I dream of growing wings, Siberian White Crane wings, so I could fly from one settlement to another, instead of crawling like a snail half buried in mud. All I need is a pair of wings. I know I am asking for a miracle. But even though I don’t have wings, miracles happen on the Road of Life.
There are two types of fire. The fire of war and the fire of love. One brings death. And one brings life. As we travel the Road of Life in Yakutia we meet the local artists who out of garbage, out of barbed wire, out of rusted “nothing” create music, art and everything else that makes people happy.
Yakutian...
Read more...
More rains and mosquitoes have arrived. Ignorant, we thought that the conventional gray flying beasts were deadly, but only when the new ones - gigantic orange ones have taken their place, we understood how wrong we were.
While waiting for the weather we busied ourselves inside of Anna's urosa. Urosa is a summer home. It looks like a yurt but is build of wood instead of skins. Anna invested her small pension in it, collecting penny by penny from month to month to buy materials and pay for construction.
And it was all worth it because now Urosa stands high above eveyrthing – the sheds,...
Read more...
Don't ask how we got to The Middle World, Orto Doidu, in Khangalas Ulus. It's another story and surely it will be told. But we got there on time, when the first Кitaliks (Siberian White Cranes) were ready for the flight.
If life could always be like that there would be no need in revolutions, feuds, quarrels or disagreements of any kind. There would be no need for soldiers and diplomats; there would only be need in artists.
There are some things that do not grow by being blabbered about. One of them is Yhyakh. You can't make Yhyakh bigger than it is. You can't make it shine more...
Read more...
....And now let's talk about orphans.
There is an old legend that goes like this: once upon a time there was an oprhan who was so poor, so neglected, so filthy and so ugly that no one wanted even to look at him. No one loved him, no one at all, so he was forced to live like a shadow, hiding from people behind the kachelofen and picking up seeds after mice. In the winter time, when temperatures dropped to -60C, he lived with Yakutian horses, ouside on the snow. The horses adopted him, raised him as one of their own and gave him some very special powers. When the horse orphan grew up he turned...
Read more...
Rain continued for two more days. More water has arrived. And even more was on its way. Is this a normal spring melt? Not so much. Underground fires that broke out two years ago and burnt vasts of taiga stripped the soil that was protecting the permafrost. Late autumn rains fell on the snow, and then early spring rains followed up. And now melting snow has filled the ground fissures and contributed to melting of the subterranean ancient ice. This is one of the reasons why we see today in Taatta exactly what we see. The big picture is: Yakutian permafrost is thawing.
In the morning we could...
Read more...
And now we are stuck. The road is gone and the water only keeps rising. Overnight we turned into islanders, even though our beautiful island can not be found on any map.
Living well in Taatta means mastering the art of adaptation. In Taatta it’s a never ending process.
People here adapt through their hard work, loyalty to informal basic values and flamboyant imagination. Praskovia Petrovna Matannakova is 93 years old and she still sews tableware and storage containers out of birch bark, runs a huge family and welcomes unsolicited strangers in the times of Flood.
In excessive...
Read more...
Some of us know how the M56 Kolyma Highway (a.k.a the Road of Bones that connects Yakutsk with Magadan via Pole of Cold) can be. In the winter it's a fictional place. One's exhale crackles in the air and the clothes hung on the rope to dry shatter easier than glass. In late January temperatures drop to – 60°C and in late March it gets only a little warmer. Summer lasts only two months with the first snow arriving in late September. So, we thought, since we've seen this road in the times of cold, why won't we try to travel on it in the summer when the temperaturures quickly rise to + 40°C,...
Read more...
Recent Comments