Buryatia, in Black & White and Color

• Main Author: Thomson, Peter
• Format: Book Part
• Language: unknown
• Published: Oxford University Press 2007
• Subjects: Arctic; Chanda; Tundra
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195170511.003.0013

The trail along the eastern shore of the Holy Nose south of our campsite is maybe a foot wide, just a narrow track of compacted leaves and dirt, a path that could just as easily have been made by centuries of hooves and paws as by shod human feet. And perhaps it was. I’ve walked such trails in the Arctic, etched into the tundra by caribou and wolves and musk oxen. It’s a humbling and exhilarating experience, the trails a simple but stark reminder that you are in someone else’s habitat and that humans are not the only species to have left their mark on the planet. This one weaves between thick-barked evergreens and leathery aspens, clinging precariously to a slope that could easily throw a clumsy hominid to the waves fifty or more feet below. Andrei is lost in the thickets ahead, charging on to the next clearing, at which he’ll wait for us, again. James, Elisa, Chanda, and I keep to a more leisurely pace, in no more of a hurry to see the next sparkling facet of Baikal than this one, or to catch a toe on the next stone or gnarled root than the previous one. Igor stayed behind with our stuff at the campsite, to be picked up by the Lonesome Boatman. We’ll rendezvous with them farther down the coast this afternoon. Yesterday’s ragged clouds blew out in the evening, and the sky over Baikal today has the clarity of vodka and carries a cool, yellowish luminescence, as if after their ninety-three million mile dash the sun’s photons have slowed down to admire the little corner of the solar system that they’ve been lucky enough to have been sent to. There is no sign that any of the billions of humans who have ever lived have set foot in this place. We walk mostly in silence. From high above the lake, the trail drops down to the water, the steep slope giving way ahead to a thin, gracefully arcing beach dividing the lake from a narrow stand of wispy wetland trees and a soft amber field beyond.