At the beginning of this year, we visited the village of Verkhnyaya Vodlitsa, in Vytegorsky Uyezd, Vologda Governorate. It is a large settlement that exists as a bush—in the North, this is what they call several small villages located near one another and together forming a single whole.
From the small forest settlement of Gorny Ruchey, a half-abandoned road led to the village we were looking for. A thin forest was already beginning to grow in the middle of the road, which suggested certain thoughts. But since it had been cleared somehow (in truth, very poorly), we set off along it—and arrived at yet another uninhabited village. Almost uninhabited...
Dead, open, gutted houses—like victims of a maniac—with doors flung wide, like screaming mouths. Typical wooden Rus’.
In early January, dusk falls quickly. The hamlets were scattered at a considerable distance from one another, the snow was deep, and we wanted to explore as much as possible. So the photographs you see now are only from the village of Tarasyevskaya. Gorka and Evstikheyevskaya, not to mention the far-off Ankhimovskaya, remained for us terra incognita.
“How did you even get into this dead world at this time of year?” you might ask—and the question is reasonable: in abandoned villages, no one clears the roads in winter.
Here there is one inhabited house: smoke poured from its chimney, a neat stack of firewood lay nearby, and the windows glowed with warmth. Who lives here? A stern hunter, or a half-mad fisherman, of которых так много на Севере? We saw no one when we arrived. But when we were walking back to the car, an elderly woman came out of the house. We spoke with her a little.
She was born here, in Vodlitsa; after spending her youth and mature years in the Great Northern City, she returned eight years ago to her native home and family hearth. She told us that a classmate from Gorny Ruchey clears the road for her with a tractor; a few years ago, one more resident—Sashka—still lived here, but then he left somewhere. Her daughter visits from St. Petersburg from time to time. And recently, a couple of weeks before our visit, increasingly brazen wolves tore apart her dog right in the yard.
The woman’s face suggested a certain fondness for strong drink, but she was quite friendly and invited us in for tea.
The short winter day was ending rapidly; deep half-Yuletide twilight was setting in. We still had many kilometers to drive on poor roads and needed to catch a ferry. So we said goodbye, without going inside, and left her alone again in this atmospheric place under a sullen sky with howling gray predators.
Still, we promised to return. We have yet to explore the local terra incognita—the villages of Gorka and Evstikheyevskaya, not to mention the distant Ankhimovskaya.
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