Anga Ra

It turned out that on Baikal I was going to be in the Angara. Baikal was a delightful but true place of power for me in these parts became the Angara. And I still can't answer the question 'why'.

After the ethnographic expedition to the Taltsy, we just drove along the road to Irkutsk and turned into the forest. We just wanted to take a walk. The forest was quiet, dry and light. I won't hide my true attitude towards autumn as an inevitability, which for me is gloomy, but here, like Alice, a somersault of consciousness happened when I realized that autumn with its fabulous colors is 'depart beautifully '. To get to the point of loving it.

In addition to beautiful stories and places, truly amazing. Very picturesque views, dense visual structures, total harmonic suitability and endless silence.

It should be noted that the local forests are rich in deciduous trees, and its autumnal color palette in mass simply sweeps away some kind of dependent haze, gently cocooning with a yellow blanket of peace. The color saturation is maximum.

We were in an Angara estuary somewhere near Taltsy, as the sun started to set, and we decided to stay for the night. The place wasn't quite desolate — groups of people were packing their picnics and setting off for warm beds — but we waited until we were quite alone, and then set up our tent.

There is such a thing as sensory deprivation. For more information, Google it, but in a nutshell it is complete isolation from external stimuli. This is when all of your senses are 'turned off'. Some people in special places do this in laboratory conditions — I haven't experienced it myself but from the description, in the end you end up in an intrauterine continuum.

At Angara, I experienced something similar, where external sensors were simply registering, but nothing was getting to the processing center. In other words, the concept of 'danger' disappeared, and in its place a pervasive emptiness of nothing. Grasping on to reality, the brain lit up its nearest connection to the Angara and ... voila! The neural complex is ready. In this state we were till morning. Of course, nothing was dreamed, because we dreamed of nothing.

The morning began with a persistent sun. The only food was water in the river and cookies. The body obediently reacted and did not require an urgent bath and a mirror. At this point there was enough of such an objective reality to want something more from this endless surrounding beauty.

With crystal clear minds we set off to Irkutsk. Because hints of an airplane started appearing from an abstraction.

Anga Ra (Angara) is a great river. Perhaps, for now, it is the only point on the map of my personal places of power. Unique and unrepeatable.