Saturday, Jul. 31, 2010

COMMENTARY

A long-awaited reunion, half a world away

IRKUTSK, Russia | The flight from Moscow to this historic Siberian city was a red-eye, departing at 9:15 p.m. and bearing southeastward six hours through darkness to meet the rising sun.

The trip across five time zones was uneventful. Dawn flamed a sudden fiery orange through the windows on the port side as our plane, an Airbus, tipped down first over unbroken evergreen forest, then scattered evidence of settlement and cultivated land.

Finally Lake Baikal came into view — that immense, mile-deep, 400-mile-long, body of water that lies in a geologic fracture between two mountain ranges and is the defining natural feature of this eastern region of Russia.

Shortly, then, we were on the ground, only minutes from our reunion with the friends we’d come nearly halfway around the world to see.

After the stifling heat of Moscow — a summer more brutal, we were told, than most Muscovites remember — descending the stair from plane to runway and into the 55-degree Siberian morning was like a sweet drink of chilled wine.

And, yes, our friends were there: Victor Gulevich and Volodya Donskoi, companions on the 2,700-mile expedition we’d made in 1991 on the most unspoiled and splendid of Siberia’s great rivers.

Also there was the older of Victor’s two sons, Alyosha, who was only 16 when he climbed a mountain ridge with us to the Lena’s source, but now is a wonderfully fit and accomplished man with a daughter of his own.

We’d earlier been told by mail that a third Russian member of our expedition team, Valera Sherstyanikov, no longer was living. Yesterday we learned the tragic details.

Valera’s humble quarters were in the central market area of Irkutsk, known to be a neighborhood prowled by thieves. Evidently he’d gone out at night on foot, perhaps to buy cigarettes, and was accosted while returning.

His body was found on the street the next morning, not far from home. The loss was shattering, for he and Victor had been longtime best friends.

From the airport we were transported to our temporary lodging on the base that Victor had created in the nearby village of Nikola for the training and housing of rescuers.

Siberia still is very much the Russian frontier.

There are boat accidents on the region’s rivers and on Baikal, and too-frequent plane crashes. Travelers in the planet’s largest arboreal forest often suffer mishaps or lose their way, and have to be found and fetched back out of the wilderness.

This is a seismically active area, with many hundred earthquakes every year. Most are small, though some larger ones cause damage and injury.

And in a region where summer is brief but winter lasts a seeming eternity, avalanche catastrophes are common. In his years as a practicing geographer, Victor often went alone into the mountains to research snow formations in temperatures of minus-70 degrees Fahrenheit.

The rescue base was his inspiration, and he persuaded Moscow to fund its establishment.

It is a splendid facility, with quarters to house full-time staff plus contingents of trainees, a spacious dining facility, well-equipped offices and two large inflated domes — one with a pool for practicing water rescues.

There’s a heliport and a great variety of rescue vehicles, from amphibious ducks and powerful jet boats to larger watercraft of what’s known in Russia as the Yaroslavits class.

From here, after a bit of time to get oriented, we will travel north on the great lake to places of scenic and historic interest. There’ll be opportunity to visit sites important to the region’s variety of ethnic groups, and locations of concern to the growing ecological movement, whose prime focus is defense of the Baikal area’s natural assets.

It’s also likely — no, more than likely — that we’ll pause along the way to spend a little time fishing.

Anyone who would come to this part of Russia and pass up the opportunity to wet a line needs to get his priorities straight.

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