souls seeking refuge within their vaults.
Consolation timber that you know: somewhere you will find a hut where you can achieve something.
Source: http://rus.ruvr.ru/
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