July 29
Krasnayarsk, Siberia
Hi, babe,
After our shoot today, Cathy our guide, a
driver and Sasha, the lighting guy and I went to shoot ID/beauty shots of the
area,. shooting the city and the river from a high vantage point. We drove,
after turning off the main road, through a small area with wooden single family
homes. Cathy and I walked slowly along the dirt and gravel road. Each house had
a fence around it, and a garden in the front yard with corn and other
food-producing plants. A woman came out on her porch behind a fence and watched
us. I asked Cathy to ask her if I could take her picture. She was shy but
friendly, probably mid-30's, and invited us in for tea. I took her picture and
we entered her house. She asked if I wanted to see how Russians lived and I said
yes. She showed us past her small bedroom to her living room where there was a
black and white tv, and deer antlers on the wall. Hanging from the antlers was a
white wedding veil, and she explained her daughter was getting married tomorrow.
I took a picture of her , the veil, and the antlers. She showed us a picture of
her granddaughter who was to be in the wedding, and the granddaughter's dress, a
cute little pink number under plastic, with some of the Disney-style 7 dwarves on
it. I wished her all the best for the wedding and the marriage and declined her
several offers of tea, explaining we didn't have time, thanking her, and we left.
Missing you,
Your groom
JOURNAL SIBERIA
8/1 Monday
Now it's after midnight. I'm sitting next to a fire
in a camp by a swamp, in the middle of Siberia near the center of the Tunguska
event.
Today we flew by special charter in an 18-seat Aeroflot turboprop into
Vanavara, a true frontier town complete with a wood-log airport building, dirt
roads, and boardwalks made of wood for sidewalks. At the airport, while we were
waiting to load our helicopter for the next leg of our trip to Tunguska, our
sound man pointed to a piece of metal in the chipped-away concrete landing pad.
It looked exactly like the same piece of metal that "Lovebeen" showed us
yesterday, and one size bigger. Then, we flew 30 minutes here to Kulik's camp.
Kulik was the first scientist into the region in 1928, and he returned many times
to try and find out what the hell happened here.
eyewitness report
"I was sitting on the porch of the house at the trading
station of Vanavara at breakfast time and looking
toward the north. I had just raised my axe to hoop a
cask when suddenly in the north the sky was split in
two and high above the forest the ... sky appeared to
be covered with fire. At that moment I felt great heat
as if my shirt had caught fire. This heat came from
the north side. I wanted to pull off my shirt and throw
it away, but at that moment there was a bang in the
sky and a mighty crash was heard. I was thrown to the
ground about 21 feet away from the porch and lost
consciousness."
S.B. Semenov, a Tunguski
No one has figured it out yet. We put Georgi and the camera in a back window,
and I sat in the jump seat between and just behind the two pilots. What a wild
view. Zipping across the treetops, nothing ahead of us but wilderness--trees,
trees, trees, a little water. Some of the trees were on fire, and off to the
west we see great areas of smoke. I wondered how far away the fire was from
where we're going, and it made me think of all the fires raging in the American
northwest. We got to the Tunguska region, circled, and then land on a wooden
platform, small round logs nailed together.
We climb to the top of Mt. Farrington, where Kulik first climbed for an elevated
view of the damage wrought by whatever it was. It's quite a hike; the mosquitoes
are everywhere, thick and nasty.
KULIK JOURNAL
I still cannot sort out my chaotic impressions of this
excursion. In the north, the distant hills along the
River Khushno are covered with a shite shroud of snow
half a meter thick. From our observation point no
sight of forest can be seen, for everything has been
devastated and burned, and around the edge of this dead
area the young 20-year-old forest growth has moved
forward furiously seeking sunshine and life. One has
an uncanny feeling when one sees 20 to 30 inch thick
giant trees snapped across like twigs, their tops
hurled many meters away to the south.
We shoot, we return, and now to bed, along with the rest of the gang, on one
large wooden platform raised 3 feet off the ground inside a log cabin built by
Kulik in 1928. Tomorrow, another hike to a nomad village destroyed by the
event, another chopper ride, then the turboprop back to Krasnayarsk before
heading on to Vladivostok.
JOURNAL SIBERIA
August 4
Our second-day hike in Tunguska started at 8 AM. A beautiful quiet hike through
the marsh grass, woods, along a creek, to the top of a waterfall, where the
Tungus nomad camp was destroyed in 1908. We shot the camp and the water and a
hill where many downed trees still lay, slowly being returned to the earth.
KULIK JOURNAL
In the early part of the day when the wind rose, it was
very dangerous to walk through the old dead forest.
Twenty-year-old dead giants rotted at the roots were
falling down on all sides. Sometimes they fell quite
close to us. As we went along we kept our eyes on the
treetops so that if they fell, we should have time to
jump aside.
Then on our way to Kulik's first camp (we had been staying at his main base camp,
his second camp) Vitally and a Polish girl, Anika, appeared. We decided to take
a break. Vitally built a fire at the top of a 40' waterfall , and laid down on
his bearskin from a bear he killed. We drank some water, me from my bottle, and
watched the peaceful scenes all around us. Vitally then took some birch bark and
a young green sapling, warmed the bark over the fire, and folded it into a cup,
using the green twig as a handle and a clip to hold the cup together. Then he
pulled out a bottle of Italian sparkling wine, and there we sat, a tv crew with a
Siberian mountain man and his new polish girl drinking champagne next to a
waterfall a zillion miles from anywhere in the middle of a region that still
holds the secrets to one of the greatest mysteries of this century. Cool.
Then Vitally took one of the cups and set it up across the little stream for
target practice with his gun, a well-made wood-stocked .22-type rifle with a
3-shot clip. As we were about to go down the waterfall and continue on to the
chopper pickup sight, another group of hikers appeared, two British amateur
cometary astronomers and Tunguska buffs, with another Russian guy, Valudi. It
seems Vitally and Valudi have been feuding for years, and I straight away
(Britishism) don't like Valudi. Chris and Quentin, the two Brits, seem friendly.
They've spent 3 1/2 days getting to Tunguska the old-fashioned way, by boat and
by foot. Chris seems fine, but Quentin, looking like Martin Short with 57
mosquito bites, is a bit frayed at the edges. They do point out one great thing
to us--a boulder with a strange impression in it, either produced by something
hitting it at very high speed, like a piece of a comet, or a meteorite, or a
space ship, or someone sticking a piece of dynamite in the rock and blowing a big
hole. In typical Brit fashion, they're prepared to carry a large chunk of similar
stone back to England to have it tested. They ask if we can take the stone back
to Vanavara in our helicopter. I say I have no objection if it can be arranged,
and would they share their results? At this point they get pissy, and say
they'll share their results if we'll pay them. I feel like they've been watching
all those stories about tv shows paying for information relating to anything
remotely connected to O.J. I wanted to say "keep your discoveries to yourself"
but we just say goodby and go on our way. It's an awkward parting, with Valudi
trying to enlist Cathy to his side in his feud with Vitally, and Chris being a
snot about sharing what they might find out; not the sort of "hey, we're humans
meeting here by chance in the remote Siberian wilderness" that I would have
enjoyed more. In any event, it's off to Kulik's camp, the helicopter ride back
to Vanavara, a visit to Vitally's private museum of Tunguska, the meteorite,
Kulik, the wildlife, and the indigenous peoples,.it's an amazing collection and
I'm knocked out by the range and depth of his skills and knowledge.
