Konstantin Powesta - Meshcherskiy side - library "100 best books". Konstantin Powesta - Meshchers' Powestoys every hour the name is cold

But most lakes are still black. The old men say that the blackness is caused by the fact that the bottom of the lakes is eliminated by a thick layer of fallen leaves. Brown foliage gives a dark infusion. But it is not entirely true. Color is explained by peat bottom lakes - the older peat, the darker water.

I mentioned Meshorsk Chelny. They look like Polynesian pies. They are wound out of one piece of wood. Only on the nose and on the stern, they brought forged nails with large hats.

Chelny is very narrow, easy, turning, you can go through the smallest ducts.

Between the forests and the eye draws a wide belt bay meadow,

In the twilight, the meadow is similar to the sea. As in the sea, the sun sits down in the grass, and the lighthouses are burning lights on the Oka shore. Just like in the sea, fresh winds are blowing over the meadows, and the high sky overturned a pale green bowl.

In the meadows stretches on a lot of kilometers the old direction of the Oka. His name is a buoy.

This is a word, deep and stationary river with steep banks. The shores thickets with high, old, three clashes, seedling, centenary, rosehip, umbrella herbs and blackberries.

ONE PLA on this river we called the "fantastic stop", because nowhere else and none of us have seen such huge, in two human growth, reurenikov, blue barns, such a high median and horse sorrel and such gigantic raincoat mushrooms like this Mland.

The herbs in private places on the Nagid, such that from the boat can not be landed, - the herbs are impassable by an elastic wall. They repel a person. Herbs are sent with treacherous blackberry loops, hundreds of dangerous and barbed sinks.

Over the bid often stands easy haze. She is changing from time to day. In the morning - this is a blue fog, in the afternoon - whitening blades, and only at twilight air over the knob is made transparent as key water. The foliage of echorads barely trembles, pink from the sunset, and in the waters, Gulco beat sprinkled pikes.

In the morning, when it is impossible to go through the grass and ten steps, so as not to get into the thread from the dew, the air on the knife smells like a bitter yav, herbal freshness, four. He is thick, cool and heel.

Each autumn I spend on a kniver in a tent in many days. To get a remote idea of \u200b\u200bwhat is a breakdown, you should describe at least one spanking day. I come to the buzz on the boat. With me a tent, an ax, a lantern, a backpack with products, a sapper blade, a little dishes, tobacco, matches and fishing facilities: fishing rods, docks, rearness, gallows and, most importantly, a bank with smiling worms. They collect them in the old garden under the heaps of fallen leaves.

I have my favorite favorite, always have a very deaf place. One of them is a steep turn of the river, where it is bottled into a small lake with very high, overgrown with a vine shores.

There I break the tent. But first of all I'm taking the hay. Yes, I confess, I drag the hay from the nearest stack, but I am very deftly, so that even the most experienced eye of the old man of the collective farmer does not notice any flag. Hay I put under the tarp floor of the tent. Then, when I leave, I relate him back.

The tent must be stretching so that it goes down like a drum. Then it must be inkling, so that during the rain the water flows into the ditches on the sides of the tent and did not join the floor.

The tent is arranged. It is warm and dry. Lamp " bat»Hanging on a hook. In the evening I light it and even read in a tent, but I read it usually for a short time - there is too much noise: then the corner will begin to shout, then a powder fish will be hit with a cannonic hum, it will deafen in the fire in the fire. Thickets will begin to flare up the bugger glow and the gloomy moon will take up over the expanses of the evening earth. And immediately appease the kosor and cease to buzz in the swamps, the moon rises in a wary silence. It appears as the domain of these dark waters, centenary Yves, mysterious long nights.

Black IV tents are hanging above their heads. Looking at them, you begin to understand the meaning of old words. Obviously, such tents in previous times were called "Senyu". Under the village of Yves ... And for some reason, in such nights, the Constellation of Orion is called Stozhars, and the word "midnight", which in the city sounds, perhaps, as a literary concept, this meaning becomes here. Here is this darkness under the wings, and the glitter of September stars, and bitterness of the air, and the distant fire in the meadows, where the boys watch the horses, coented in the night, - all this is midnight. Somewhere far the watchdog knocks off the clock on the rural bell tower. It hits long, dimly - twelve blows. Then again dark silence. Only occasionally to the Ocean scatter the towing steamer with his voice.

The night stretches slowly: it seems it will not be the end. Sleeping in the autumn nights in a tent strong, fresh, despite the fact that you wake up every two hours and go to look at the sky - find out whether Sirius raised, whether the strip of dawn is not visible in the east.

Every night the night is cold. By dawn, the air is already burning with a face with a light frost, tent panels covered with a thick layer of crispy ynei, slightly sagging, and grass seats from the first matinee.

It's time to get up. In the east, it is already poured by a quiet light, already visible in the sky of huge outlines of Yves, the stars are already blown. I descend to the river, wash off the boat. Water is warm, it seems even slightly warmed.

Sun rises. Inay melts. Coastal sands are made dark from dew.

I boil strong tea in a tin wokey. Solid soot looks like enamel. In the kettle floating the buried leaves in the fire.

All morning I catch fish. I check the rear from the boat, the river across the evening from the evening. First there are empty hooks - they ate the whole bait. But the cord is stretched, cuts water, and in the depths there is a living silver shine - it goes on a hook flat bream. Behind him is visible fat and thorough perch, then - a pure woman with yellow shrill eyes. The extruded fish seems to be ice.

To these days spent on a propeller, the words of Aksakov include:

"On a green blooming shore, over the dark deep-deep river or lake, in the shade of bushes, under the tent of the Giant Island or a curly alder, quietly fluttering with its leaves in a bright water mirror, imaginary passions will be swayed, the imaginary storms will be squeezed, there will be imperishable dreams, imminent hopes will scatter. Nature will enter into eternal rights of their own. Together with the fragrant, free, light air, you will inhale the serenity of thought, the meekness of feelings, condescend to others and even to yourself. "

A little retreat from the topic

A lot of all sorts of fishing incidents are associated with a busty. I'll tell about one of them.

The great tribe of the fishermen who lived in the village of Solotche, near the bid, was excited. In Solotch, he arrived from Moscow a high old man with long silver teeth. He also caught fish.

The old man caught on the spinning: an English fishing rod with glittered - artificial nickel fish.

We despised spinning. With gloating, we watched the old man when he patiently wandered along the shores of meadow lakes and, waving spinning, as a whip, invariably squeezed an empty glitter from the water.

And right there is a lanka, the son of the shoemaker, tuskled the fish not on the English fishing line, standing hundred rubles, but on an ordinary rope. The old man sighed and complained:

- Brutal fourth injustice!

He said even with boys very politely, on "you", and used in conversation old-fashioned, long forgotten words. The old man was lucky. We have long already knew that all the fishermen are divided into deep losers and on lucky. The lucky fish pecks even on a dead worm. In addition, there are fishermen - envious and cunning. Claws think that they can overcome any fish, but never in life I have not seen such an a fisherman even the very gray hesh, not to mention the roach.

With the envious, it is better not to go to catch - it will not even be to peck. In the end, it loses weight from envy, he will begin to throw his fishing rod to yours, spank the ship by water and scares all the fish.

The black lake is called the color of water. Water in it is black and transparent.

In Meshchera, almost all lakes water different color. Most of all lakes with black

water. In other lakes (for example, in black), water resembles a brilliant

mascara. Difficult, not seeing, imagine this saturated, thick color. AND

however, water in this lake, as well as in black, completely

transparent.

This color is especially good in the fall, when yellow and yellow and

red leaves Birz and Osin. They cut the water so thickly that Chelny rustle

by foliage and leaves a brilliant black road.

But this color is good and in summer, when white lilies lie on the water, like on

unusual glass. Black water has excellent property

reflections: It is difficult to distinguish real shores from reflected, real

thickets - from their reflection in the water.

In the Uzensky lake, water purple, in Segden - yellowish, in the Great Lake

Tin color, and in lakes behind the break - a little bluish. In meadow lakes

in summer, the water is transparent, and in the fall acquires a greenish marine color and

even the smell of sea water.

But most lakes are still black. Old men say that black is caused

in the way that the bottom of the lakes is eliminated by a thick layer of fallen leaves. Brown foliage gives

dark infusion. But it is not entirely true. Color is explained by peat bottom lakes

The old peat, the darker water.

I mentioned the Meshchersk Chelny. They look like Polynesian pies. They are

punched from one piece of wood. Only on the nose and on the stern they are glued

forged nails with large hats.

Chelny is very narrow, easy, turning, you can go through the smallest

drives.

Between the forests and the eye draws a wide belt bay meadow.

In the meadows stretches on a lot of kilometers the old direction of the Oka. His name is a buoy.

This is a word, deep and stationary river with steep banks. Shores

thickets with high, old, three clashes, coolers, centenary,

rosehip, umbrella herbs and blackberries.

sorrel and such gigantic raincoat mushrooms like on this point.

dangerous and barbed sills.

osokoria barely trembles, pink from sunset, and in pools Gulco beat

spanish pikes.

In the morning, when it is impossible to go through the grass and ten steps to not bust

before the thread from the dew, the air on the knife smells like a bitter yav

herbal freshness, Russian. He is thick, cool and heel.

Each autumn I spend on a kniver in a tent in many days. To obtain

the remote idea of \u200b\u200bwhat a breakdown should be described at least

one spanking day. I come to the buzz on the boat. With me tent

ax, lantern, backpack with products, sapper blade, little dishes,

tobacco, matches and fishing accessories: Fishing rods, docks, rear

pravitsa and, most importantly, a bank with smiling worms. And collect them in

old garden under the heaps of fallen leaves.

I have my favorite favorite, always have a very deaf place. One of

they are a steep turn of the river, where it blooms into a small lake with

very high, overgrown with a vine shores.

There I break the tent. But first of all I'm taking the hay. Yes, I confess, I

i carry the hay from the nearest stack, I'm very deftily, so that even

the most experienced Eye of the old man of the collective farmer will not notice any flag.

Hay I put under the tarp floor of the tent. Then, when I'm leaving, I

i do it back.

The tent must be stretching so that it goes down like a drum. Then it is necessary

dig in order to drain water in the ditch on the sides of the tent and not

used the floor.

The tent is arranged. It is warm and dry. Lantern "Bat Mouse" hangs on

crochet. In the evening I light it and even read in the tent, but I read usually

for a short time, there is too much interference on a knit: then behind the next bush will begin

screaming the corner, then a powder fish will hit the cannon

deafeningly shooting in the fire of the Yves rod and sprinkle sparks, then above

thickets will begin to flare the crimson glow and a gloomy moon will take up

expanders of evening land. And immediately appease the kosor and stop

to buzz in the swamps, the moon rises in alert-noine silence. She is

appears as the domain of these dark waters, centenary Yves, mysterious

long nights.

Black IV tents are hanging above their heads. Looking at them, you begin to understand

the meaning of old words. Obviously, such tents in former times were called

"Senya". Under the Senyu Yves ...

and the brilliance of September stars, and air bitterness, and a distant fire in the meadows,

where boys watching horses hinged into the night, all this is midnight. Somewhere

far of the watchman chops on a rural bell tower. He hits long, dimly -

twelve blows. Then again dark silence. Only occasionally on the mouth

Forest rivers and canals

I again distracted from the card. To finish with her, I must say about the mighty massifes of the forests (they pour the entire map of green dull paint), about mysterious white spots in the depths of the forests and about two rivers - Solotche and Previous to South through the forests, swamps and Gary.

Solotcha - winding, shallow river. In her flags stand under the shores of the Piazza. Water in solotch red. Such water peasants are called "harsh". Throughout the river, only in one place is suitable for it.

Pra flows from the lakes of Northern Meshchera in Oka. Villages on the shores are very small. In the old time, the splitters settled in the premium forests.

In the city of Savior Klepika, in the upper reaches, the ancient cotton factory works. She descends the cotton products into the river, and the bottom of the spacing is covered with a thick layer of a blind black cotton wool. It should be, the only river In the Soviet Union with a cotton room.

In addition to rivers, there are many channels in the Meshchersk region.

Upon Alexander II, General Zhilinsky decided to drain the Meshcherski swamps and create large lands for colonization near Moscow. An expedition was sent to Meshreir. She worked twenty years old and dried only a half thousand hectares of the Earth, but no one wanted to settle on this earth - she turned out to be very scarce.

Zhilinsky spent many channels in Meshrera. Now these channels stuck and thickets with swamp herbs. Ducks nest in them, lazy lini and boiled belts live.

These channels are very picturesque. They go deep into the forests. Thickets hang over the water with dark arches. It seems that each channel leads to mysterious places. On the channels, especially in spring, you can make your way in a light chely on tens of kilometers.

Sweet the smell of water lilies is mixed with the smell of resin. Sometimes high reeds brave the channels with solid dams. On the shores grows the white crust. The leaves are a bit like the leaves of the valley, but on one sheet there is a wide white strip, and it seems that it blooms huge snowflowers. Fern, blackberry, horsetails and moss lean off from the shores. If you hurt your hand or oars for the moss' cosma, bright emerald dust is crashed out of it with a dense cloud - controversy of cuckoo flax. Pink Cyprus flowers low walls. Olive booms swimming dive in water and attack the flocks of fry. Sometimes you have to drag Chelny with a wolf in shallow water. Then the femards are biting legs to blood.

Silence is violated only by ringing mosquitoes and fish splashes.

Swimming always leads to an unknown target - to a forest lake or to a forest river carrying clean water over a shine bottom.

On the shores of these rivers in deep norah live water rats. There are rats, completely gray from old age.

If it is quietly monitoring the hole, then you can see how the rat catches the fish. She crawls out of the hole, dives very deeply and floats with terrible noise. On wide water circles, yellow pitches are swinging. In the mouth of the rat holds silver fish and sails with her to the shore. When the fish can be more rat, the struggle lasts long, and the rat gets out to the shore of tired, with red eyes.

To make it easier to swim, water rats are unloaded with a long stem of Kuga and float, holding it in the teeth. Stem Cuga Polon Air Cells. He perfectly holds on the water, not even such a severity like rat.

Zhilinsky tried to dry the meshwer swamps. From this idea did not come out. The soil of the meshchera is peat, subzole and sands. Only potatoes will be born on the sands. The wealth of the meshchera is not in the ground, but in the forests, in the peat and in the filler meadows on the left bank of the Oka. These meadows other scientists are compared for fertility with the floodplain of the Nile. Meadows give a magnificent hay.

Meshchera - the remainder of the forest ocean. Meshchery forests are majestic as cathedrals. Even the old professor, not the prone to poetry, wrote in a study on the Meshchery region.

In the wind forest noise. The buzz passes along the tops of the pines, like waves. A lonely aircraft swimming on a dizzying height seems to be a destroyer observed from the bottom of the sea.

Powerful air currents are visible by a simple eye. They are raised from the ground to the sky. Clouds melt, standing still. Dry the breath of forests and the smell of juniper must be coming to the aircraft.

In addition to pine forests, masts and ship, there are fir forests, birch and rare stains of broadly lip, elm and oaks. There are no roads in oak armor. They do not learn and are dangerous due to ants. It's almost impossible to go through the oak thicket in a hot day: in a minute, the whole body, from the heels to the head, will cover the redish evil ants with strong jaws. In the oak thickets roam harmless bears-antigents. They excavated old stumps and lick ant eggs.

Forests in the meshrera robbing, deaf. There is no greater holiday and enjoyment than to go all day on these forests, according to unfamiliar roads to some far lake.

The path in the forests is kilometers of silence, ulution. This is a mushroom prelae, cautiously pepperfers birds. These are sticky mulberries, rolled cheese, rigid grass, cold white mushrooms, strawberries, purple bells in glades, shivering aspen leaves, solemn light and, finally, forest twilight, when the moss pulls the dampness and fireflies are burning in the grass.

The sunset is hardly glowing on the crowns of trees, golden by their old gilding. Below, at the foot of the pine, it is already dark and deaf. Surely fly and seem to look in the face of bats. Some incomprehensible stories are heard in the forests - the sound of the evening, the exhaust day.

And in the evening, finally the lake, as a black, sideline furnished mirror. The night is already standing on it and looks into his dark water, - Night, full of stars. In the West, there is still a dawn, in the thickets of the wolf berry shouts with a lot, and they mumble on Msharah and rusty cranes, worried about the smoke of the fire.

All night fire fire is bravely, it goes out. Foliage Bereza hangs without lying. Rosa runs on white troughs. And hear how somewhere far away - it seems, after the edge of the Earth, the old rooster screams in the skeleton of the forester.

In an extraordinary, never heard silence is emerging dawn. Sky in the east green. Blue crystal lights up at the Zare Venus. it best time day. Still sleeps. Sleeping water, sleeping the pita, sleep, bolding around the noses in the squigs, fish, sleep the birds, and only owls fly around the fire slowly and silently, like whisk white fluff.

The bowler is angry and mumble on fire. For some reason we speak in a whisper - we are afraid of sighing the dawn. Heavy ducks rush with tin whistle. Fog begins to flow over water. We vail in the bonfire of the trees of the branches and look at how the huge white sun rises - the sun of an endless summer day.

So we live in a tent on forest lakes for several days. Our hands smell like smoke and lingonberries - this smell does not disappear for weeks. We sleep for two hours a day and almost do not know fatigue. There must be two or three hours of sleep in the forests stand at many hours of sleep in a glass of urban homes, in the fobtime of asphalt streets.

Once we spent the night on a black lake, in high thickets, near the big pile of old twig.

We took a rubber inflatable boat with you and left the edge of the coastal water lugs at the dawn - to catch fish. At the bottom of the lake, the fat layers were eliminated leaves, and squigs were swimming in the water.

Suddenly, the boat itself has a huge humpback back of black fish with sharp, like a kitchen knife, spinal fin. Fish dived and passed under the rubber boat. The boat was injected. Fish emerged again. It must have been a giant pike. She could hurt a rubber boat with a pen and sravel her as a razor.

I hit the oars on the water. Fish in response to terrible power Whitched the tail and again passed under the boat itself. We threw out and began to row to the shore, to your Bivak. Fish all the time went near the boat.

We entered the coastal thickets of the water lugs and prepared to stick, but at that time the sighty peculiar tovakne was rang out from the shore and the trembling lacking behind the heart of howl. Where we descended the boat, on the shore, on the hint of the grass stood, prying the tail, a wolf with three wolves and lined, raising the face to the sky. She lied for a long time and boring; Volctera squeezed and hid behind the mother. Black fish again passed at the side itself and hooked the pen for the oars.

I threw in a wolf heavy lead ship. She bounced off and ruined the shore. And we saw how she climbed together with the wicras in the round hole in a bunch of his twigs, not far from our tent.

We landed, raised the noise, kicked out the wolf of the twigs and moved Bivak to another place.

The black lake is called the color of water. Water in it is black and transparent.

In Meshrere, almost all lakes are water different colors. Most lakes with black water. In other lakes (for example, in black), water resembles a brilliant mascara. Difficult, not seeing, imagine this saturated, thick color. And at the same time water in this lake, as well as in black, completely transparent.

This color is especially good in the fall, when yellow and red leaves of birches and oxin flies on black water. They settle the water so thickly that Chelny rustles in foliage and reserves a brilliant black road behind him.

But this color is good and in summer, when white lilies lie on the water, like on an extraordinary glass. Black water has an excellent reflection property: it is difficult to distinguish real shores from reflected, real thickets - from their reflection in water.

In the Uzensky Lake, water purple, in Segden - yellowish, in the Great Lake - tin color, and in the lakes behind the trace - a little bluish. In the meadow lakes in summer, the water is transparent, and in the fall, it acquires a greenish marine color and even the smell of sea water.

I mentioned the Meshchersk Chelny. They look like Polynesian pies. They are wound out of one piece of wood. Only on the nose and on the stern, they brought forged nails with large hats.

Chelny is very narrow, easy, turning, you can go through the smallest ducts.

Between the forests and the eye draws a wide belt bay meadow.

In the twilight, the meadow is similar to the sea. As in the sea, the sun sits down in the grass, and the lighthouses are burning lights on the banks of the Oka. Just like in the sea, fresh winds are blowing over the meadows, and the high sky overturned a pale green bowl.

In the meadows stretches on a lot of kilometers the old direction of the Oka. His name is a buoy.

This is a word, deep and stationary river with steep banks. The shores thickets with high, old, three clashes, seedling, centenary, rosehip, umbrella herbs and blackberries.

One Ples on this river we called a "fantastic break" because nowhere and none of us have seen such huge, in two human growth, burdens, blue spines, such a high median and horse sornery and such gigantic raincoat mushrooms like this Mland.

I have my favorite favorite, always have a very deaf place. One of them is a steep turn of the river, where it is bottled into a small lake with very high, overgrown with a vine shores.

There I break the tent. But first of all I'm taking the hay. Yes, I confess, I'm taking a hay of the nearest stack, I'm very deftily, so that even the most experienced eye of the old man of the collective farmer will not notice any flag. Hay I put under the tarp floor of the tent. Then, when I leave, I relate him back.

The tent must be stretching so that it goes down like a drum. Then it must be inkling, so that during the rain the water flows into the ditches on the sides of the tent and did not join the floor.

The tent is arranged. It is warm and dry. The lantern "bat" hangs on the hook. In the evening I light it and even read in a tent, but I read it usually for a short time - there is too much noise: then the corner will begin to shout, then a powder fish will be hit with a cannonic hum, it will deafen in the fire in the fire, the scark rods and sprinkle Thickets will begin to flare up the bugger glow and the gloomy moon will take up over the expanses of the evening earth. And immediately, the kosor will immediately eat and stop walking in the swamps, the Moon rises in alert-noine silence. It appears as the domain of these dark waters, centenary Yves, mysterious long nights.

Black IV tents are hanging above their heads. Looking at them, you begin to understand the meaning of old words. Obviously, such tents in previous times were called "Senyu". Under the Senyu Yves ...

And for some reason, in such nights, the Constellation of Orion is called Stozhars, and the word "midnight", which in the city sounds, perhaps, as a literary concept, this meaning becomes here. Here is this darkness under the wings, and the glitter of September stars, and bitterness of the air, and the distant fire in the meadows, where the boys watch the horses, coented in the night, - all this is midnight. Somewhere far the watchdog knocks off the clock on the rural bell tower. It hits long, dimly - twelve blows. Then again dark silence. Only occasionally to the Ocean scatter the towing steamer with his voice.

Night stretches slowly; It seems she will not end. Sleeping in the autumn nights in a tent strong, fresh, despite the fact that you wake up every two hours and go to look at the sky - find out whether Sirius raised, whether the strip of dawn is not visible in the east.

Sun rises. Inay melts. Coastal sands are made dark from dew.

I boil strong tea in a tin wokey. Solid soot looks like enamel. In the kettle floating the buried leaves in the fire.

All morning I catch fish. I check the rear from the boat, the river across the evening from the evening. First there are empty hooks - they ate the whole bait. But here the cord pulls, it cuts water, and in the depths there is a living silver shine - it goes on a hook flat bream. Behind him is visible fat and thorough perch, then - a pure woman with yellow shrill eyes. The extruded fish seems to be ice.

To these days spent on a propeller, the words of Aksakov include:

"On a green blooming shore, over the dark deep-deep river or lake, in the shade of bushes, under the shatter of the Giant Island or a curly alder, quietly fluttering with its leaves in a bright water mirror, imaginary passions will be hugged, the imaginary storms will swell, the impersonal dreams will crumble, imminent hopes will scatter. Nature will enter into eternal rights of its own. Together with the incense, free, light air, you will inspire the serenity of thought, the meekness of feelings, condescend to others and even to yourself. "

A little retreat from the topic

A lot of all sorts of fishing incidents are associated with a busty. I'll tell about one of them.

The great tribe of the fishermen who lived in the village of Solotche, near the buzz, was excited. In Solotch, he arrived from Moscow a high old man with long silver teeth. He also caught fish.

The old man caught on the spinning: an English fishing rod with glittered - artificial nickel fish.

And right there is a lanka, the son of the shoemaker, tuskled the fish not on the English fishing line, standing hundred rubles, but on an ordinary rope. The old man sighed and complained:

Brutal injustice of fate!

He said even with boys very politely, on "you", and used in conversation old-fashioned, long forgotten words. The old man was lucky. We have long already knew that all the fishermen are divided into deep losers and on lucky. The lucky fish pecks even on a dead worm. In addition, there are fishermen - envious and cunning. Claws think that they can overheet any fish, but never in life I have not seen such an a fisherman even the very gray hesh, not to mention the roach.

So, the old man was not lucky. In one day, he climbed the squiga at least ten expensive glitters, walked all in blood and blisters from mosquitoes, but did not give up.

Once we took it with you to Lake Segden.

All night the old man dreamed by the fire, like a horse: He was afraid to sit on the crude ground. At the dawn, I fried the scrambled eggs with lard. Sleepy old man wanted to step over a bonfire to get bread from the bag, stumbled and the huge feet came to the scrambled eggs.

He pulled out his leg, shook her yellow, shook her in the air and struck the jug with milk. The jug cracked and crumbled into small pieces. And the wonderful foil milk with a light rustle was concerned about our eyes in the wet earth.

To blame! - said the old man, apologizing to the jug.

Then he went to the lake, lowered his leg into the cold water and spent a long time for a long time to wash off the scrambled egg from the shoe. For two minutes, we could not say a word, and then laughed in the bushes until half a day.

Everyone knows that once the fisherman is not lucky, it is sooner or later such a good failure will happen to him that there will be no less than ten years about her. Finally, such a failure happened.

We went with an old man on a buzz. The meadows have not been beveled yet. Chamomile magnitude with palm clapped on the legs.

The old man was walking and, stumbling about the grass, repeated:

What a fragrance, citizens! What kind of harmony aroma!

Over the bucks stood windless. Even IV leaves did not move and did not show the silvery inside, as it happens at easy wind. In the heated herbs "Jundel" bumblebees.

I sat on a broken raft, smoked and watched a punch float. I waited patiently when the float flies and go to the green river depth. The old man walked over the sandy shore with spinning. I heard from the bushes his sighs and exclamations:

What a wonderful, charming morning!

Then I heard the rivets, hobs, snakes and sounds, very similar to the pits of the cow with a tied mouth. Something hard slapped into the water, and the old man shouted with a thin voice:

My God, what beauty!

I jumped off the bad, the belt in the water got to the shore and ran up to the old man. He stood behind the bushes at the water itself, and the old pike breathed in front of him in front of him. At first glance, it was no less pound.

But the old man came across me and trembling his hands taken out of Pensna's pocket. He put it on him, bent over the pike and began to consider it with such a delight, with what experts admire a rare painting in the museum.

Pike did not reduce evil rooted eyes from the old man.

Great looks like a crocodile! Said Lenka. Pike glanced at Lenka, and he bounced off. It seemed that the pike was stuck: "Well, wait, a fool, I'll throw out your ears!"

Golubushka! - an old man exclaimed and leaned over the pike even lower.

Then there was a failure, which is still told by the village.

The pike tried out, blinking the eye and with all the scope struck the old man with a tail on the cheek. Over the carotid water, a deafening crackle of the fellows was heard. Pensna flew to the river. Pike jumped and slightly plipped into the water.

Alas! - shouted the old man, but it was too late.

Aside, Lenka shouted and shouted with a sauna voice:

Yeah! Received! Do not catch, do not catch, do not catch when you do not know how!

On the same day, the old man reached his spinning and left for Moscow. And no one has no longer violated the silence of ducts and rivers, did not break off the glittered cold river lilies and did not adversely out loudly the better to admire without words.

More about meadows

There are a lot of lakes in the meadows. They have a strange and diverse names: quiet, bull, hotels, wenter, ditch, styrica, muga, beobrovka, Selian lake and finally Langobard.

On the bottom of the hotz lie black moraine oaks. In quiet always calm. High shores close the lake from the winds. In the bobrovka there was no time beavers, and now the silver races. Promone - a deep lake with such a capricious fish that only a person with very good nerves can catch it. Bull - the lake mysterious, distant, stretching on a lot of kilometers. In it, the melons are replaced by pools, but there is little shadow on the shores, and therefore we avoid it. Amazing golden lines are found in the ditch: each such lin pecks half an hour. By the fall of the banks of the ditch are covered with purple spots, but not from autumn foliage, but from the abundance of very large breeds of rosehip.

On the old man on the shores - the sand dunes, overgrown with the Chernobor and a turn. The grass grows on the dunes, her name is in the luggage. These are dense gray-green balls, similar to the tight-closing rose. If you snatch such a ball from the sand and put the roots up, it begins to slowly swing, as the beetle turned on his back, straightens the petals on one side, rests on them and turns over again with roots to the ground.

In the museum, the depth comes to twenty meters. On the shores of the Much, during the autumn flight, the caravaline flocks are resting. The village of Lake all overgrown with black Kuga. It nest hundreds of ducks.

How names are given! In the meadows near the old man there is a small ramless lake. We called him Langobard in honor of the bearded guard - "Langobard". He lived on the shore of the lake in a halate, stamped the cabbage gardens. And a year later, to our surprise, the name was given, but the collective farmers redid it in their own way and began to call it a lake of the barn.

A variety of herbs in the meadows unheard. The unkurved meadows are so souls that the head is misty and a heavy head. The kilometers stretch thick, high chamomile thickets, chicory, clover, wild dill, cloves, coltsfoot, dandelions, gentzians, plantain, flakes, butt and tens of other flowering herbs. Meadow strawberries ripen in herbs.

I have my favorite favorite, always have a very deaf place. One of them is a steep turn of the river, where it is bottled into a small lake with very high, overgrown with a vine shores.

The tent is arranged. It is warm and dry. Lantern "Bat" hangs on a hook. In the evening I light it and even read in a tent, but I read it usually for a short time - there is too much noise: then the corner will begin to shout, then a powder fish will be hit with a cannonic hum, it will deafen in the fire in the fire, the scark rods and sprinkle Thickets will begin to flare up the bugger glow and the gloomy moon will take up over the expanses of the evening earth. And immediately appease the kosor and cease to buzz in the swamps, the moon rises in a wary silence. It appears as the domain of these dark waters, centenary Yves, mysterious long nights.

A little retreat from the topic

Black IV tents are hanging above their heads. Looking at them, you begin to understand the meaning of old words. Obviously, such tents in previous times were called "Senyu". Under the Senyu Yves ...

Sun rises. Inay melts. Coastal sands are made dark from dew.

I boil strong tea in a tin wokey. Solid soot looks like enamel. In the kettle floating the buried leaves in the fire.

To these days spent on a propeller, the words of Aksakov include:

A little retreat from the topic

A lot of all sorts of fishing incidents are associated with a busty. I'll tell about one of them.

The great tribe of the fishermen who lived in the village of Solotche, near the buzz, was excited. In Solotch, he arrived from Moscow a high old man with long silver teeth. He also caught fish.

The old man caught on the spinning: an English fishing rod with glittered - artificial nickel fish.

And right there is a lanka, the son of the shoemaker, tuskled the fish not on the English fishing line, standing hundred rubles, but on an ordinary rope. The old man sighed and complained:

Brutal injustice of fate!

So, the old man was not lucky. In one day, he climbed the squiga at least ten expensive glitters, walked all in blood and blisters from mosquitoes, but did not give up.

Once we took it with you to Lake Segden.

To blame! - said the old man, apologizing to the jug.

What a fragrance, citizens! What kind of harmony aroma!

What a wonderful, charming morning!

My God, what beauty!

Great looks like a crocodile! Said Lenka.

Golubushka! - an old man exclaimed and leaned over the pike even lower.

Alas! - shouted the old man, but it was too late.

Yeah! Received! Do not catch, do not catch, do not catch when you do not know how!

Meshchership

Story

Ordinary land

There are no special beauties and wealth, except for forests, meadows and transparent air in the Meshchersk Territory. But still the edge of this has a great attractive force. It is very modest - just like the paintings of Levitan. But in it, as in these paintings, the whole charm and all invisible at first glance is a variety of Russian nature.

What can be seen in the Meshchersk region? Blooming or beveled meadows, pine forests, wage and forest lakes, overgrown with black Kuga, stacks smelling dry and warm hay. Hay in stacks keeps heat all winter.

I had to spend the night in stacks in October, when the grass at dawn is covered in the other, like salt. I pulled a deep hole in the hay, climbed into her and slept all night in stack, as if in a locked room. And there was cold rain over the meadows, and the wind launched oblique blows.

In the Meshchersk region you can see pine bours, where it is solemn and quiet that the bubbler "Boltune" of the lost cow is heard away, almost for a kilometer. But such silence is in the forests only in windless days. In the wind of the forests, the great ocean roar and the peaks of the pines are bent after the fluttering clouds.

In the Meshchersk Territory, you can see forest lakes with dark water, extensive swamps covered with alder and aspen, lonely, charred from the old age of foresters, sands, juniper, heather, shoals of cranes and familiar with all the stars' latitudes.

What can I hear in the Meshchersk region, except for the roast of pine forests? Creamers of quails and hawks, whistle of tips, a fussy knock of Dyatlov, howl wolves, rain rustles in red-haired, evening crying harmonica in a village, and at night - a different singing of the roosters and the beater of a rustic guard.

But you can see and hear so little only in the first days. Then every day this edge is all richer, more diverse, Mile Heart. And finally, the time comes when each Iva is above the swollen river seems to be very familiar when the amazing stories can be told about it.

I violated the custom of geographers. Almost all geographic books begin with the same phrase: "This region lies between such degrees of Eastern longitude and northern latitude and borders in the south with such an area, and in the north - with such something." I will not call the latitudes and the longitude of the Meshchersky region. Suffice it to say that he lies between Vladimir and Ryazan, not far from Moscow, and is one of the few surviving forest islands, the residue of the "Great Belt coniferous forests" He pulled out once from the woodland to the Urals. It included forests: Chernihiv, Bryansk, Kaluga, Meshcherski, Mordovskie and Kerzhensky. In these forests, the ancient Russia was disturbed from Tatar raids.

First meeting

I first came to the Meshchersky region from the north, from Vladimir.

For Guses-Crystal, on a quiet station Tum, I moved to the train of the narrow scene. It was a train of Stephenson Times. The locomotive, similar to a samovar whistled by the children's falsetto. The locomotive had a hurt nickname: "Merin". He really looked like the old Merine. On the roundabilities, he stopped and stopped. Passengers went to smoke. Forest silence stood around the chipping "Merin". The smell of wild cloves heated by the sun filled the wagons.

Passengers were sitting on the venues - things in the wagon did not fit. Occasionally, bags, baskets, carpent saws began to fly from the site from the site on the canvas, and their owner popped out for things, often quite ancient old woman. Inexperienced passengers were afraid, and experienced, twisting "goat legs" and digging, explained that this is the most convenient way to disembark from the train closer towards his village.

A narrow scene in mentor forests is the toughest railway in the Union.

The stations are littered with resinous logs and smell with fresh rinse and wild forest colors.

At the station Pilevo to the car, the savory grandfather. He crossed in the corner, where the round cast iron stove rattled, sighed and complained to the space '

"Slightly, now take me over the beard - go to the city, tie up Lapti. And it is not in consideration, which may not be a penny of a penny. Send me to the museum, where the Soviet government collects cards, the price list, all that other things. Separate with a statement.

- What are you trying?

- You look - here!

The grandfather pulled out a gloomy piece of paper, filmed with her Mahru and showed a babe neighbor.

"Manka, read," said Baba Girl, rubbed his nose about the window. Manka covered the dress on the scratched knees, picked up his legs and began to read a hoarse voice:

- "Consistent that unfamiliar birds live in the lake, huge growth striped, only three; It is unknown, the flutter flew, - it would be necessary to take alive for the museum, and therefore send the catches. "

"That's," the grandfather said in proud, "for what business now the bones break. And all Leshka-Komsomolets. Yazva - Passion! Ugh!

Grandfather spat. Baba wiped round mouth with a scarf and sighed. The locomotive frightened, the forests buzz and on the left, raging, like the lake. Hosted western wind. The train barely broke through his raw flows and is hopelessly late, hanging out on empty half-stands.

- Here is an existence of our, - Santa repeated - the rampant year chased me in the museum, today again!

- What did you find in the ramp year? - asked Baba.

- Torchack!

- Chega?

- Torchack. Well, the bone ancient. She was lying in the swamp. Sort of deer. Horns - with this car. Straight passion. They dug his whole month. The people spent thoroughly.

- Did he give up on? - asked Baba.

- We will teach the guys.

About this find in the "Research and Materials of the Regional Museum" reported the following:

"The skeleton went deep into the bog, not giving supports for the corps. I had to undress and descend into the bog, which was extremely difficult due to the ice-cooled temperature of the spring water. Huge horns, like the skull, were intact, but extremely fragile due to the complete maceration (discovery) of bones. The bones were blocked right in their hands, but as the hardness of the bones were restored. "

The skeleton of the giant fossil Irish deer was found with the scope of horns in two and a half meters.

With this meeting with cosmonate grandfather My acquaintance began with Meshcher. Then I heard a lot of stories about Mammoth's teeth, and about the treasures, and about the mushrooms of the magnitude with the human head. But this first story in the train remembered me especially sharply.

Vintage card

With great difficulty, I got a map of the Meshchersk region. It was a mark on it: "The map is compiled according to the old surveillance, produced until 1870." I had to correct this card myself. The river beds changed. Where the marsh and a young pine forest were noisily on the map; At the site of other lakes were the bog.

But still it was more reliable to use this card than to engage in the abrasions of local residents. For a long time, it was so possible in Russia, that no one so much dips when explains the road as a local resident, especially if he is talkative.

"You, a dear man," the local resident shouts, "others don't hear others!" They tell you such that you will be not happy about life. You have one rumor me, I know these places. Go to the Occolic, you will see the hut-five-ranger on the left hand, take from the wrong hand on the stitch across the sands, you will reach the border and Vali, the cute, the edge of the prodle, Vali, do not be able to up to the very beginning of Willow. From her, you take a little bit to the forest, past the museum, and for the museum, give it cool to the holloch, and behind the holloye the road is known - through Mshara to the lake itself.

- And how many kilometers?

- Who knows? Maybe ten, and maybe all twenty. There are kilometers, cute, nemerene.

I tried to follow these tips, but always or burned IV turned out to be somewhat, or there was no noticeable hollochka, and I waving my hand on the stories of the natives, relied only for your own sense of direction. It almost never deceived me.

Natives always explained the road with passion, with violent hobby. It was at first to amused, but somehow I myself had to explain the way to Lake Segden Poet Simonov, and I caught myself that I told him about the signs of this confusing road with the same passion as the natives.

Every time you explain the way that you go through it again, in all these driving places, on forest calaims, destroyed in the colors of the immortelle, and again feel ease in the soul. This ease always comes to us when the path is far and not on the heart of worries.

A few words about the signs

In order not to get lost in the forests, you need to know the signs. Find signs or to create them - a very exciting occupation. The world will take infinitely diverse. It happens very joyful when the same sign is preserved in the forests year after year - every autumn you meet all the same fiery bush of Ryabina behind the Larina Pond or all the same snub made by you on the pine. With each summer, the cat is growing more stronger than solid golden resin.

Signals on the roads are not the main signs. These signs are considered to be those that determine the weather and time.

It will take so much that it could be written about a whole book. We do not need signs in the cities. Fire rowan replaces the enameled blue plate with the title of the street. Time is found not at the height of the sun, not by the position of constellations and not even on the cock cries, but by the hour. Weather predictions are transmitted by radio. In cities, most of our natural instincts immersed in a hibernation. But it is worth spending two or three nights in the forest, and the rumor is sharpened again, the eye is made to the eye, the sense of smell.

Signs are associated with everything: with the color of the sky, with dew and fogs, with the bird with the bird and the brightness of the star light.

A lot of accurate knowledge and poetry is concluded in the signs. There are signs simple and complex. The simplest sign is the smoke of the fire. That he rises to the post to the sky, quietly flows upwards, above the highest Yves, then it is stealing the fog on the grass, then meswords around the fire. And so to the delights of the night campfire, to the bitter smell of smoke, the cod of the busty, the oguning of the fire and the fluffy white ashes are also joined by the knowledge of tomorrow's weather.

Looking at smoke, it is possible to definitely say whether it will rain tomorrow, wind or again, like today, the sun will rise in deep silence, in blue cool fogs. Sleeping and warmth predicts evening dew. It is so abundant that even glitters at night, reflecting the light of the stars. And the more rude dew, the hotter will be tomorrow.

These are all very simple signs. But there are signs of complex and accurate. Sometimes the sky suddenly seems very high, and the horizon is compressed, it seems close to the horizon as if no more than a kilometer. This is a sign of future clear weather.

Sometimes in a cloudless day suddenly ceases to take a fish. Rivers and lakes are dead, as if out of them left life forever. This is a sure sign of close and long bad weather. In a day or two, the Sun will go to the Baghoma ominous Mol, and by noon, black clouds will almost touch the Earth, blows the raw wind and they pour out the tricks, catching sleeping chains.

Return to the map

I remembered the signs and distracted from the map of the Meshchersky region.

Studying unfamiliar edge always starts with a card. This occupation is no less interesting than the study will take. On the map you can travel the same way as on the ground, but then, when you get to this real land, knowledge of the card immediately affects - you no longer blame blindly and do not spend time on trifles.

On the map of the Meshchersky region below, in the old corner, in the south, the bending is shown fit river. This is an eye. To the north of Oki, the wooded and swampy nizin stretches, to the south - long-haired, populated Ryazan land. Oka flows in front of two completely different, very dissimilar spaces.

Ryazan lands of bread, yellow from rye fields, curly from apple ordeal gardens. Okolitsa Ryazan villages often merge with each other, the villages are scattered by thick, and there is no such place, from wherever it is visible on the horizon alone, or even two or three more surviving bell tower. Instead of forests on the slopes of logs, birch groves are noisy.

Ryazan land - Earth fields. South of Ryazan are already starting steppes.

But it is worth crossing the ferry through OKU, and at a wide band of the Prioksky meadows already stand in a dark wall of meshchersa pine forests. They go to the north and east, round lakes will blue. These forests hide huge peat swamps in their depths.

In the west of the Meshchersky region, on the so-called boric side, among the pine forests, eight Borovy Lakes lie in Mescolese. There are no roads or a trail, and you can only get to them through the forest on the map and the compass.

These lakes have one very strange property: the smaller the lake, the more deeper. In the large Mitinsky lake only four meters of depth, and in a small attendant seventeen meters.

Msryry

East of the Borovy Lakes lie huge Meshcherski swamps - "Mshary" or "Omshrai". This overgrown during the millennia of the lake. They occupy the area in three hundred thousand hectares. When you stand among such a swamp, the former highland of the lake is clearly visible by the horizon - "Mainland" - with his dense pine forest. In some places, sandy bumps, squeezed and fern, are visible on Msharah, are the former islands. Local residents still have these bugras "Islands". On the "Islands" idle spend the night.

Somehow, at the end of September, we walked with ushram to the trashing lake. The lake was mysterious. Baba was told that the cranberries of the nut and the fetal mushrooms "a little more than a culberry head" grow along its shores. From these fungi lake and got its name. On the frightened lake of Baba went feared - about him there were some "green quags".

- How to step foot, "they told women," so the whole earth will blow under you, thoroughly, says, like Zybka, Olha hards, and water will hit the lapels from under the face. By God! Direct such passions - it is impossible to say. And the lake without the bottom, black. If what a young woman looked at him - the police officer.

- Why is the surrender?

- from fear. So you fear and tread on the back, and it's. We are like on the dirty lake, they are right away from him, they are moving to the first island, there only and swept away.

Baba have been planted us, and we decided to reach to the Pogato Lake. On the way we have come across the Black Lake. All night looked around the tent rain. Water grumbled quietly in the roots. In the rain, wolves were tired in the impenetrable darkness.

The black lake was pouring on the shores. It seemed to be worth the wind or intensify the rain, and the water floods the mshary and we are together with the tent and we will never come out of these low, sullen waste.

All night, the mshary breathed the smell of wet moss, bark, black corping. By morning the rain passed. Gray sky lowered above his head. From the fact that the clouds almost touched the tops of Berez, on Earth was quiet and warm. The cloud layer was very thin - the sun was shone through it.

We turned the tent, drove backpacks and went. It was hard to go. Last summer, the Low Fire was held on Msharam. The roots of Berez and Alder are burned, the trees fell, and we had to climb every minute through big dawns. We walked along the bumps, and between the bumps, where the sweet red water, stuck sharp, like stakes, the roots of Berez. Their name is in the Meshchersk region.

The mshary thickets with sphagnum, lingonberries, gogobobel, curtain flas. Toner leg in green and gray moss at the very knee.

For two hours we passed only two kilometers. The "Island" seemed ahead. From the last forces, climbing through the dawns, washed and bloody, we got to the wooded boogue and fell on warm land, In the thickets of the valley. The valley has already matured - between the wide leaves hung hard orange berries. Through the branches of the pine shields the pale sky.

With us was the writer Gaidar. He walked around the whole "island". The "Island" was small, from all sides they were surrounded by Mshara, only two "Islands" were visible on the horizon.

Gaidar shouted from published, witnessed. We reluctantly got up, went to him, and he showed us on crude land, where the "island" passed into the mshary, huge fresh traces of elk. Elk, obviously, walked big jumps.

- This is his trail on the waterway, - said Gaidar ...

We went through the elk trail. We did not have water, I wanted to drink. In one hundred steps from the "Island" traces led us to a small "window" with clean, cold water. Water smelled of iodoform. We got drunk and returned back.

Gaidar went to look for a frown lake. It lay somewhere nearby, but him, like most lakes in Msharah, was very difficult to find. The lakes are surrounded by such thick thickets and high grass that you can go through a few steps and not to notice the water.

Gaidar did not take a compass, said that he would find the road to the sun, and left. We lay on MSh, listened to the old pine cones from the branches. Some beast strongly crushed in distant forests.

An hour has passed. Gaidar did not return. But the sun was even high, and we were not worried - Gaidar could not not find the road back.

Passed for the second hour, the third. The sky over the urms has become colorless; Then gray wall like smoke, slowly passed from the east. Low clouds closed the sky. A few minutes later the sun disappeared. Only dry blades got out of the urms.

Without a compass in such a millet, it was impossible to find the road. We remembered the stories about how people circled in dusty days in Msharah in one place for several days.

I got to a high pine and began to shout. No one responded. Then someone's voice responded very far away. I listened, and the unpleasant cold passed on the back: in Msharah, just in the same side, where Gaidar left, wolves were sad.

What to do? The wind blew in the side where Gaidar left. It was possible to regret the bonfire, the smoke would pull in Mshary, and Gaidar could return to the "Island" by the smell of smoke. But this could not be done. We did not agree on this with Gaidar. Fires often have fires in swamps. Gaidar could take this smoke for the approach of the fire and, instead of going to us, began to leave us, fleeing from the fire.

Fires in dried swamps are the worst thing that can be experienced in these parts. It is difficult to escape from them - the fire goes very quickly. And where to go, when the horizon is dry, like gunpowder, moss, and you can escape, and it is not for sure, just on the "island" - for some reason the fire is sometimes bypassing the woody "Islands".

We shouted everything at once, but we were answered only wolves. Then one of us left the compass in Mshary - where Gaidar disappeared.

Twilight descended. The crows flew over the "island" and the cartoon frightened and sinister.

We shouted desperately, then still a bonfire was burned - quickly darkly, - and now Gaidar could reach the fire of the fire.

But in response to our cries, there was no human vote, and only in the deaf twilight somewhere around the second "island" suddenly thickened and cried as a duck, car horn. It was ridiculous and wild - where could a car in the swamps come from, where a man hardly passed?

The car is clearly approaching. He burst insistently, and after half an hour we heard a crackle in the dawn, the car shaked the car in last time Somewhere nearby, and from Mshar got smiling, wet, exhausted Gaidar, and for him and our comrade - the one that left the compass.

It turns out that Gaidar heard our screams and answered all the time, but the wind blew in his direction and distilled his voice. Then Gaidar was tired of shouting, and he began to clog - imitate the car.

Before the fruit of Lake Gaidar did not reach. He met a lonely pine, he got to her and saw this lake away. Gaidar looked at him, swore, tears and went back.

- Why? We asked him.

"Very scary lake," he answered - well, his hell!

He told that even dismissed, which is black, as if resin, water in a lake riding lake. Rare sick pines stand on the shores, leaning over the water, ready to fall from the first impust of the wind. Several pines have already fallen into the water. Around the lake must be impassable quaggers.

Doperly quickly, in autumn. We did not stay spending the night on the "island", but went by Msharam towards the "continent" - the wooded bank of the swamp. It was unbearable to go in the dark in the dank. Every ten minutes, we checked the direction along the phosphorus compass and only by midnight got into the solid land, in the forest, stumbled upon an abandoned road and reached Lake Segden, where our common friend Kuzma Zotov, meek, sick person, fisherman lived Collective farmer.

I told the whole story, in which there is nothing special, only then to give at least a remote concept about what the Meshchersk swamps are mshary.

On some msharah (on a red swamp and on a swamp, the peat has already begun. Peat here is old, powerful, it is enough for hundreds of years.

Yes, but you need to finish the story of the Lake Rogging. For the next summer, we still reached this lake. His shore had a floating - not familiar solid shores, but a thick plexus of the whiteberry, a richness, herbs, roots and mosses. The shores swam under their feet like a hammock. Under the skinny grass was the bottomless water. The pole easily pierced the floating coast and went into the quagger. At each step, the fountains of warm water beat from under the feet. It was impossible to stop: the legs sucking and the traces were poured with water.

Water in the lake was black. With the bottom of the bubbles climbed the marsh gas.

We wondered on this lake perch. We tied long fishing racks to the bushes of the richness or to the trees of young alder, and they themselves sat on the sodged pines and smoked until the rich knitted bush began to ride and noise or did not bend and sucks the village of alder. Then we lazily risen, dragged behind the fishing line and squeeze into the shore of fatty black perch. So that they do not fall asleep, we put them in our trails, in deep pits, poured with water, and the perch beat in the water by tails, splashed, but they could not leave anywhere.

A thunderstorm gathered at noon over the lake. She grew in his eyes. Small thunderous cloud It turned into an ominous cloud, similar to the anvil. She stood on the spot and did not want to leave.

Lightning was whipped in Mshara next to us, and we didn't care about the soul.

We didn't go anymore on the frown lake, but still they deserve the glory of people who are ready for everything.

- The desperate men are at all, they said to the Naraspov, - well, such desperate, such desperate, there are no words!

Forest rivers and canals

Pra flows from the lakes of Northern Meshchera in Oka. Villages on the shores are very small. In the old time, the splitters settled in the premium forests.

In the city of Savior Klepika, in the upper reaches, the ancient cotton factory works. She descends the cotton products into the river, and the bottom of the spacing is covered with a thick layer of a blind black cotton wool. This must be the only river in the Soviet Union with a cotton room.

In addition to rivers in the Meshchersk region, many channels.

Upon Alexander II, General Zhilinsky decided to drain the Meshcherski swamps and create large lands for colonization near Moscow. An expedition was sent to the vessel. She worked twenty years old and dried only a half thousand hectares of the Earth, but no one wanted to settle on this earth - she turned out to be very scarce.

Zhilinsky spent many channels in the boss. Now these channels stuck and thickets with swamp herbs. Ducks nest in them, lazy lini and boiled belts live.

Silence is violated only by ringing mosquitoes and fish splashes.

Swimming always leads to an unknown target - to a forest lake or to a forest river carrying clean water over a shine bottom.

On the shores of these rivers in deep norah live water rats. There are rats, completely gray from old age.

Zhilinsky tried to dry the Marsh Mobol. From this idea did not come out. The soil of the mesh is peat, subzole and sands. Only potatoes will be born on the sands. The wealth of the vesnets is not in the ground, but in the forests, in the peat and in the bay meadows on the left bank of the Oka. These meadows other scientists are compared for fertility with the floodplain of the Nile. Meadows give a magnificent hay.

The woods

Meshchera - the remainder of the forest ocean. Meshchersa forests are majestic as cathedrals. Even the old professor, not the prone to poetry, wrote in a study on the Meshchersk region such words: "Here, in the mighty pine bodies, it is so light that for hundreds of steps deep into the fluttering bird."

On dry pine boras, you go on a deep expensive carpet - the land is covered with dry, soft moss for kilometers. In the lumens between the pines slices lies sunlight. Flocks of birds with a whistle and light noise scatter on the parties. In the wind forest noise. The buzz passes along the tops of the pines, like waves. A lonely aircraft swimming on a dizzying height seems to be a destroyer observed from the bottom of the sea.

Forests in the mesh robber, deaf. There is no greater holiday and enjoyment than to go all day on these forests, according to unfamiliar roads to some far lake.

The path in the forests is kilometers of silence, ulution. This is a mushroom prelae, careful peaked in birds. These are sticky mulberries, rolled cheese, rigid grass, cold white mushrooms, strawberries, purple bells in glades, shivering aspen leaves, solemn light and, finally, forest twilight, when the moss pulls the dampness and fireflies are burning in the grass.

The sunset is hardly glowing on the crowns of trees, golden by their old gilding. Below, at the foot of the pine, it is already dark and deaf. Surely fly and seem to look in the face of bats. Some incomprehensible ringing is heard in the forests - the sound of the evening, the exhaust day.

And in the evening, finally the lake, as a black, sideline furnished mirror. The night is already standing on it and looks into his dark water, - Night, full of stars. In the West, the dawn is still smoldering, in the thickets of wolf berries Krcchi g throw, and they mumble on Msharah and cranes, worried about the smoke of the fire.

In an extraordinary, never heard silence is emerging dawn. Sky in the east green. Blue crystal lights up at the Zare Venus. This is the best time of day. Still sleeps. Sleeping water, sleeping the pita, sleep, bolding around the noses in the squigs, fish, sleep the birds, and only owls fly around the fire slowly and silently, like whisk white fluff.

Once we spent the night on a black lake, in high thickets, near the big pile of old twig.

We took with ourselves a rubber inflatable boat and at dawn left it for the edge of coastal water lishes - catch fish. At the bottom of the lake, the fat layers were eliminated leaves, and squigs were swimming in the water.

In the vesetcher, almost all lakes are water different colors. Most lakes with black water. In other lakes (for example, in black), water resembles a brilliant mascara. Difficult, not seeing, imagine this saturated, thick color. And at the same time water in this lake, as well as in black, completely transparent.

I mentioned the Meshchersk Chelny. They look like Polynesian pies. They are wound out of one piece of wood. Only on the nose and on the stern, they brought forged nails with large hats.

Luga

In the meadows stretches on a lot of kilometers the old direction of the Oka. His name is a buoy.

This is a word, deep and stationary river with steep banks. The shores thickets with high, old, three clashes, seedling, centenary, rosehip, umbrella herbs and blackberries.

The tent must be stretching so that it goes down like a drum. Then it must be inkling, so that during the rain the water flows into the ditches on the sides of the tent and did not join the floor.

I boil strong tea in a tin wokey. Solid soot looks like enamel. In the kettle floating the buried leaves in the fire.

To these days spent on a propeller, the words of Aksakov include:

A little retreat from the topic

A lot of all sorts of fishing incidents are associated with a busty. I'll tell about one of them.

And right there is a lanka, the son of the shoemaker, tuskled the fish not on the English fishing line, standing hundred rubles, but on an ordinary rope. The old man sighed and complained:

So, the old man was not lucky. In one day, he climbed the squiga at least ten expensive glitters, walked all in blood and blisters from mosquitoes, but did not give up.

Once we took it with you to Lake Segden.

We went with an old man on a buzz. The meadows have not been beveled yet. Chamomile magnitude with palm clapped on the legs.

The old man was walking and, stumbling about the grass, repeated:

Over the bucks stood windless. Even IV leaves did not move and did not show the silvery inside, as it happens at easy wind. In the heated herbs "Zhundel" bumblebees.

Then I heard the rivets, hobs, snakes and sounds, very similar to the pits of the cow with a tied mouth. Something hard slapped into the water, and the old man shouted with a thin voice:

- My God, what beauty!

Pike did not reduce evil rooted eyes from the old man.

Pike glanced at Lenka, and he bounced off. It seemed that the pike was stuck: "Well, wait, a fool, I'll take your ears to you!"

Then there was a failure, which is still told by the village.

Aside, Lenka shouted and shouted with a sauna voice:

More about meadows

Old men

- Eat, do not be able to.

Grandfather sighed.

- Flash? - asked the girl.

Motherland Talent

On the edge of the Meshchersky forests, not far from Ryazan, Lies Solotcha. Solotcha is glorified by its climate, dunes, rivers and pine bodies. In Solotche there is electricity.

- Sings? - asked grandma.

- Yes, poet.

One day the artist with Vasya covered on the shore of the thunderstorm. I remember her. It was not a thunderstorm, but a rapid, treacherous hurricane. Dust, pink from lightning glitter, rushed along the ground. The forests were noisy so, as if the oceans broke through the dam and implied the vessel. Thunder shake the ground.

My house

A small house where I live in the mesh, deserves descriptions. it former bath, Log hollow, covered with gray tone. The house stands in a dense garden, but for some reason, fenced off from the garden with high frequenza. This frequency is the Western for Rustic Cats, Fish Lovers. Every time I returned from catching, cats of all stripes - redheads, black, gray and white with subpassions - take a house in the siege. They sink around, sit on the fence, on the roofs, on the old apple trees, sum up on each other and are waiting for the evening. All of them look without taking off the Cukan with fish - he is suspended to the branch of the old apple tree with such a calculation that it is almost impossible to get it.

The ovens crack, smell like apples, purely washed floors. The sits are sitting on the branches, driven glass balls in the throat, ring, crack and look at the windowsill, where there is a slight of black bread.

In the house I rarely at night. Most nights I spend on the lakes, and when I stay at home, then the night in the old gazebo in the depths of the garden. She overgrown with wild grapes. In the morning, the sun hits through the purple, purple, green and lemon foliage, and it always seems to me that I wake up inside the lit Christmas tree. Sparrows with surprise look into the gazebo. They are fatally occupied by hours. They tick on the burnt in the ground round table. Sparrows are selected to them, listen ticking, then one, then the other ear and then slow down the clock in the dial.

Especially good in a gazebo in a quiet autumn night, when in the garden is noise in a low-spirited rain.

Cool air barely shakes candle tongue. Angular shadows OT. grape leaves Lying on the ceiling arbor. Moth, similar to a lump of gray silk-raw silk, sits on the revealed book and leaves the simplest shiny dust on the page.

It smells like rain - gentle and with the sharp smell of moisture, raw garden tracks.

At dawn, I wake up. Fog fucked in the garden. The leaves fall in the fog. I pull out a bucket of water from the well. Frog pops out from the bucket. I dreamed by well water and listen to the head of the shepherd - he sings still far away, at the Okolitsa itself.

I go to an empty bathhouse, boiling tea. On the stove starts its song Cricket. He sings very loudly and does not pay attention to either my steps or a ringing of cups.

Light. I take oars and go to the river. The chain dog is sleeping at the wicket. He hits the tail on the ground, but does not raise his head. Wondered for a long time I got used to my care at dawn. He only yaws to me after and sighs noisily.

I sail in the fog. East pose. There is no longer a smell of smoke rural furnaces. It remains only to silence water, thickets, age-old Yves.

Ahead is a deserted September day. Ahead - Lost in this huge world Spherical foliage, herbs, autumn wiping, squeezing waters, clouds, low sky. And I always feel this losingity like happiness.

Unselfishness

You can still write a lot about the Meshchersk Territory. It can be written that this edge is very rich in forests and peat, hay and potatoes, milk and berries. But I do not know about it. Do we have to love your land just because she is rich that she gives abundant yields and its natural strength can be used for our well-being!

Not only for it we love their native places. We love them as long as, even poorly, they are beautiful for us. I love the Meshcherski region for the fact that he is beautiful, although all the charm is not revealed immediately, but very slowly, gradually.

At first glance, this is a quiet and nomuda land under a non-silent sky. But the more you know her, the more and more, almost to the pain in the heart, you begin to love this ordinary earth. And if you have to protect your country, then somewhere in the depths of the heart I will know that I protect and this block of land, having learned me to see and understand the beautiful, as if it was not obviously in appearance it was, - this forest pensive edge, love for Who will not rush, as the first love is never forgotten.

I hit the oars on the water. Fish in response with terrible force whipped the tail and again passed under the boat itself. We threw out and began to row to the shore, to your Bivak. Fish all the time went near the boat.

I threw in a wolf heavy lead ship. She bounced off and ruined the shore. And we saw how she climbed together with the wicras in the round hole in a bunch of his twigs, not far from our tent.

We landed, raised the noise, kicked out the wolf of the twigs and moved Bivak to another place.

The black lake is called the color of water. Water in it is black and transparent.

In the meshor, almost all lakes are water different colors. Most lakes with black water. In other lakes (for example, in black), water resembles a brilliant mascara. Difficult, not seeing, imagine this saturated, thick color. And at the same time water in this lake, as well as in black, completely transparent.

Chelny is very narrow, easy, turning, you can go through the smallest ducts.

Between the forests and the eye draws a wide belt bay meadow,

In the meadows stretches on a lot of kilometers the old direction of the Oka. His name is a buoy.

This is a word, deep and stationary river with steep banks. The shores thickets with high, old, three clashes, seedling, centenary, rosehip, umbrella herbs and blackberries.

I have my favorite favorite, always have a very deaf place. One of them is a steep turn of the river, where it is bottled into a small lake with very high, overgrown with a vine shores.

The tent must be stretching so that it goes down like a drum. Then it must be inkling, so that during the rain the water flows into the ditches on the sides of the tent and did not join the floor.

The tent is arranged. It is warm and dry. Lantern "Bat" hangs on a hook. In the evening I light it and even read in a tent, but I read it usually for a short time - there is too much noise: then the corner will begin to shout, then a powder fish will be hit with a cannonic hum, it will deafen in the fire in the fire. Thickets will begin to flare up the bugger glow and the gloomy moon will take up over the expanses of the evening earth. And immediately appease the kosor and cease to buzz in the swamps, the moon rises in a wary silence. It appears as the domain of these dark waters, centenary Yves, mysterious long nights.

Sun rises. Inay melts. Coastal sands are made dark from dew.

I boil strong tea in a tin wokey. Solid soot looks like enamel. In the kettle floating the buried leaves in the fire.

To these days spent on a propeller, the words of Aksakov include:

A little retreat from the topic

A lot of all sorts of fishing incidents are associated with a busty. I'll tell about one of them.

The great tribe of the fishermen who lived in the village of Solotche, near the bid, was excited. In Solotch, he arrived from Moscow a high old man with long silver teeth. He also caught fish.

The old man caught on the spinning: an English fishing rod with glittered - artificial nickel fish.

And right there is a lanka, the son of the shoemaker, tuskled the fish not on the English fishing line, standing hundred rubles, but on an ordinary rope. The old man sighed and complained:

- Brutal fourth injustice!

So, the old man was not lucky. In one day, he climbed the squiga at least ten expensive glitters, walked all in blood and blisters from mosquitoes, but did not give up.

Once we took it with you to Lake Segden.

- to blame! - said the old man, apologizing to the jug.

We went with an old man on a buzz. The meadows have not been beveled yet. Chamomile magnitude with palm clapped on the legs.

The old man was walking and, stumbling about the grass, repeated:

- What a fragrance, citizens! What kind of harmony aroma!

Over the bucks stood windless. Even IV leaves did not move and did not show the silvery inside, as it happens at easy wind. In the heated herbs "Zhundel" bumblebees.

- What a wonderful, charming morning!

Then I heard the rivets, hobs, snakes and sounds, very similar to the pits of the cow with a tied mouth. Something hard slapped into the water, and the old man shouted with a thin voice:

- My God, what beauty!

Pike did not reduce evil rooted eyes from the old man.

- Great looks like a crocodile! Said Lenka.

Pike glanced at Lenka, and he bounced off. It seemed that the pike was stuck: "Well, wait, a fool, I'll take your ears to you!"

- Golubushka! - an old man exclaimed and leaned over the pike even lower.

Then there was a failure, which is still told by the village.

- Alas! - shouted the old man, but it was too late.

Aside, Lenka shouted and shouted with a sauna voice:

- Yeah! Received! Do not catch, do not catch, do not catch when you do not know how!

More about meadows

There are a lot of lakes in the meadows. They have a strange and diverse names: quiet, bull, hotels, wenter, ditch, styrica, muga, beobrovka, Selian lake and finally Langobard.

On the bottom of the hotz lie black moraine oaks. In quiet always calm. High shores close the lake from the winds. In Bobrovkoy, there were no other beavers, and now the silk silver chase. Promone - a deep lake with such a capricious fish that only a person with very good nerves can catch it. Bull - the lake mysterious, distant, stretching on a lot of kilometers. In it, the melons are replaced by pools, but there is little shadow on the shores, and therefore we avoid it. Amazing golden lines are found in the ditch: each such lin pecks half an hour. By the fall of the banks of the ditch are covered with purple spots, but not from autumn foliage, but from the abundance of very large breeds of rosehip.

On the old man on the shores - the sand dunes, overgrown with the Chernobor and a turn. The grass grows on the dunes, her name is in the luggage. These are dense gray-green balls, similar to the tight closed rose. If you snatch such a ball from the sand and put the roots up, it begins to slowly swing, as the beetle turned on his back, straightens the petals on one side, rests on them and turns over again with roots to the ground.

A variety of herbs in the meadows unheard. The unkurved meadows are so souls that the head is misty and a heavy head. The kilometers stretch thick, high chamomile thickets, chicory, clover, wild dill, carnations, coltsfoot, dandelions, gentials, plantain, bells, butt and tens of other flowering herbs. Meadow strawberries ripen in herbs.

In the meadows - in dugouts and slashes - chatty old people live. This is either a guard on collective farm gardens, or ferry, or baskets. The baskets put the chalashi near the coastal overgrown of the Ivnyak.

Acquaintance with these old men begins usually during a thunderstorm or rain, when you have to sit down in the slashes, until the thunderstorm falls for OKU or in the forests and the rainbow is not over the meadows.

Familiarity always happens once again the established custom. First we snatch, then there is a polite and cunning conversation, aimed at bringing, who we are, after it - a few uncertain words about the weather ("climbed the rains" or, on the contrary, "finally wakes up the grass, and then everything is suther "). And only after that conversation can freely go to any topic.

Most old men love to talk about the things of unusual: about the New Moscow Sea, "Water Yeroplas" (Glisers) on the Oka, French food ("From the frogs of the ear cook and bread with silver spoons"), Barcuch run and collective farm from under Prier, who, They say, earned so much working that he bought a car with music on them.

Most often I met with a twistful grandfathers. He lived in a hut on a murge. He was called by Stepan, and he had a "beard in jerdoms" nickname.

Grandfather was thin, tonler, like an old horse. He said unbelievable, the beard climbed into her mouth; The wind has twisted a shaggy face with his grandfather.

Somehow I snapped in a halate at Stepan. I came late. There were gray warm twilight, impudent rain fell. He looked around the bushes, hen, then again began to make noise, as if he played with us in hide and seek.

"This rain is hurt like a child," said Stepan. - Purely baby - then shelles, then there, and then it will be caught at all, listening to our conversation.

The campfire sat a girl of twelve, light-eyed, quiet, frightened. She spoke only in a whisper.

- That's, a fool of a fence was preserved! Said Laskovo grandfather. - I was looking for a chick in the meadows-I was looking for, and I had enough to dark. Speed \u200b\u200bon the head of his grandfather. What will you do with her.

Stepan pulled out yellow cucumber from his pocket and gave the girl:

- Eat, do not be able to.

The girl took the cucumber, nodded his head, but there was not. The grandfather put a bowler on fire, began to cook chowek.

"Here, lovely you," said Grandfather, smoking, "you're, as hired, in the meadows, on lakes, and there is no you in the concept that there were all these meadows, and lakes, and the forests of monastic. From the Oka itself to pry, read for a hundred miles, the whole forest was monastic. And now folk, now the forest is labor.

- And why were there such forests Dadnaya, grandfather? - asked the girl.

- And the dog knows for what! Baba-fools spoke - for holiness. They were sins of our sins in front of the mother of God. And what are our sins? We have no sins and there was no. Eh, Darkness, Darkness!

Grandfather sighed.

- I walked around the churches, there was a sin, - muttered embarrassed grandfather. - Yes, that is a sense! Lapty for nothing.

The grandfather paused, chopped into a black bread in the chowder.

"Lyishko, our was bad," he said, crushing. - Not enough neither men nor baba happiness. A man is still there and here - a man, in extremes, it will come up to vodka, and Baba completely disappeared. Guys were not pitted, not fed. She trampled all her life with grasp of the stove, no worms attempts in the eyes did not start. You do not laugh, you throw it! I faithful word Said about the worms. Those worms were started in the woman's eyes from the fire.

- horror! - the girl said quietly.

"And you do not let me," said Grandfather. - You will not get worms. Now the girls found their happiness. The wound people thought - it lives, happiness, warm waters, in blue seasAnd the verification came out that it lives here in the shard, "the grandfather knocked the first finger on his forehead. - Here, for example, Manyka Malyavina. Bowed was a girl, and that's it. In the old days, she would like his voice overnight, and now you look, what happened. Not a day - Malyavin is a clean holiday: the harmonic plays, the pies are baked. And why? Therefore, my lovely, what's like him, Vaska Malavin, not having fun to live when the manka every month to him, the old line, two hundred rubles sends it!

- Flash? - asked the girl.

- From Moscow. She sings in the theater. Who heard, say - heavenly singing. Just crying the entire people. Here it is what it becomes now, Babia Share. She came last summer, manka. So do you know! Thin maiden, the hotel brought me. Sang in the hut-reading room. I'm up to all the usual, but just say, I grabbed my heart, but I do not understand. Fucking, I think such power is Duden's power? And how it disappeared with us, men, from our dull thousands of years! They will get together now on the ground, there they will listen, here you will see, and die everything seems to be early and early - no, dear, you won't choose time for death.

The grandfather took off his fire from the fire and climbed into the slags behind the spoons.

"We would live and live, Egorch," he said from a shala. - We were born a little bit early. Did not guess.

The girl looked into the fire with light, shiny eyes and thought about something about her.

Motherland Talent

At the edge of Meshorsk forests, not far from Ryazan, Solotcha village lies. Solotcha is glorified by its climate, dunes, rivers and pine bodies. In Solotche there is electricity.

Peasant horses, coented in a night on a meadow, wildly looking at the white stars of electric lights, originated in the distant forest, and sorze away from fear.

I lived the first year in Solotche in the gloom of the old woman, the old Virgin and rural dressmaker, Maryi Mikhailovna. Her name was venue - she was holding his whole century alone, without her husband, without children.

In her pure washed toy hollow, a few rows ticked and have two vintage paintings by an unknown Italian master. I wipe their raw bow, and Italian morning, the full of sun and the otlings of water, filled the quiet hut. The picture left the father of Maria Mikhailovna to pay the unknown foreigner artist. He came to Solotchu to study the icon painter skill. He was a person almost begging and strange. Lean, he took the word that the picture would be sent to him to Moscow in exchange for money. The artist did not send money - in Moscow he suddenly died.

The neighbor garden was noisy at night. In the garden stood a house in two floors, discouraged by a deaf fence. I wandered into this house in search of the room. A beautiful gray old woman spoke to me. She strictly looked at me with blue eyes and the room refused to pass. Behind her shoulder, I saw the walls hung with paintings.

- Whose is this house? I asked the venture.

- Yes, how! Academician pleased with the famous engraver. He died before the revolution, and the old woman is his daughter. There are two more old women there. One completely stray, humpback.

I wondered. Engraver suggests one of the best Russian engravers, his work is scattered throughout: We, in France, in England and suddenly - Solotcha! But soon I stopped perplexed, having heard how the collective farmers, a dust potatoes, set aside whether the archup artist would come to Solotch this year or not.

Possible - a former shepherd. Artists of archups and Malavin, the sculptor of Golubina - all of these, Ryazan places. In Solotche, there is almost no hut, where there would be no paintings. Ask: who wrote? Reply: grandfather, or father, or brother. Solotchins were once famous for the Virgin.

The name is pleased to utterly pronounced. He taught Solotchan to draw. They went to him secretly, carrying their canvases wrapped in a clean rag to the rating - on praise or ruling.

For a long time, I could not get rid of the thought, which is near, behind the wall, in the dark rooms of the old house, there are rarest books on art and copper engraved boards. Late at night I went to the well drink water. On the Srub lay, the bucket fought his fingers, the ice stars stood over the silent and black edge, and only the window was pleased in the house: the daughter was read before dawn. Occasionally, she probably raised his glasses on his forehead and listened - the house was engaged.

The next year I settled in goodies. I removed the old bath in the garden. The garden was swollen, all in lilac, in the wild rosehip, in apple trees and maples covered with degrading.

On the walls in the stagnaya house hung beautiful engravings - portraits of the people of the last century. I could not get rid of their views. When I reinforced the fishing rods or wrote, a crowd of women and men in tightly fastened furctures, the crowd of the seventies, looked at me from the walls with deep attention. I raised my head, I met a look with the eyes of Turgenev or General Yermolov, and for some reason I got awkward.

Solotchic district - Country talented people. Not far from Solotchi was born Yesenin.

One day the old woman went to the bath in a deference - brought to sell sour cream.

"If you still need sour cream," she said gently, "So you come to me, I have." You ask the church where Tatyana Yesenin lives. You will show anyone.

- Yesenin Sergey is not your relative?

- Sings? - asked grandma.

- Yes, poet.

"My nephews," the grandmother sighed and wiped his mouth with the end. - He was a good poet, only painfully wonderful. So if the sour cream will need, you come to me, cute.

At one of the forest lakes near Solotchic, Kuzma Zotov lives. Before the revolution, Kuzma was an unrequited poor man. From his poverty, he has survived the habit of speaking in a low voice, imperceptibly - it is better not to say, but to pour out. But from the same poverty, from the "cockroach life" he has survived his stubborn desire by anything to make his children "real people."

In the Zebe Zeotov appeared for last years Many new - radio, newspapers, books. From the old time there was only a decrepit dog - no way want to die.

"Like him, neither feed, still either," says Kuzma. - This is the Bedniksky for his entire life. Who is more conspicable, those afraid, bury under the shop. Thinks - gentlemen!

Kuzma has three sons Komsomol members. The fourth son is still a boy, Vasya.

One of the sons, Misha, heads an experienced ichthiological station on the Lake Great, near the city of Spas-Klepika. Somehow, the Misha brought home the old violin without strings - bought it from some old woman. The violin was lying in the old woman, in the chest, - remained from Shcherbatov landowners. The violin was Italian work, and Misha decided in winter when there will be little work at an experienced station, go to Moscow - to show CE connoisseurs. He did not know how to play a violin.

"If it turns out to be valuable," he said to me, "I will give someone from our best violins.

The second son, Vanya, is a teacher of botany and zoology in a large forest village, for a hundred kilometers from his native lake. During the holiday, he helps his mother in the housework, and in his free time wanders on the forests or on the lake on the belt in water, looking for some rare algae. He promised to show them to his disciples, cheerful and scary curious.

Vanya man shy. From the father, the location of people, love for mental conversations, moved from his father.

Vasya is still studying at school. There is no school on the lake - there are only four huts there - and Vasya have to run to school through the forest, for seven kilometers.

Vasya is an expert on its places. He knows every path in the forest, every buck of Nora, the plumage of each bird. His gray dressing eyes possess unusual disorders.

Two years ago, the artist arrived from Moscow. He took Vasya himself into assistants. Vasya transported the artist on a Chelny to the other shore of the lake, changed his water for the paints (the artist painted the French watercolor paints Lefranka), served lead tubes from the box.

The artist with Vasya was barely reached home. In the hives, the artist discovered the loss of a tin can with watercolor. Paints were lost, magnificent paints Leferanka! The artist was looking for them for several days, but did not find it and soon went to Moscow.

In two months in Moscow, the artist received a letter written by large porey letters.

"Hello," Vasya wrote. - Expix what to do with your colors and how to send them them. As you left, I was looking for them for two weeks, everything was stippled, while I found it, only heated heavily, because it was already raining, got sick and could not send you before. I almost died, but now I go, although it is still very weak. So do not be angry. Papan said that I had inflammation in the lungs. Send me if you have what the opportunity, a book about all trees and color pencils - hunt for me to draw. We have already fallen snow, but only I said, and in the forest under the Christmas tree - you look - and sits the hare! I remain my zotov. "

A small house where I live in a mesh, deserves descriptions. This is a former bath, a log hut, sheathed with gray tone. The house stands in a dense garden, but for some reason, fenced off from the garden with high frequenza. This frequency is the Western for Rustic Cats, Fish Lovers. Every time I returned from catching, cats of all stripes - redheads, black, gray and white with subpassions - take a house in the siege. They sink around, sit on the fence, on the roofs, on the old apple trees, sum up on each other and are waiting for the evening. All of them look without taking off the Cukan with fish - he is suspended to the branch of the old apple tree with such a calculation that it is almost impossible to get it.

In the evening, cats are carefully climbed through the frequency and are assembled under the cooking. They are raised by hind legsAnd the front makes rapid and clever cramped, trying to hook a cook. Missed it seems that cats play volleyball. Then some brazen cat jershits, joins in Cucuan dead grip, hanging on it, swinging and trying to tear the fish. The rest of the cats are hit from each other's crowns on a mustache muzzle. It ends with the fact that I go out with a lantern from a bath. Cats, covered by surprise, rush to the frequency, but do not have time to climb through it, and they are squeezed between the stakes and get stuck. Then they press her ears, close their eyes and begin to scream desperately, asking for mercy.

In the fall, the whole house is covered with leaves, and in two small rooms it becomes light, like in a flipping garden.