Читать книгу The Mysteries of the Shaman Stone - Иван Рассказов - Страница 4

The plane, having lifted off the ground, began to bite into the sky with a loud howl. I thought that the vibration and the roaring inside an old AN-24 would scare all passengers but taking a closer look, I realized: those flying with me were experienced people. Taking into consideration the fact that Irkutsk and Bodaibo are only connected by this mode of transport, I calmed down and started watching the earth moving away from us, without noticing how I fell asleep pretty soon. Suddenly, the loudspeaker that looked like it had seen a lot started reproducing the hoarse voice of the flight hostess right above my ear, heralding the imminent touchdown. This woke me up immediately and brought me to my senses. The AN-24 that must have been of my age, made a U-turn and plunked into the liquid mud of the Bodaibo airport, throwing thousands of splashes in all directions from under its belly. I crossed myself, woke up my Moscow pal Nikita who was sitting next to me and started bringing my cell phone to life. Vitim was the only thing I wanted to see as soon as possible. Ugryum River, what are you like? – I kept on thinking. I heard so much about this mysterious and Nordic river from Herman and then there was this movie with a pursuit in taiga and gold rush I saw as a child, which stirred up my interest to this river and the surrounding nature even more.

Meeting us at the airport, an old acquaintance Herman immediately offered to go with him to hunt some bear. The day before, he put a smelly bait in his hunting area destined for the predator that was walking around his winter hut and frightening people and dogs. And he was sure: the bear had already found it and we had to hurry in order to go up Vitim to get to the winter hut and meet the beast while it was still daylight. Herman was a local entrepreneur, a hunter, fisherman and a descendant of a small, vanishing ethnicity, the Tofalar, whose representatives are mainly settled in the Nizhneudinsky District and only a few of them, like Herman, were uprooted and dispersed all over our huge country. Without much delay, the three of us – me, Nikita and Herman – left the airport to go to the boat station where a “Crimea” boat was waiting for us. The three of us hopped into it and, together with two huskies Buran and Baikal, went up the river at quite a pace. You would not believe it: the higher we climbed up Vitim, the larger grew my admiration for nature around me. The soft carpet of the forest was interrupted by the ragged rock that climbed up the sky with its snow that has not yet melted on the peaks. The wild, primordial nature fascinated me with its beauty, and the same feeling that our ancestors must have felt, the ancient people who went hunting some prey without knowing what was awaiting them, was filling my chest. “If we’re lucky,” Herman said, “the Deer crossing will be behind that hill, and we’ll be able to see these beauties.” Very little time passed, and far away, right in the middle of Ugryum River, we saw a herd of seven deer swimming rapidly. The leader was swimming in front of the herd; he could be distinguished by the huge horns that struck immediately. The animals, which we took by surprise, snorted loudly with their nostrils, trying to get to the shore as soon as possible and enter their habitat, that is, Mother Nature. Meeting humans was never a good thing for the deer. We slowed down, watching these forest beauties jumping out of the water to the river bank one by one and disappearing in the woods. When the last one of them disappeared in the taiga, we accelerated and continued our journey. Suddenly we saw another deer not far away, which was swimming in a strange kind of way – slowly and in circles. Getting closer with our boat, we understood the animal’s behavior – there was a small calf swimming next to its mother and the latter, fearing for its safety, was blocking it from us. Pushing it with its face, the mother was helping it to swim faster. Herman, in order not to frighten the two, moved the boat aside, and soon the deer disappeared from my view.