Section 4. Melnichnie Kamni – The northern taiga

Days 7 and 8: (August 18 and 19) Travel by hydrofoil from Igarka to the wilderness camp at Melnichnie Kamni. Excursions through the northern taiga, study soils, flora, fauna and discuss ecology and traditional land use in the area. Waterfall; swimming. Overnight in tents.

Melnichnie Kamni on the Yenisei, Monday, 19 August 10 p.m.

Jeri and I are now in our tent. The sun is soon to set over the Yenisei, but for now it shines in through the little screened ‘window’ in the foot end of the tent. On the outside of the screen, hundreds of minute sandflies are feverishly trying to gain access in order to practice their sanguivorous habits. Fortunately for us, the designers of our new tent called for a screen, which is too fine for these irritating insects to get through. We have come to the end of a wonderful, but exhausting day’s hiking through the taiga, and we need a good sleep. Yesterday’s rain ended late in the afternoon. After breaking into a series of spectacular thunderstorms, the sky cleared by the time we arrived at this delightful site. Our landing turned out to be quite an experience. Most villages along the river either have a dock or a moored barge which functions as a dock. This is essential for us, since our hydrofoil can not venture into shallow water, and hence, can not make a beach landing. Here, at Melnichnie-Kamni, there is no dock of any kind, nor are there any small craft to ferry us ashore. To our surprise, a large coastguard ship was waiting for us. We all crossed from our ship to the coastguard one, which took us ashore. There we had to descend down a rickety, steep gangplank onto the beach. Jeri and I found a more or less level piece of ground, three quarters of the way up the slope towards the beautiful campsite that Oleg had prepared for us, and got ready for our first tenting experience in Siberia. After we put up our tent, we stood in awe at what must have been one of the most spectacular sunsets of my life. The sun dropped below the distant floodplain of the western shore, illuminating the remnants of the storm clouds in the darkening eastern sky with flaming orange light. Then we turned in, and slept through a cooling night, gradually crawling deeper and deeper into our sleeping bags.

This morning we woke to a cloudless sky, a perfectly still river and mysterious looking fog banks over the western floodplain. And it was cold! We also still had the problem of an accumulation of wet clothes and footwear, which had by this morning reached the point where I had to put on wet socks, trousers and boots. Jeri was in even worse shape with wetness, aggravated by her accidentally burning a hole in one of her boots when trying to dry them by the fire. We shivered through breakfast, and did not get warm until well into our day’s excursion, when the sun burnt off the dew, and the temperature rose to bearable levels. Unfortunately for our footwear situation, the taiga is really a kind of bog-forest, where sooner or later one’s boots go in over the waterproof level.

Our hike started on a trail which leads from our camp up through a stand of young trembling aspen, to the river’s spring run-off high-water line (20+ meter above current level). There the forest changes to a surprisingly rich and diverse community for a latitude comparable to Churchill, Manitoba. The gently westward sloping land is still part of the overall Yenisei valley, well drained, and warmed by the sun and the river. We walked among spruce, pine, larch, birch and trembling aspen, forming a light canopy, but the forest showed signs of previous disturbance (i.e. flat-topped decaying stumps, trails and a paucity of mature trees). I was fascinated by the vegetation, which consisted of mostly circumpolar species, or species with sibling species in the New World. But there are also some species either of southern Asian origin, such as the wild peony (Paeonia anomala), or of genera well known to me, but with unique Eurasian adaptations such as the Siberian pine (Pinus sibirica). We had already seen a few Siberian pines near Igarka, but here they make up a sizable part of the forest. They are mid-sized trees here, closely related to the North American white pine (P. strobus), but with one important difference. Instead of having small, wind-distributed seeds, like most conifers, they have stubby cones that produce fair sized nuts, like the pignoli we buy at Italian shops, that are the seeds of the southern European pine (P. pinea), or the alpine pine (P. cembra). What I found most fascinating about this pine was that it has an enormous influence on the entire ecology of the taiga. The nuts it produces are the main food of the nutcracker , a mid-sized, noisy bird of which we saw large flocks, but are also eaten by a diverse and abundant guild of small mammals, several other bird species, and even such large animals as the brown bear. Indirectly, of course, it also affects the population of predators, such as the sable, fox and several species of shrews. During our discussions, we also questioned why in Europe, after the retreat of the glaciers, the alpine pine did not migrate northwards, taking the nutcracker and other seed-dependant animals with it, while the Siberian pine did. The world of ecology is full of such mysteries; I would love to be an ecologist for several more lifetimes, one of these days I will call on the devil to see what he has to offer.