A Breathe of Fresh, Very "Refreshing" Air

Writing keeps getting harder and harder as work keeps piling up and the continued winter (early spring = basically winter in my book) saps my energy.  Next week I'm looking forward to helping out in a spring break extracurricular school of sorts in Pushchino which will basically have me running around crazily for 12 hours each day so getting all the planning done this week is a must do.  I'm going to St. Petersburg as well next weekend to visit people from YSS...not exactly the best weekend to be going I'll admit, but I booked the tickets before I agreed to help with the school.  

But that is enough about the future, I think it is more interesting to talk about things that happened in the past because I can give you more details, its more real, and much more surprising in most cases.  Every adventure holds its own wonderful surprises that unfold as you undergo it.  So with that introduction, let's go back to the weekend before last, in which I skied into the forest, spent a night there and skied back.

Our Campsite

I've done plenty of backwoods camping and hiking, but with one caveat: it was always in the summer.  This was the first time I've ever gone camping in the winter and it wasn't really all that different actually expect for the temperature and mode of transportation.  We gathered our group of 12 young adults (and a few high schoolers) around 2:00 on March 8th. (International Women's Day, celebrated with many flowers and chocolates, but most importantly with a day off work.  The holiday has nice intentions, but to be short, I'm glad I spent it skiing into the woods rather than dwelling on how often I find myself frustrated because of Russian gender roles which tend to lag at least 50 years behind the US. End of rant.)  We skied down the river...

across the river, up the bank and away from Pushchino...

 

through some beautiful birch forests...

past a newly rebuilt church... 

(5 years ago this church was classic Soviet church architecture, aka a pile of rubble)

and taking many breaks along the way.

(Quite the colorful group)

We found a nice camp spot, and proceeded to make camp in probably definitely not the most efficient manner.  First, everyone changed into their camp shoes:

Check out this inception big honkin' snow boot within an even bigger honkin' snow boot!!

Then we made a fire and set up the tent.  Then, the men decided we needed 4 trees worth of wood to burn (4 decidedly tall trees too) and felled them one, two, three, fou-no wait.  Shoot.  That one got stuck on the way down.  Luckily it looked like it would only fall on either the fire or on the tent.  So everyone cleared out and the bottom 5 feet were sawed off.  If fell a little further towards the fire.  Another 5 feet.  It now leaned towards the tent.  Another 5 feet.  Still going towards the tent.  Another 5 feet.  Surely it would fall this time!  Nope, it was now standing perfectly balanced completely vertical.  But not to worry, another 5 feet had it turned around and falling with a lovely thump in the opposite direction.  Only 1.5 hours later.  Since it was cold, people kept gathering around the fire and preparing dinner, and every 10 minutes or so the call would go up "warning, it's going to fall!" at which point the fire would be vacated until the tree again proved to be stubborn and the warmth seekers returned.  At one point the call changed a bit: "Attention, attention!  Comrades, be aware, this tree may fall further than we expect it to."

I will also add as a side note, related to my previous post, that we were a hop, skip and a leap away from a protected nature reserve (заповедник) but the trees 100 yards away didn't seem to fall under this protection, so burn baby burn I guess.  Until 3 in the morning we sat around our fire starting up at the sky, eating sausages, drinking hot beverages, and singing or just listening to songs.  Songs about dentists, songs about love, songs about family vacations... apple might have an app for everything, but Russians can sing about anything.

We spent the night in the tent, shivering in our sleeping bags.  With an oven that doesn't work and then (I'm pretty sure) goes completely out halfway through the night, -20 C feels pretty cold.  Even in a big 3 person sleeping bag with a dog sleeping on top (no in, no out, no in...Russian dogs are no more decisive than American dogs) it was chilly.  Very very chilly.  The next morning we packed up and skied back home, already reminiscing about the beautiful weekend we had.

Our shoes needed a little drying [thawing] as we got breakfast ready.