Sylvain Tesson - Consolations of the Forest - Alone in a Cabin in the Middle Taiga

I regain the cabin as happy as a foot-soldier diving into his bunker. Depending on my mood, my shelter is an egg, a womb, a coffin or a wooden ship. I bid farewell to my friends. Oh, the happiness that wells up as the rumbling of their engine dies away…

Winter is still here. Only the pale face of the lake signals that spring is waiting in the wings.

Some snow has melted in the clearing, revealing the detritus my predecessor accumulated over twenty years. Capable of superhuman efforts to repel an enemy, Russians can’t summon the energy to throw rubbish into a ditch. I cart tyres, wrecked engines and damaged motor parts off behind the banya. I restore the clearing to emptiness. A mist runs along the shores, snagging itself on the pines, sometimes dawdling enough to let a beam of sunshine slip through. Surrounded by fairyland, I go fishing. The dogs follow me everywhere. My shadow has become a dog. The two little creatures have placed themselves in my hands. A humanist animal, the dog believes in us. Wherever water seeps onto the ice, lapis-blue reflections bloom on the creamy glaze. The dogs wait patiently by the ice-hole. I give them the guts of the three char I catch.

My round trip to the city has reinforced my love of cabin life. Cabins are the votive lights hung on the roof of the night.

The taiga is black. The trees are shedding their snow. Dark patches appear on the mountains. Aika and Bek rush up outside the window at first light. When two little dogs celebrate your advent in the morning, night takes on a flavour of expectation. A dog’s fidelity demands nothing, not a single duty. Canine love is satisfied with a bone. Dogs? We make them sleep outdoors, we speak roughly to them, snap at them, feed them on scraps, and now and then – whap! A kick in the ribs. What we deal out to them in blows, they give back to us in drooling adoration. And suddenly I see why man has made the dog his best friend: this is a poor beast whose submission demands nothing in return, a creature corresponding perfectly, in other words, to what man is capable of giving.

We’re playing on the lakeshore. Aika has found a deer bone, and I’m throwing it for them. They never tire of bringing it back to me, they’d keep going till they dropped dead. These masters teach me to inhabit the only country worth living in: the moment. Man’s particular sin is to have lost this frenzy the dog has for retrieving the same bone. For us to be happy, we have to cram our homes with dozens of more and more sophisticated objects. Advertising urges us to ‘Go fetch!’ The dog has admirably solved the problem of desire.

A long trek to South Cedar Cape with the little chaps. The wind has come up and the sky is in shreds. Shafts of sunlight strafe the taiga through the clouds with tawny streaks and stamp it with yokes of gold; sometimes the light strikes a section of mouldered cliff face, bathing it in brightness. Old ice faults can be treacherous where they haven’t refrozen solid, because the eye cannot gauge the thickness of the surface. The dogs stop short, whimpering, before an area gorged with water, and I must advance carefully to show them they can follow. An eagle wheels high overhead. The wind kicks up sheaves of spangles, which turn into pyrite dust when they hit a sunbeam. The forest grumbles at the gusts. Spring has marshalled its forces here; I feel them, ready to attack, not yet daring to retake the territory.

The sky is insane, in a fluster of fresh air, dazed with light. Images of intense beauty spring up – and vanish. Is that the apparition of a god? I’m incapable of taking the slightest photo, which would be a double offence: a sin of inattention and an insult to the moment.

When we reach the cape where I wanted to test the fishing, a little over six miles from the cabin, I don’t even have time to get out my ice drill. The enraged wind orders a retreat. I go home at a run, the dogs on my heels. We’re waylaid by some fierce blasts, which suck up particles of abrasive crystal. The dogs protect their noses with their forepaws. For two hours, we fight our way towards the cabin against an invisible hand.

Tomorrow is May Day. Will the traditional lilies-of-the-valley bloom on the taiga?

Last February, a good mile to the north of the cabin and within the orbit of a bay, Volodya T. set up a net to catch catfish. It lies out on the ice, attached to wooden stakes. I break open the old hole and thrust in the net, at the bottom of which I’ve hooked two char heads. The dogs stand guard in case any catfish come out of the hole to pounce on me.

I am the emperor of a mountainside, lord of my puppies, king of North Cedar Cape, protector of titmice, ally of lynxes and brother of bears. I am above all a little tipsy because after two hours of cutting wood, I’ve just polished off the dregs of a bottle of vodka.

Living in a nature reserve is symbolic: man is just passing through. What trace of him is left? Footprints in the snow. Across the lake, on the Buryat shore, there is a biosphere polygon off-limits to all visitors. I find it poetic, this idea of turning stretches of the Earth into sanctuaries where life would go on without mankind. Animals and gods would flourish there, all unseen. We would know that life in its wild state was carrying on in that haven, and this thought would be an elixir. The point would not be to deny men the usufruct of the forests, barrens and seas, but to protect a few selected acres from our appetites. The pretentious pedants of this world, however, are ever watchful, polishing up their speeches on the necessity of an ecology in the service of mankind. They would never allow 7 billion human beings to be barred from the tiniest hankie-size sliver of the planet…

Hail is blurring the bronze of the taiga. The heavens have decided to send something besides snowflakes. A day for reading Mircea Eliade (a book for awaiting spring: The Myth of the Eternal Return ), and for cleansing the clearing of the last of Volodya T.’s debris. Later in the day, I try out a new hole at the mouth of the North Cedar River. Now I have four fishing holes: in front of the cabin, at the tip of the cape, an hour’s tramp to the north, and at the heart of the bay where I reactivated the catfish trap yesterday. Sitting on my stool, I smoke, keeping an eye on my fly line.

The dogs twine constantly around my legs; in me they have found someone who responds to their affection. They neither rely on nor delight in their memories. Between longing and regret, there is a spot called the present. Like jugglers who ply their trade while standing on the neck of a bottle, we should train ourselves to balance in that sweet spot. The dogs manage it.

When he entrusted the puppies to me, V.E. from Zavorotni told me: ‘Don’t let them get too close to you.’ I’m the most pathetic dog trainer east of the Urals, incapable of forbidding Aika and Bek from bubbling over with affection. People teach a dog how to lie down – and announce that they’re training him. I accept the high jinks of the two little creatures and all it costs me is their paw prints on the legs of my trousers.

We return home with dinner: three spotted char. Tonight the dogs will get the heads and entrails mixed into their mush of flour and lard. In the distance, the sun is cutting its way through the clouds here and there. This would have been a good spot for Paradise: infallible splendour, no serpents, impossible to live naked, and too many things to do to have any time left over for inventing a god.

This morning, dawn is tangled up in frilly tulle. I climb up towards the head of the ‘white valley’. The dogs are dementedly struggling to follow me, collapsing through the flat tracks of my snowshoes. At the heart of the combe, at the place where I turn up the flank to reach the granitic ridge, a bear has crossed through, heading for the other side of the valley. Hibernation is over. The awakening of the bears, the arrival of the wagtails and the cracking of the ice are ambassadors of spring. I’ve got my flare gun at my waist, the dogs as scouts: I’m not at risk. The bears, on the other hand, know that man is a wolf to them, and they avoid encounters.