(a fragment of memories of Varya and I rafting down the wild Oloy River in the heart of Chukotka in 1983)
***
— “I’m Ptitsyn! Stanislav! A hunter! Went for a swim… the old fool… not exactly by choice… on the way! And you… you from the capital? From Anadyr? We need to talk!” - shouted a red‑bearded man, firing off ragged phrases as he ran toward me from the riverbank, dripping wet, freezing, and exhausted.
Clutching my hand with his icy fingers as if it were a stove, Ptitsyn continued: — “Forgot, damn fool, to throttle down… started the “Vikhr”1 at full throttle … and flew right overboard! Mother of God! The boat went in circles, I swam across to intercept… swallowed half the river before the revs dropped… Good thing the throttle was loose — the engine slowed and I caught the boat! Thank God I managed to grab her and climb back in before the cramps hit!”
I stared at the legendary Stas Ptitsyn — yes, the very same one from “House for Tramps”2 — with open astonishment, while he hopped from foot to foot, shivering, and immediately switched to the real reason he had fought his way fifty kilometers upstream along a freezing, shallow river: “No cartridges! No gasoline! No spare parts… no nails… no bricks…” In short, no order in the promkhoz3 — and no one to complain to. Then the moment came: the tundra grapevine whispered that, for the first time in ages, an inspector from the capital had turned up at the perevalka4 — and Ptitsyn tore over there to hunt me down, or rather to hunt down justice itself…
At that time, Varya and I were conducting a brown bear census, drifting down the Oloy river from the very headwaters, where an MI‑4 helicopter had dropped us off with our boat and all our gear. For nearly three weeks we descended through riffles and rapids, stopping at long pools, finding bear tracks, sketching them, measuring them, recording everything required.
We were trying to finish the work before the cold set in, but a strong upstream wind and frequent stops slowed us down, and the nights had already turned bitter — even the water in the kettle froze, bulging the bottom outward, and Varya’s hair froze to the floor of the tent.
When we finally reached the perevalka, the local horses ate all the bread we had the very first night. The impudent habits of those shaggy Yakut horses are well known in the North, and we thought we had taken proper precautions by locking our supplies in the bow compartment of our “Obushka” — a duralumin Ob’ river boat.
But the horses tore the lock out — ‘down to the meat,’ as they say, and dragged out the sack of bread I had stuffed deep into the bow compartment behind the backpacks and sleeping bags. When we came to the shore in the morning, the horses were still finishing the last crumbs. I grabbed a pole and charged at the boldest horse, but he spun around nimbly and began kicking, neatly parrying my stick with his hooves. Then he even charged straight at me, wrinkling his nostrils and snapping his big yellow teeth — teeth that, as it turned out, didn’t consider duralumin to be metal at all.
We retreated in disgrace.
We had to delay our journey until enough bread could be baked to last at least to the meteorological station at the confluence of the Oloy and the Omolon.
Bread at the perevalka was baked by Alevtina Innokentyevna — a tall, broad‑shouldered Even woman, a master of all trades, who had recently served ten years for killing her husband. She had herded reindeer with him since childhood, borne him children, and had been perfectly content with married life until that fatal drunken fight in which she managed to use the knife before her enraged husband did.
When I, with an expert’s air, asked, ‘Were you a chumrabotnitsa5?’ she answered with crisp disdain: - “No! I was a herder — we had to keep moving with the reindeer, walking after them day and night, not just standing and watching, understand?”
That was the only time she showed displeasure.
Otherwise, she was invariably friendly and hospitable. During the few days she baked bread for us — one loaf a day, since she had only four molds, and the settlement went through three loaves a day — we grew accustomed to this sixty‑year‑old woman as if she were an old acquaintance. Besides Alevtina Innokentyevna, two pensioners lived at the base: Uncle Kolya, a former reindeer herder who made the best racing sleds in the valley, and Pavlov, a deaf‑mute Yakut hunter.
— “Here, Varya — it’ll be cold soon, so keep your pretty feet warm!” Alevtina Innokentyevna said as she handed Varya a new pair of chizhi6 from kamus7 — which she had been carefully sewing at night while we stayed in her cozy rustic house.
…
At last we set off with the necessary supply of bread, and about an hour and a half later we heard the ringing bark of Ptitsyn’s dogs. A light breeze carried the delicious smell of smoke, and soon his spacious cabin glowed warmly through the straight larches, their needles blazing in autumn colors.
Ptitsyn waded into the water, pulled our boat alongside his, and threw a mooring line over her stern cleat.
He talked without stopping, waving his arms, shouting at the dogs weaving underfoot, cursing the bears that disrupted his plans, the geologists, the bosses, his neighbor Foma, bad traps, rotten nets, and stingy nature itself...
Varya and I relaxed in the warm cabin, drinking tea with hot pancakes and blackcurrant jam, greedily listening to his magnificent, theatrical monologue.
Of course, Ptitsyn remembered Kuvaev well — House for Tramps stood atop a stack of dog‑eared books kept here, in what was truly a house for tramps.
The hunter’s speech rose and fell — now dropping to a whisper, now exploding in sudden scenes. Ptitsyn’s hands soared like birds, carrying us into the magical space they wove, drawing us into the dramatic events he described. Years of solitary life in the taiga or tundra naturally spill out in such unrestrained revelations from people who crave communication. I remembered our late ranger Myachin, who could stand for hours before a passing guest, pouring out everything that had accumulated in his soul “from meeting to meeting,” and not only that — for his entire conscious life as a lonely hermit.
And so Ptitsyn was completely open as he recounted an incident from several years earlier — one of the most dramatic episodes of his life.
…
That year, just before freeze‑up, Uncle Kolya set out for “Foma’s”8 place to cut birch poles, the blanks for sleds… The straightest and most flexible birch trees grew there, perfect for making the light, strong runners of racing sleds…
Uncle Kolya didn’t have his own boat, so he asked Seryozha the hydrologist to take him to Foma’s and leave him there for a couple of nights. They did just that, flying past Ptitsyn at full speed in Seryozha’s unusual little boat, which could skim over even the shallowest riffles at full throttle.
After dropping Uncle Kolya in Foma’s empty cabin (Foma had gone off to the settlement of Omolon and, true to his habit, was on quite a serious drinking spree) — Seryozha returned to his hydropost. One glance at the instruments was enough: he decided he had to bring Uncle Kolya back the very next day. The river was dropping fast, and the two riffles near the perevalka could soon become impassable even for his unique boat.
The next morning he raced downstream again, freezing in the headwind, dreaming of warming up soon in the cozy cabin with hot tea and dried fish. That’s how it’s done in the North — travelers are welcomed with warmth in every sense. Uncle Kolya should have already lit the stove and boiled the kettle, and Seryozha should have seen the hospitable smoke rising in the cold air and smelled its delicious scent.
But strangely — there was neither smoke nor smell. A bad feeling crept over Seryozha.
Dragging the boat onto the crunchy gravel, he hurried to the cabin. The door stood wide open… and in the dark doorway, right above the threshold, Uncle Kolya’s head was visible — he had managed to lift it when he heard the boat approaching. The old man was barely conscious, his clothes torn, and on the floor where he had lain through the night a dark stain had dried.
Seryozha forgot instantly about tea and warmth — he had to get Uncle Kolya to the perevalka and call for a medevac helicopter. He quickly bandaged the old reindeer herder, put him in the boat, and sped upstream. Riffle after riffle, wind and frost — they both froze to the bone, and Uncle Kolya asked to stop at Ptitsyn’s for an hour to warm up.
— “Even better,” thought Seryozha. “Stas has a radio — we can call the helicopter right from there.”
…
They sat on these very benches, at this very table, drinking from the same mugs that Varya and I now held several years after the incident.
Uncle Kolya turned out to be a tough old man and recovered quickly in the warmth, but mentally he was far away from the two talkative Russian men. No one could have read in his frozen gaze what he felt about what had happened. Ptitsyn kept pressing him for details — after all, such a dramatic event was rare in the quiet taiga life, devoid of news. It was boring otherwise. Unless a bear caused mischief — breaking into a cabin, tearing open a sack of flour, prying open cans of condensed milk.
But the battered pensioner remained laconic, and again the story came down to bear mischief: “Cut the poles… dragged them to the cabin… and then, out of the logjam, the bear… knocked me down… started tearing… then left and ran… small bear, inexperienced… a big one would’ve finished me.”
Such an explanation didn’t satisfy Ptitsyn at all. Growing heated, unable to hide his suspicion, he burst out: — “Oh come on, Uncle Kolya! Doesn’t happen like that — a bear attacks and then just lets you go for no reason! No way! You must’ve drunk some of Foma’s hooch and fell off the logjam yourself, eh? That’s how it was, right? Found the hooch, didn’t you?!”
But Uncle Kolya had neither the strength nor the desire to defend himself. And among reindeer people, it simply isn’t customary. So he argued nothing, silently drinking hot tea, regretting only that he had left without his one meaningful task for the whole long winter — the birch poles still lay on the gravel by the ill‑fated logjam. ‘Ah! Shame! Could’ve made three, maybe four good sleds…’ he thought sorrowfully, staring out the window at the freezing river. For a moment he forgot his injuries, the bear, and the two arguing men — who, in turn, had completely forgotten the old herder who needed urgent medical help.
…
After seeing the guests off, Ptitsyn decided he had to go to Foma’s immediately. Slush ice was already clogging the shallows, ice shelves were forming along the banks — there was no time to waste.
But if you think he wanted to brave the freezing riffles out of kindness, to retrieve Uncle Kolya’s abandoned sled‑runner stock, you’d be mistaken.
— “No way Uncle Kolya found all of Foma’s hooch! There must be another canister or two left somewhere!” That obsessive thought troubled Ptitsyn greatly — and off he went.
He flew at full throttle on his Vikhrya, throwing his battered kazanka9 (a popular duralumin boat in the USSR) from port to starboard, slipping sideways over shallow riffles so as not to smash the propeller on the gravel bottom...
...An hour later he was already at the mouth of the Tatiana10, whispering with his bosom friend Zhora at the geologists’ base.
- “Bosom friend — right here in the throat!” Ptitsyn jabbed a finger at his Adam’s apple, giving us a knowing grin…
Half an hour later they were both climbing out of the boat and hurrying toward Foma’s cabin — past the very logjam Uncle Kolya had spoken of.
…
At this point Ptitsyn paused his rich monologue. His hand hovered for a moment under the low ceiling and, after hanging there briefly, sliced through the cramped space as if preparing us for the full dramatic force of the next, main scene — catching us completely off guard.
“Suddenly, from behind the logjam, a bear jumps out and WHAM — hits me in the side!” Ptitsyn roared, sweeping his arm in a wide arc to show how the bear struck him, then pointing to the exact spot. “I went down like a sack, and my rifle flew the other way!”
The bear rolled Ptitsyn across the gravel, clawing at him, while Zhora, walking behind, froze in shock, unable at first to understand what to do. Finally he snapped out of it, grabbed a sturdy pole from the pile, and with all his strength struck the bear across the back.
The beast let out a startled, almost human grunt, dropped Ptitsyn, and bolted, trying to rub the bruised spot with its front paws even as it ran.
Ptitsyn found himself sitting on the ground, holding a young larch tree in his hand. The sapling had been torn out with its roots. Later, he and Zhora tried to pull out another one — even a smaller one — but they couldn’t do it.
…
— “Look!” Ptitsyn lifted his shirt and turned sideways.
Four long, healed scars from the bear’s claws clearly confirmed the truth of his story.
— “My helicopter‑issue leather jacket, my diver’s sweater, and my Chinese Druzhba shirt — all ripped in one swipe!” he said, not with fear, but with theatrical indignation, listing the damage inflicted by the mischievous bear.
…
Varya and I left the cozy house for tramps with regret, but there was nothing to be done — the weather and the wilderness had grown uncooperative. The frost was strengthening, the river was running shallow, and our journey ahead was long.
Ptitsyn’s figure disappeared behind a bend. His dogs still ran along the bank beside us, wagging their tails and filling the echoing forest with their ringing bark. And ahead of us lay new encounters in the uncharted lower reaches of the river.
And first of all — with Foma. In that very cabin by the bear’s logjam...
1 “Vikhr” (Вихрь) - a popular Soviet outboard motor.
2 “House for Tramps” (“Дом для бродяг”) is a story by Oleg Kuvaev, a well‑known Soviet writer. In it, he mentions Stanislav Ptitsyn, who once sheltered the author in his home for several days. It was first published in 1971 in the book "Тройной полярный сюжет (“A Triple Polar Plot”).
3 Gospromkhoz (госпромхоз), or simply promkhoz (промхоз), is a state enterprise in the USSR, designed for the procurement of meat and skins of wild animals, mushrooms, nuts and berries, as well as fish and other wildlife resources.
4 Perevalka (перевалбаза, перевалочная база) is a state farm's transshipment base for reindeer herding brigades. In this case, we are talking about base Ulyashka (Уляшка), on the site of an abandoned village.
5 Chumrabotnitsa (чумработница) - a woman who works in a reindeer herder’s tent, doing camp chores.
6 Chizhi (чижи) - fur socks sewn from reindeer kamus.
7 Kamus (камус) -the tough hide from the lower part of a reindeer’s legs.
8 “Foma” (Фома) — a nickname derived from his surname, Fomenko (Фоменко) — a hunter‑trapper whose territory lay downstream from Ptitsyn’s
9 “Kazanka” (“Казанка”)- a popular duralumin boat in the USSR.
10 “Tatyana” (“Татьяна”) – a creek the very border stream rich in sable, the one Foma and his neighbor ‘Kvadrat’ (“Квадрат”) fought over every time they met — though that’s a story of its own.
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