Things you find in the forest.. Foraging and exploring near Yakutsk (Vladimirovka)

One of the great things about Yakutsk is that it’s so easy to get out of it – not if you want to go to another city; in that case you’re totally out of luck – but if you want to escape to the great outdoors, it’s right there. For example, from where I live in the center you can take the #7 bus for about 10-15 minutes and get to Chochur Muran (which really needs its own post)… Another accessible option (for the same forest) is Vladimirovka, a short ride out of the city on the #101 bus. There’s a main dirt road that goes up from the village into the forest, and then a lot of smaller roads and paths splitting off of that. In the fall it’s a popular place for berry and mushroom picking, so when I got back to Yakutsk in September Gavriil and I made a spur of the moment to get one more short camping trip in and try to do some foraging as well.

On the main road, breaking in my new backpack from Alite from SF (https://alitedesigns.com/)

A beautiful mushroom, also edible (I think 🙂

We got off to a late start on the Saturday, so had to walk fairly quickly to our intended camping spot, which was near a small lake about 6-7 kms from the village.

The lake (in June)

Most of the way the walk is easy, on dirt trails, but the last part was through a marshy area which was slower going but we did see that it was full of berries. We picked up a few assorted mushrooms on the way, which we added to that night’s dinner. Unfortunately it was dark by the time we got that cooking, so I didn’t get any pictures of what we gathered and ate. When we got near the lake, we were glad to find a ready-made campsite with a little makeshift table and bench.

Although it was still early September (Sept 8-9), it happened to be a pretty cold weekend, and our sleeping bags are really meant for summer. So although I was wearing several layers it was kind of a miserable sleepless night, and when I poked my head out at 5 a.m. the sky looked kind of ominous. A storm had been predicted for later that day, and not wanting to get caught in it, we decided to pack up early and do our berry picking on the way out.  First we crossed a swampy area carpeted with multicolored spongy mosses, where we picked a type of cranberry (клюква in Russian).

Next came a hidden stream, overgrown with grasses and reeds. I did my best to follow Gavriil’s steps as he hopped from tuft to tuft, but lost my balance and ended up almost knee deep in freezing water. Luckily I had a couple extra pairs of socks..

After that we came to the area with a lot of lingonberries (брусника), which is the most common type here. We filled up a small container; I would have liked to have picked more but Gavriil isn’t so into berry picking, and there was that storm on the way.

The rest of the hike was without incident. Once we were on the bus on our way back to town, it started to snow, quite a bit, actually.

So far I’ve written about things you expect, and want, to find in the forest. However, there are lots of things that don’t fall into those categories. Unfortunately there’s lots of trash, especially nearer the main road. That includes stuff left by picnickers, partiers, hunters, etc., as well as random stuff that people bring in cars to dump there. In the unexpected category, there are the ruins of some old Soviet-era military structures, which we passed by last summer.

And finally, in the unexpected but welcome category, there’s a new land art installation that is off the main road near the entrance, which we visited with friends the following weekend. I don’t know a lot about it, but there are lots of sculptures of two-headed, 8-legged horses made by different teams of people under the supervision of Saint Petersburg-based artist Nikolai Polissky.