Encounter

(Anatoly, one of the characters of the series Crater)

He hoped very much, he was sure that from the top of this pass he would spot some sign of a human presence. Maybe a clearing in the woods, or a footpath, or a far-away smoke at least. But the trees – taiga – down below looked like an unbroken carpet all the way to the horizon, and it was obvious there was no chance to find people here.

He sat on the rock and unroll the map, looked around, determined where the north was, and peered in that direction, checking the map, too. He had been sure that the settlement was just beyond this pass. But there was no sign of human habitation anywhere in sight.

He realized he had lost his location on the map. He knew he was “somewhere here”, but now this “here” was blurred into a spot of ten kilometers in diameter. It may have gone beyond the limits of the map.

For the second day, he was on the road longer than planned. There was little food left, but it didn’t bother him yet. He took off his backpack, pulled out all the supplies and laid them on the ground: a bag of cereal, a handful of pasta, bay leaves, tea, a little sugar, salt, a few crackers. It can be stretched for three days. Then one has to start fishing, which requires time. He hoped though, there would be no need for that. Three days should be enough to get out of this jam!

They can start a fuss at work. It was Sunday. But the next day he was expected to be in the shop already. Well, nothing can be done to make this happen. Now he needed one thing only – to get to people – any people – and then think about the rest. He hoped the shop would not raise alarm.

He worked as a turner. He was very good at that. Without him, the shop would often lag behind the production schedule. Many times, they asked him to lead by example and break a record of productivity. But he knew that nothing good would come of it. That is, of course, he would be given a big prize and sit on the podium at the meeting. They might even promote him to a supervisor.

But, by setting a higher level of productivity, he would let his colleagues – his buddies – down. The payment for each unit of production would drop, and no one would shake hands with him. He even could be punched in the face in a bar. Was it their fault that they did not have such an eye and such sensitivity of fingers as he had? And patience. Not everyone had the patience necessary for the job. And character, so as not to be tripped by every nonsense. After all, every unit produced must be worked carefully to the very end, to the last moment. If the attention is lost, you immediately screw up the workpiece. Then start all over again. And all this time you are immersed in the deafening noise and thunder of the production site. And the turning machine needs to be tuned every few minutes. And many other unexpected distractions happen at the same time.

He pulled out an empty bread bag and another one from under the potatoes and poured a third of the remaining cereal into each of them. “Not to get carried away,” he told himself almost out loud. He decided to leave pasta for the fourth day, in case he does not manage to catch fish.

— The survival mode is up! – He said a bit louder.

There was little use for the map now, so he put it away.

— I need to find a river and follow it, – he decided.

There were no rivers visible from the pass, but there was a gorge below, and a creek should run there, at the bottom. He began to descend.

It was steep but manageable. He moved sideways, driving the welt of the boot into the dense clay of the slope, using any irregularities. Then there was scree of small pebbles and the walking became easier. He even managed to take several large steps on the scree and quite quickly reached the boulders below. The legs were strained too much, though. He longed to take off the boots and dip the feet into the cool of the creek. But there was no any water around.

Only by the evening at the very exit from the gorge, he noticed the wet pebbles. He was lucky to pick the correct direction, and in the dusk already, did find a small creek. The feet were burning. He took off his boots, examined and washed feet, dried them up at the fire and put on fresh clean socks. The feet status was his biggest concern at the moment. Getting calluses or damaging them in any way would create a major problem. He washed the dirty socks in the creek. Tomorrow, on the top of the backpack, they will dry up in no time.

He spread the sleeping bag on a foam mattress, sprinkled some gasoline to spook a bear, threw a few thick branches into the fire, and climbed into the bag. It was nice to stretch out after a day of walking on rocks. Tomorrow the path is going to be smoother. Well, if he will not be forced to break through the piles of deadwood. Or wade the creeks or swamps. And there better be no rain, or bear, or any other surprises. A lot of things are needed for the success of his trip. And most importantly, he needs to find people.

His name was Anatoly. He arrived at the Altai mountains with a group of his friends in search of an abominable snowman. There was a whole club of such folks, who dreamed to find the hairy humanoid and “save” him. To save from what, nobody was sure. But everybody wanted to find the poor creature.

Each club member had their own experience of meeting the beast or finding signs of his present, but nobody had solid proof of his existence. To finally solve the mystery, they started performing a systematic search in the area, where people saw or thought they saw the guy: they divided the area into sub-areas, and now each group cleared one such sub-area at a time, looking for the traces or any other signs of snowman’s presence.

The Anatoly’s group canvased the area allocated to them, found nothing, and returned home, except Anatoly, who stayed for another week. In addition to the snowman search, he had a hobby – the shilajit. He has been collecting it for several years, has established distribution channels – through a pharmacy and privately. And now collected three hundred grams of the black stuff, from which one hundred or even one hundred and fifty grams of a pure shilajit can be extracted.

It was a good catch and he could go home. But no, he decided to check the neighboring area too. He did not find new deposits of shilajit. He saw a lot of pikas. But the crack in the rock, where they lived, had to have a particular configuration. The pikas had to leave in the horizontal crack, while their droppings had to fall into the vertical crack, so that in the lowest part of this vertical crack the shilajit forms after hundreds of years.

Such details, of course, not public knowledge. Who would otherwise swallow the shilajit or put it on wounds? We have lost our connection with nature. Everything, we assume, is made from pure raw materials, like it is shown in the pictures of the textbooks. But life processes are not all clean and pure like in a laboratory. And the smell … If the pictures in the textbooks smelled, then we would have many more vegetarians. Although humans can get used to almost everything or can find a convenient explanation and workarounds as needed.

Then, behold, he got lost. Oh, well, he will figure something out tomorrow. Anatoly rolled over on one side and fell asleep.

In the morning he did not shave, but immediately packed up and went down along the creek. When the sun had already risen high, he stopped and drank tea. The creek in this place merged with another one, and Anatoly hoped that soon the river would appear.

After half day of walking, however, there was still no river. Anatoly took a break to avoid the midday heat, cooked the cereal, and seasoned it with bay leaves. It turned out delicious. He dozed a little in the shade and started walking down along the creek again.

The taiga there was still not very dense. Only by the end of the day, the trees stretched upwards for twenty meters and the first deadwood piles appeared. Walking around or breaking through them was not easy.

It was then that he decided to climb up the cedar. He knew he shouldn’t do it. He would not see very far anyway. But he was worn down by the monotonous efforts. And the taiga around became denser – one could not see anything beyond the first rows of trees. He suddenly got scared that he could walk by the winter hut or any other sign of human presence without noticing it. So, he climbed.

He climbed to the very top like a squirrel, but did not see anything, except other cedars. On way the down he lost his footing, and at the same time a twig broke off under his hand.

He hit the ground hard. When he was able to see again, he was even surprised to be alive. He mentally checked the limbs. There was not much pain. But getting up was not easy. And it was hard to breathe. He pulled up his right leg but could not move the left one. The knee did not bend. It hurt. He tried to raise himself by pushing up with the hands and realized that the left arm was broken just above the wrist.

This discovery mobilized him. Now the life and death fight was up.

He closely examined himself and established the following: a broken arm (“The bones did not shift. Maybe just a crack, thank god!”), a few broken ribs (“Also without a shift. Life is good!”), and a dislocated knee cap. The latter was the worst. He could not afford not to walk at all.

He spent some time thinking, then pulled out of the backpack a tin mug and a bit of shilajit and started dissolving it in water. He always carried some shilajit, just in case. He needed to be able to move – that was his only hope for survival.

The broken arm began to ache, as well as the knee. He could not sit because of the broken ribs. But he paid no attention to the pain or discomfort and tried to act as if it were not his injuries. He tore into strips the spare shirt, spread the shilajit all over the knee, wrapped it in a piece of plastic, and bandaged tightly, assisting his hand with the teeth. Then he covered the broken area of the arm with shilajit and bandaged it, too.

It became surprisingly difficult to make a fire. It turns out one cannot do much with one hand. But eventually, he managed.

The night was long. He thought he had a fever, so he drank a cup of shilajit solution. After some time, he felt better.

The next day he stayed put in the same place, letting the knee heal a bit. He felt not bad but was concerned about going hungry. He drank more water with a shilajit and ate the second portion of cereal. It started raining shortly after noon. He climbed into the bag and covered himself with a piece of plastic. By evening, the rain stopped. He lit the fire again. There was a lot of smoke.

He hardly slept that night and dozed off only by the morning. The pain and the thought of food dwindling down did not give a break. He had to reach a place where he could catch fish. There was no other way out.

When the sun got up, he began to carve a crutch. The hatchet was recently sharpened. It helped a lot. The crutch turned out to be clumsy but allowed him to move. He hobbled all day. The amount of water in the creek remained low.

Towards evening, he again lit a fire and ate the last portion of cereal. At night, he slept very little, with nightmares every time he dozed off. He waited for the dawn as salvation, immediately got ready and went – hobbled, that is – slowly, but further and further along the creek. Once in awhile and more frequently over time, he stopped, drank water, and hobbled again.

How many more days and nights had passed, he could calculate only approximately much later. Everything merged into one continuous stream of pain-hunger-step-forward-day-another-step-night-pain.

Suddenly, as through a fog, he saw a cultivated field in front of him and thought he was hallucinating. He sat down and wanted to cry but could not. So, he remained sitting until an old man who lived in a house on the edge of the field bumped into him and saved his life.

Anatoly stayed with him for a week. The old man was not particularly talkative. Besides, he was busy all the time. Gradually, from individual phrases, Anatoly understood that he had once worked as a gamekeeper, but now lived alone, far away from other people. He knew herbs well and used them to treat Anatoly. He turned down the offer to use shilajit:

–- Herbs carry all the power. Where does the good stuff in shilajit come from? Mice eat the grass and extract all its power. That’s why shilajit heals. But the herbs heal better.

Anatoly felt that the old man did not particularly welcome his presence but had nothing against it either. It would seem that such a hermit should be interested to meet another human for a change, to learn the news, at least. But no, Anatoly did not notice any such feelings in the host. It seemed that he just lived day after day, hour after hour, perceiving everything that happened as it came, expecting nothing and not being surprised at anything as if he were just a part of the taiga in which he lived.

At the same time, the old man seemed to be imbued with deep wisdom. It manifested in everything he did, how he made decisions, and how he reacted (or did not) to the words of his guest.

Sometimes in the evenings, they talked a bit. Anatoly tried to find out more about the old man’s past. It was hard for him to believe that he had really spent his whole life in the forest. He seemed to know much more than a man can acquire without leaving the woods.

There are very different people in Siberia. Under an unprepossessing appearance, a former academician, a famous actor, athlete, or even a prince or a Russified foreigner may well be hiding. Many had served long prison sentences, rightly deserved and not. Few Siberian people liked to talk about their past, especially with a stranger.

The most Anatoly was able to extract from the old man was:

–- All my life I plowed this field.

They sat on the doorstep of the house and looked at the vast, well-cultivated field, surrounded by a dense wall of taiga.

–- And where did you got to school? – Anatoly asked

–- This field was my school and my university, – the old man answered after a pause.

He reminded Anatoly his teacher, an old master, who taught him how to “understand” metal. Just like this old man, his teacher had no formal education and did not read books. He learned from looking around without bias – without theories and generalizations, without morality and any high values attachments.

That was probably how people lived before the invention of writing, when most of the knowledge did not come from others, but from personal experience acquired under the guidance of older folks who were not inclined to broad generalizations, knowing how unpredictable the turn of events can be.

This meeting remained in Anatoly’s life the main beacon that provided guidance in all his decisions and attitude to what was happening around.

Several years later, when he visited the area again, Anatoly tried to find the old man, asked in the village – the one he reached after the old man had brought him back to life. Nobody knew about any hermit around. How could one live there alone?!

For the rest of his life, Anatoly was grateful for that encounter. But certain frustration sometimes overwhelmed him, too. Why didn’t he ask the old man this or that? Why he didn’t write down what he had said? And especially, why he did not pull from the old man all the details about his encounters with the snowman? When asked if he had seen such, the old man once answered:

— Chuchuna? Sure, I saw him. Shaggy. Very smart.

At that time, they got distracted, and the topic did not come up later. What a bummer! Such a missed opportunity!