Prishvin's story: red cones. Prishvin Mikhail Mikhailovich - (Native land)
Like rye in the fields, so in the meadows all the grains also bloomed, and when the grain was swayed by an insect, it was enveloped in pollen, like a golden cloud.
All the herbs are blooming, and even the plantain. What kind of grass is plantain - and it’s also covered in white beads. Crayfish necks, lungwort, all sorts of spikelets, buttons, cones on thin stems greet you.
How many of them passed while we lived for so many years, and it is impossible to know; It seems that all the same necks, spikelets, old friends.
Hello, darlings, hello!
Ball on the river
Yellow lilies open from sunrise, white ones open at about ten o'clock. When all the white flowers bloom, a ball begins on the river.
Red cones
The dew is cold and fresh breeze The summer heat is moderated during the day. And only because of this is it still possible to walk through the forest, otherwise now there would be horseflies, apparently and invisibly, during the day, and mosquitoes in the mornings and evenings. Now would truly be the time for the horses, maddened by horseflies, to rush into the field right with the carts.
Fresh sunny morning I'm going into the forest through the fields. Working people rest peacefully, enveloped in the steam of their breath. The forest lawn is completely saturated with cold dew, insects are sleeping, many flowers have not yet opened their corollas. Only the aspen leaves move; on the smooth upper side the leaves are already dry; on the lower side the velvety dew is held in place by small beads.
Hello, familiar Christmas trees, how are you, what's new?
And they answer that everything is fine, that during this time the young red cones have reached half their real size. It’s true, you can check it: old empty ones hang on trees next to young ones.
From the spruce abysses I rise to the sunny edge, along the way in the wilderness I encounter a lily of the valley, it has still retained all its shape, but has turned slightly yellow and no longer smells.
boat
Golden network sunbeams on a river rift. Dark blue dragonflies in reeds and horsetail trees. And each dragonfly has its own horsetail tree or reed, it flies off it and returns home again to its horsetail.
The crazy, fucking crows hatched their chicks and are now resting.
The leaf, the smallest one, went down to the river on the web and is spinning, spinning!
So I ride on my boat down the river and think about nature; To me, nature now is a certain unknown in its beginning given, from which man himself very recently emerged and began to create his own from this given, to create a second nature.
Forest book
The forest book is given only to those who want to read it without any tangible benefit for themselves or self-interest; even if you need a mushroom or a nut, it will interfere with you, and you will not have enough attention to delve into the course of forest life.
The forest is young aspen, the undergrowth is walnut, ferns and horsetail live under the nuts.
You have to learn to walk in the forest, looking at the trees from the very bottom to the top, otherwise you usually look either down or straight ahead, and you don’t see what’s happening on the top floor.
The grass is covered with such dew that it doesn’t matter to them like after rain, and even the bushes are covered in dew. To what level of the forest does the dew last?
Water and love
For animals, from insects to humans, the closest element is love, and for plants - water: they thirst for it, and it comes to them from earth and from heaven, just as we have earthly and heavenly love...
Shepherd's pipe
The days are turning very hot, but the dew is still strong and cool. They began to drive out the cattle early and bring them in at noon, to escape horse flies. The shepherd's pipe has the ability to penetrate every home and reach every sleeping soul.
Today the melody penetrated into me, and I allowed myself the possibility of satisfaction with a completely simple life, in which real good would come out without any effort, but just as an indispensable consequence of the life that you lead for yourself. And my communication with a person would occur due to the fact that I want to talk to the person, I want to caress the children. There are no approaches or riddles, everything should come out naturally: a person is waiting for attention, not money.
old linden
I thought about the old linden tree with such wrinkled bark. How long did she console the old master and console me, without thinking anything about us at all! I look at her selfless service to people, and hope blooms in me, like a fragrant linden blossom: maybe someday I, too, will flourish together with her.
Overgrown glade
A forest clearing... I went out and stood under a birch tree... What's happening! The fir trees grew so dense one after another and suddenly they all stopped at a large clearing. There, on the other side of the clearing, there were also people eating and they also stopped, not daring to move further. And so, all around the clearing, there were thick, tall spruce trees, each sending a birch tree ahead of itself. All large clearing was covered with green bumps. It was all once developed by moles and then became overgrown and covered with moss. On these hills dug up by moles, the seed fell and birch trees grew, and under the birch tree, under its maternal protection from frost and sun, a shade-loving Christmas tree grew. And so, the tall spruce trees, not daring to openly send their babies to the clearing themselves, sent them out under the cover of birch trees and crossed the clearing under their protection. Some years allotted for the tree will pass, and the whole clearing will be overgrown with only fir trees, and the patron birches will wither away in shadows.
Rosehip blossom
The rosehip had probably made its way inside the trunk to the young aspen since spring, and now, when the time had come for the aspen to celebrate its name day, it all burst into red, fragrant wild roses. Bees and wasps are buzzing, bumblebees are buzzing, everyone is flying to congratulate and drink on the name day and take honey home.
Rye pours
Rye pours. Heat. In the evenings the sun casts slanting rays on the rye. Then each strip of rye was like a feather bed: this happened because the water flowed well between the strips. This way, rye comes out better on a feather bed with stingrays. In the rays of the setting sun, now each strip of feather bed is so lush, so attractive that you yourself want to lie down and sleep on each one.
Chiaroscuro
Birch and aspen are the most light-loving trees, and especially, it seems to me, aspen. After all, every leaf of her trembles and is bathed in light on all sides. Aspen is light-loving, and shade-loving grasses, ferns, and horsetails grow under the aspen. The aspen forest is so dense that a hare cannot get through, and here, in the thickness, tall nettles emerge from underneath... And so it is everywhere in the world: where there is light, there is shadow.
Strongman
The earth, loosened by the ants' work, was covered with lingonberries on top, and under the berries a mushroom arose and, little by little pushing with its elastic cap, lifted up above itself a whole arch of lingonberries, and itself, completely white, appeared into the light.
Spruce and birch
Spruce is good only with strong sunlight: then her usual blackness shines through with the thickest, strongest green. And the birch tree is cute both in the sun, and on the grayest day, and in the rain.
Blooming Sally
So summer has come, in the coolness of the forest the white, porcelain-like “night beauty” began to smell, and the handsome man of our forests, fireweed, stood in the sun in his full magnificent stature by a tree stump.
At the old stump
The forest is never empty, and if it seems empty, it’s your own fault.
Old dead trees, their huge aging stumps are surrounded in the forest with complete peace, hot rays fall on their darkness through the branches, from the warm stump everything around warms up, everything grows, moves, the stump sprouts all sorts of greenery, is covered with all sorts of flowers. On just one bright sunny spot in a hot spot there were ten grasshoppers, two lizards, six large flies, two ground beetles... Tall ferns gathered around, like guests; From the stump, one fern will lean towards another, whisper something, and that fern will whisper to the third, and all the guests will exchange thoughts.
Anthill stump
There are old stumps in the forest, all covered, like Swiss cheese, with holes and retaining their strong shape... If, however, you have to sit on such a stump, then the partitions between the holes are obviously destroyed, and you feel that you yourself are a little ass on the stump. And when you feel that you are a little ass, then get up immediately: from every hole of this stump under you, many ants are crawling out, and the spongy stump will turn out to be a solid anthill, retaining the appearance of a stump.
Forest stream
If you want to understand the soul of the forest, find a forest stream and go up or down its bank.
I see how, in a shallow place, flowing water meets a barrier in the roots of spruce trees and, as a result, gurgles against the roots and releases bubbles. When these bubbles are born, they rush quickly and immediately burst, but most of they cluster further at a new obstacle into a far-visible snow-white lump.
And then there’s a big blockage, and the water seems to be murmuring, and this murmur and splashing can be heard far away.
Under the restrained murmur of water, the streams roll confidently and cannot help but call out to each other in joy: powerful streams converge into one large one and, meeting, merge, speak and call out to each other.
The tree had long and tightly laid down on the stream and had even turned green with time, but the stream found its way out under the tree and quickly, with tremulous shadows it beats and gurgles.
A wide, deep depression appeared on the way. The stream, sparing no water, filled it and ran on, leaving this backwater to live its own life.
A stream ran out of the deep forest into a clearing and, in the open warm rays of the sun, spread into a wide reach.
Dew
Fogs rose from the fields and meadows and melted into the blue sky, but in the forest the fogs lingered for a long time. The sun rises higher, the rays penetrate through the forest fog into the depths of the thicket, and there, in the thicket, you can look directly at them and even count and photograph.
The green paths in the forest all seem to be smoking, the fog is rising everywhere, the water is sitting in bubbles on the leaves, on the fir trees, on spider webs, on the telegraph wire. And as the sun rises and the air warms up, the drops on the telegraph wire begin to merge with one another and thin out.
Probably the same thing is done on trees: drops merge there too.
And when, finally, the sun began to shine fairly on the telegraph wire, large rainbow drops began to fall to the ground. And the same thing in the coniferous and deciduous forest - it wasn’t rain, but as if joyful tears were shed. The aspen was especially quivering with joy, when one drop falling from above set a sensitive leaf in motion, and so lower and lower, the entire aspen, sparkling in complete calm, trembled from the falling drop.
At this time, some of the highly alert webs of spiders dried out, and the spiders began to tighten their signal threads. A woodpecker knocked on the tree and pecked a blackbird on a mountain ash tree.
Golden Meadow
My brother and I always had fun when the dandelions ripened. It used to be that we would go somewhere on our business - he was ahead, I was at the heel.
“Seryozha!” - I’ll call him in a businesslike manner. He will look back, and I will blow a dandelion right in his face. For this, he begins to watch for me and, like a gape, he also makes a fuss. And so we picked these uninteresting flowers just for fun. But once I managed to make a discovery.
We lived in a village, in front of our window there was a meadow, all golden with many blooming dandelions. It was very beautiful. Everyone said: “Very beautiful! The meadow is golden! One day I got up early to fish and noticed that the meadow was not golden, but green. When I returned home around noon, the meadow was again all golden. I began to observe. By evening the meadow turned green again. Then I went and found a dandelion, and it turned out that it had squeezed its petals, as if our fingers on the palm side were yellow and, clenching it into a fist, we would close the yellow one. In the morning, when the sun rose, I saw the dandelions opening their palms and this made the meadow turn golden again.
Since then, dandelion has become one of the most interesting colors, because dandelions went to bed with us children, and got up with us.
You can either write your own.
And then suddenly you come to this quiet place stream, that you can hear the bullfinch purring throughout the forest and the chaffinch rustling the old leaves.
And then powerful jets, the whole stream converges into two jets at an oblique angle and with all its strength hits the steep, fortified by many mighty roots of an age-old spruce.
It was so good that I sat down on the roots and, while resting, heard the confidently powerful jets calling to each other down there, under the steep slope, they were calling to each other in their “is it sooner or later?”
The water splashed in the aspen patches like a whole lake, and, having gathered in one corner, began to fall from a cliff a meter high, and from this it began to mumble far away. So Bubnilo mumbles, and on the lake there is a quiet trembling, a small trembling, and the cramped aspen trees, overturned there under the water, run down like snakes continuously and cannot escape from themselves.
The stream has tied me to itself, and I can’t step aside, it’s getting boring.
I came out onto some forest road, and now there was the shortest grass, so green, almost poisonous, and on the sides there were two ruts overflowing with water.
On the youngest birch trees the buds are green and shining brightly with fragrant resin, but the forest is not yet clothed, and this still bare forest is in this year a cuckoo has flown in: a cuckoo flying into a bare forest is considered bad.
This is the twelfth year now that I have been going through this clearing early, naked in the spring, when only wolf's bast, anemones and primroses are blooming. The bushes, trees, even stumps are so familiar to me here that the wild felling became like a garden to me: I caressed every bush, every pine tree, every fir-tree, and they all became mine, and it’s the same as if I planted them, it’s my own garden.
From this “garden” of mine, I returned to the stream and looked here at a great forest event: a huge century-old spruce, undermined by the stream, fell with all its old and new cones, all its many branches lay on the stream, and a trickle was now beating against each branch and , as it flowed, she repeated, echoing with others: “Is it sooner or later?”
A stream ran out of the deep forest into a clearing and, in the open warm rays of the sun, spread into a wide reach. Here he was the first one to emerge from the water yellow flower, and like a honeycomb lay the eggs of frogs, so ripe that black tadpoles could be seen through the transparent cells. Right there, just above the water, there were a multitude of bluish flies, almost the size of a flea, and they immediately fell into the water, flew out from somewhere and fell, and this, it seems, was their short life. Shiny like copper, spun on calm water a water bug, and the rider galloped in all directions and did not even stir the water. Lemongrass, large and bright, flew over calm water. Small puddles around the quiet creek are overgrown with grass and flowers, and downy willows on early willow They flourished and began to look like little chickens covered in yellow fluff.
What happened to the stream? Half of the water flowed in a separate stream to one side, the other half to another. Perhaps, in their struggle for faith in their “sooner or later,” the water divided: one water said that this path would lead to the goal first, the other saw in the other direction shortcut, and so they parted, and ran around a large circle, and enclosed a large island between themselves, and again joyfully came together and understood: no different roads for water, all paths, sooner or later, will certainly lead it to the ocean.
And my eye is caressed, and my ear hears all the time: “Is it sooner or later,” and the aroma of poplar resin and birch bud - everything came together into one, and I felt so that it could not have been better, and I had nowhere else to strive . I sank down between the roots of the tree, pressed myself against the trunk, turned my face towards warm sun, and then my desired moment came.
My stream came to the ocean.
"CHAMOMILE"
What a joy! In a meadow in the forest I came across a chamomile, the most common “loves it or doesn’t love it.” At this joyful meeting, I returned to the idea that the forest opens up only to those who know how to feel kindred attention to its creatures. This first daisy, seeing someone walking, asks “does he love you or doesn’t he love you?” “I didn’t notice, I pass by without seeing, I don’t love, I love only myself. Or noticed. Oh, what joy: he loves! But if he loves, then everything is fine: if he loves, he might even rip it off.”
"RED CONES"
Cold dews and a fresh wind during the day moderate the summer heat. And that’s the only reason you can still walk in the forest, otherwise there would now be horseflies, visible and invisible, during the day, and mosquitoes in the mornings and evenings. Now would really be the time for the horses, maddened by horseflies, to rush into the field right with the carts.
On a fresh sunny morning I walk through the forest fields. Working people rest peacefully, enveloped in the steam of their breath. The forest lawn is completely saturated with cold dew, insects are sleeping, many flowers have not yet opened their corollas. Only the leaves of the aspen are moving; on the smooth upper side the leaves are already dry; on the lower side the velvety dew is held in place by small beads.
- Hello, familiar Christmas trees, how are you, what’s new?
And they answer that everything is fine, that during this time the young red cones have reached half their real size. It’s true, you can check it: old empty ones hang on trees next to young ones.
From the spruce abysses I rise to the sunny edge, along the way in the wilderness I encounter a lily of the valley, it has still retained all its shape, but has turned slightly yellow and no longer smells.
"FLOWERING HERBS"
Like rye in the fields, so all the grains also bloomed in the meadows, and when an insect swayed the grain, it was enveloped in pollen, like a golden cloud.
All the herbs are blooming, and even the plantains - what a plantain grass, and also covered in white beads.
Crayfish necks, lungworts, all sorts of spikelets, buttons, cones on thin stems greet us. How many of them have passed while we have been living for so many years, but it seems that we still have the same necks, spikelets, old friends. Hello, hello again, dears!
"THE FLOWING OF THE ROSE HIP"
The rosehip had probably made its way inside the trunk to the young aspen since spring, and now, when the time had come for the aspen to celebrate its name day, it all burst into red, fragrant wild roses. Bees and wasps are buzzing, bumblebees are buzzing, everyone is flying to congratulate and drink roses on the name day and take honey home.
"SPIRCE AND BIRCH"
Spruce is good only in strong sunlight: then its usual blackness shines through with the thickest, strongest greenery. And the birch tree is cute both in the sun, and on the grayest day, and in the rain.
"MY MUSHROOM"
IN mushroom forest one clearing gives a hand to another clearing through the bushes, and when you cross these bushes, your mushroom meets you in the clearing. There is nothing to look for here: your mushroom is always looking at you.
"PANSIES"
A butterfly, completely black, with a thin white border, sits down and becomes, like a moth, a triangle. And then among these same small butterflies there is a blue one, very familiar to everyone. This one, when it sits on a blade of grass, becomes like a flower. You will pass by and you will never consider it a butterfly - a flower and a flower: a pansy.
"BLOOMING SALLY"
So summer has come, in the coolness of the forest the night beauty, white as porcelain, began to smell, and the handsome man of our forests, Ivan Chai, stood in the sun in his full magnificent stature by a tree stump.
Everyone is scolded by the beast, it’s worse when they say “here real beast" Meanwhile, these animals have a bottomless supply of tenderness. How much love is inherent in the nature - you can see when the children of animals are separated from their own mother and a stranger takes the place of the mother.
The little blind fox was taken out of the hole, given to be raised by a dairy cat, and she blindly loved him, and he caressed her as if he were his own mother.
The cat lambed, the kittens were abandoned, another soon lambed in the same basket, and she was left alone. Then both cats began to feed one kitten, the native one goes away, a stranger climbs into the basket, as if in her milk lies a commanding power that makes all other people’s things akin. And not only a wolf, even a tiger will look into his eyes with the greatest tenderness if a person leaves him and from an early age becomes his mother.
And dogs before all animals special love to a person. The nature of this love is the same as the love of blind people for their milk mother. The dog, snatched from wild life, probably retained the feeling of the loss of all Mother Nature and devoted itself to man as a mother on faith. It is most noticeable in a dog what potential for love is inherent in the animal and in the wild in general.
"WOOD CEMETERY"
They grabbed a strip of forest for firewood and for some reason didn’t take it all out, so the woodpiles remained in the clearing, in some places completely disappearing into a young aspen forest with huge light green leaves or into a dense spruce forest. For those who understand the life of the forest, there is nothing more interesting than such cuttings, because the forest is a book with seven seals, and cutting is a page of an open book. After cutting pine forest the sun burst in here and therefore giant grasses grew, which did not allow the seeds of pine and spruce to germinate. Small aspens, wildly dense and lop-eared, however, conquer even the grass and grow, no matter what. When the aspen tree choke out the grass, the shade-loving spruce begins to grow in the aspen forest, overgrows it, and therefore the spruce usually replaces the pine. At this clearing, however, there was mixed forest, but the most important thing was that there were swampy moss patches that had become lively and cheerful since the forest was cut down.
And in this clearing one could now read the whole life of the forest, in all its diversity there was moss with its blue and red berries, red moss and green, small-starred and large, and rare spots of white moss interspersed with red lingonberries, dwarf birch . Everywhere, near the old stumps, against their black background, young pines, spruces, and birches glowed brightly in the sun’s rays. The wild change of life inspired cheerful hopes, and the black stumps, these naked graves of the former tall trees, were not at all depressing in their appearance, as happens in human cemeteries.
A tree dies in different ways. Here is a birch tree, it is rotting from the inside, so for a long time you mistake its white trunk for a tree. Meanwhile, there is only dust inside. This wood sponge is saturated with water and is quite heavy; if you push such a tree and are not careful, the top pieces can fall and bruise and even kill. You often see a birch stump standing like a bouquet; only the birch bark remains a white collar, it alone, resinous, does not rot, but from the inside, on the rot, there are flowers and new trees. After death, spruce and pine trees first of all shed their bark; it falls down in pieces, like clothing, and lies in a heap under the tree. Then the top falls, the branches fall, and finally the stump itself falls apart.
A multitude of flowers, mushrooms, and ferns are rushing to compensate for the decay of the once great tree. But first of all, it itself, right next to the stump, continues with a small tree. Moss, bright green, large-starred, with frequent brown hammers, hurries to cover the bare knees that once held the tree in the ground; on this moss there are often giant red russulas, in a plate. Light green ferns, red strawberries, lingonberries, blue blueberries are surrounded by ruins. It happens that for some reason the threads of a creeping cranberry need to get over a stump, and you see, there are its blood-red berries hanging on thin threads with tiny leaves, extremely decorating the ruins of the stump.
"DARK FOREST"
The dark forest is good on a bright sunny day - there is coolness and miracles of light bird of paradise it seems like a blackbird or a jay when they fly across Sunbeam, the leaves of the simplest mountain ash in the undergrowth flash with green light, as in the fairy tales of Scheherazade.
The lower you go down to the river, the thicker the thickets, the greater the coolness, until, finally, in the darkness of the shadow, between the alder trees curled with hops, the water of the barrel flashes and its wet sand appears on the shore. You have to walk quietly: you can see a turtle dove drinking water here. Afterwards, you can admire her paw prints in the sand and all kinds of prints nearby. forest dwellers: So the fox passed.
That is why the forest is called dark, because the sun looks into it as if through a window, and does not see everything. So he cannot see badger holes and near them a well-compacted sandy area where young badgers roll. There are a lot of holes dug here, and, apparently, it’s all because of the fox, which settles in badger holes and with its stench and untidiness the badger survives. But the place is wonderful, I don’t want to change it: a sandy hill, ravines on all sides, and everything is overgrown with such thickets that the sun looks out and can’t see anything through its small window.
"ANTHILL STUM"
There are old stumps in the forest, all covered with holes like Swiss cheese, and retaining their strong shape. If, however, you have to sit on such a stump, then the partitions between the holes are obviously destroyed, and you feel that you yourself have sank a little on the stump. And when you feel that you have sunk a little, then get up immediately: from every hole of this stump under you a lot of ants will crawl out, and the spongy stump will turn out to be a solid anthill that has retained the appearance of a stump.
"Overgrown Glade"
Forest Glade. I went out and stood under the birch tree. What's being done! The fir trees, one after another, grew so dense and suddenly they all stopped at a large clearing. There, on the other side of the clearing, there were also fir trees and they also stopped, not daring to move further. And so all around the clearing there were thick, tall spruce trees, each sending a birch tree ahead of itself. The entire large clearing was covered with green hillocks. It was all once developed by moles and then became overgrown and covered with moss. On these hills dug up by moles, the seed fell and birch trees grew, and under the birch tree, under its maternal protection from frost and sun, a shade-loving Christmas tree grew. And so the tall spruce trees, not daring to openly send their babies into the clearing themselves, sent them out under the cover of birch trees and crossed the clearing under their protection.
Some years allotted for the tree will pass, and the entire clearing will be overgrown with only fir trees, and the patron birches will wither in the shade.
"Forest Dwellings"
We found an aspen tree with an old woodpecker nest, which was now favored by a pair of starlings. We also saw one old square hollow, obviously yellow, and a narrow long crack in the aspen, from which a nut jumped out.
We found two hainas on the spruce trees, dark tangles of twigs in which you can’t see anything from below. Both guys were placed on the trees medium height, so that in the entire large forest the squirrels occupied the middle floor. We also managed to catch the squirrel below and drive it low into a tree. The squirrel was still covered in all its winter fur.
Buzzards hovered over the treetops, apparently also near the nest. The guard raven flew around almost half a kilometer from its nest, screaming.
The grouse rushed with extraordinary speed and successfully shot down the flight of the hawk pursuing it. Having missed, he sat down on a tree branch in disappointment. It had a white head: apparently it was a gyrfalcon or a falcon.
You have to look for woodpecker hollows in the same way as you do mushrooms: all the time you look intensely in front of you to the sides, as far as you can see, and down and down, although the woodpecker hollows are, of course, at the top. This is because it is at this time that woodpeckers begin to hollow out their nests and drop light debris onto the still dark ground, not covered with greenery. By these quarrels you will find out which tree the woodpecker has chosen for itself. Apparently, it is not so easy for him to choose a suitable tree for himself: you constantly see near the hollows made by a woodpecker starting them on this tree or on neighboring ones. It is remarkable that the vast majority of hollows we found were certainly located under aspen fungus. Whether this is done to protect the nests from rain, or whether the mushroom shows the woodpecker a place that is favorable to it, soft for chiselling, we still couldn’t decide.
It was interesting to see a hollow at the top of a small birch tree that was decaying from rotting. Its height was four meters, one hollow was at the very top, the other was made a little lower under the fungus. Next to this tree trunk lay its upper part, rotten, saturated, like a sponge, with water. And the trunk itself with the hollow did not hold up well - if you shook it a little, it would have fallen. But maybe the chiseling was not for the nest.
"MASTER"
After the thunderstorm it suddenly became very cold, a strong North wind. Swifts and shore swallows do not fly, but fall from somewhere in masses.
This continuous wind day and night, and today, in full sunshine, ever-running waves with white crests and tirelessly scurrying clouds of swifts, shore swallows, village and city swallows, and there all the seagulls fly from Gremyach at once, like birds in a good fairy tale, only not blue ones , and white on blue. White birds, blue sky, white crests of waves, black swallows - and everyone has one task, divided in two: to eat themselves and to endure being eaten by others. Midges swarm and fall into the water, fish rise after midges, seagulls after fish, gudgeon on a worm, perch on a gudgeon, pike on a perch and an osprey on top of a pike.
At dawn, when the wind had died down a little, we set the sail and, at the edge of the wind, walked along the fiery cast of the waves. Very close to us, an osprey rushed on top of a pike, but was mistaken; the pike was larger and stronger than the osprey, after a short struggle the pike began to sink into the water, the osprey flapped its huge wings, but the paws stuck into the pike did not free themselves, and the water predator pulled it into the depths of the air. The waves indifferently carried the bird's feathers and washed away the traces of the struggle.
At a depth where the waves rose very high, a shuttle floated without a man, without oars or sail. One shuttle, without a person, was as creepy as a horse when it rushes a cart without an owner straight into a ravine. It was dangerous for us in our gas chamber, but we still decided to go there, to find out what was the matter, if some trouble had happened, when suddenly the owner, invisible to us, rose from the bottom of the shuttle, took an oar and steered the shuttle against the waves.
We almost screamed with joy that a man had appeared in this world, and although we knew that it was just an exhausted fisherman who had fallen asleep in a canoe, what did it matter: we wanted to see how the man would perform, and we saw it.
"CUCKOO"
During my rest on a fallen birch tree, the cuckoo, without noticing me, sat down somewhere almost nearby and with some kind of aspiration, as if it were telling us: “Come on, I’ll try, what will happen?” - cuckooed.
- Once! - I said, out of old habit, wondering how many years I still had left to live.
And only she said her “ku” for the third time, and I was just about to say my “three”...
- Cook! – she said and flew away.
I never said my three. It wasn’t enough for me to live, but it’s not a shame, I lived enough, but it’s a shame that if these two-and-a-half years you’ve been getting ready for some big undertaking, and then you get ready, you start, and then suddenly “crack!” .. It will all end!
So is it worth getting together?
“It’s not worth it!” – I thought.
But, getting up, I took one last look at the birch tree - and immediately everything blossomed in my soul: this wonderful fallen birch tree is opening its resinous buds for its last, for this spring alone.
"WIND IN THE FOREST"
Windy, cool and clear. In the forest, “the forest is noisy,” and through the noise you can hear the bright summer song of the wren.
The forest makes noise only at the top, in the middle tier; in the young aspen forest, only the tender round leaves tremble and barely audibly tap each other. Below in the grass there is complete silence, and you can hear a bumblebee working in it.
The great dryness continues. The river has completely dried up, the bridges of trees that were once felled by the water remain, and the duck hunters’ path has been preserved on the bank, and on the sand there are fresh traces of birds and animals that, from old memory, came here for water. They, however, find water to drink here and there in barrels.
"RYE IS POURING"
Rye pours. Heat. In the evenings the sun casts slanting rays on the rye. Then each strip of rye was like a feather bed: this happened because the water flowed well between the strips. This way, rye comes out better on a feather bed with stingrays. In the rays of the setting sun, now each strip of feather bed is so lush, so attractive that you yourself want to lie down and sleep on each one.
"DOVE"
The peaceful sound of a cooing turtle dove testifies to all living things in the forest: life goes on.
"SUNSET OF THE YEAR"
For everyone, it’s just the beginning of summer, and here we are at the end of the year: the days are already waning, and if the rye has bloomed, then you can count on your fingers when it will be harvested.
In the slanting morning rays at the edge of the forest there is a dazzling whiteness of birches, whiter than marble columns. Here, under the birch trees, the buckthorn is still blooming with its extraordinary flowers, I’m afraid that the rowan has not started well, and the raspberries are strong and the currants are strong, with large green berries.
Every day now, “peek-a-boo” is heard less and less often in the forest, and the well-fed summer silence with the roll call of children and parents grows more and more. As a rare case - the drum trill of a woodpecker. If you hear it close, you will even shudder and think: “is there anyone?” There is no more general green noise, here is the song thrush - he sings as well, but he sings alone. Maybe this song sounds better now - the best is ahead best time, after all, this is the very beginning of summer, Semik is in two days. But all the same, that something is no longer there, it has passed, the sunset of the year has begun.
“ASPENS ARE COLD”
On a sunny day in autumn, at the edge of a spruce forest, young multi-colored aspen trees gathered, densely one to the other, as if they were there, in spruce forest, it became cold and they went out to warm themselves at the edge of the forest, just like in our villages people go out into the sun and sit on the rubble.
"AUTUMN DEW"
It dawned on me. Flies are knocking on the ceiling. The sparrows are herding. Rooks are in the harvested fields. Forty families graze on the roads. The ridges are cold and grey. Another dewdrop in the axil of a leaf sparkles all day.
There is a barn spirit in the village.
At dawn, geese - oak socks - knock merrily.
The mushroom climbs and climbs.
"LEAF FALL"
A hare came out of the dense fir trees under a birch tree and stopped when he saw a large clearing. He didn’t dare go straight to the other side and walked around the entire clearing from birch tree to birch tree. So he stopped and listened. If you are afraid of something in the forest, it is better not to go while the leaves are falling and whispering. The hare listens: it seems to him as if someone is whispering from behind and sneaking. It is possible, of course, for a cowardly hare to pluck up courage and not look back, but here something else happens: you were not afraid, did not succumb to the deception of falling leaves, and just then someone took advantage of you and quietly grabbed you in the teeth from behind.
I was driving here and the rye was starting to turn yellow. Now I’m leaving back - people eat this rye, and the new one turns green again. Then the trees in the forest merged into one green mass, now each one appears on its own. And it’s always like this in autumn. She doesn’t undress a lot of trees right away, she gives everyone a little time to be and show off separately.
Fogs rose from the fields, from the meadows, from the waters and melted into the azure sky, but in the forest the fogs lingered for a long time. The sun rises higher, the rays penetrate through the forest fog into the depths of the thicket, and there, in the thicket, you can look directly at them.
The green paths in the forest all seem to be smoking, the fog rises everywhere, the water sits in bubbles on the leaves, on the needles of the fir trees, on spider webs, on the telegraph wire. And, as the sun rises and the air warms up, the drops on the telegraph wire begin to merge with one another and thin out. Probably the same thing is done on trees: drops merge there too.
And when, finally, the sun began to warm up the telegraph wire, large rainbow drops began to fall to the ground. And the same thing in the coniferous and deciduous forest - it wasn’t raining, but as if joyful tears were shed. The aspen was especially trembling and joyful when one drop falling from above set a sensitive leaf in motion, and so lower and lower the entire aspen, sparkling in complete calm, trembled from the falling drop.
At this time, some of the highly alert webs of spiders dried out, and the spiders began to tighten their signal threads. A woodpecker knocked on the tree and pecked a blackbird on a mountain ash tree.
"WINDY DAY"
This fresh wind knows how to speak tenderly to the hunter, just as the hunters themselves often chatter among themselves from an excess of joyful expectations. You can speak and you can remain silent: conversation and silence are easy for a hunter. It happens that a hunter is animatedly telling something, but suddenly something flashed in the air, the hunter looked there and then: “What was I talking about?” I don’t remember, and that’s okay: you can start something else. So the hunting wind in the fall constantly whispers about something and, without finishing one thing, moves on to another; Then I heard the muttering of a young black grouse and stopped, the cranes were screaming.
"SUNRISES"
Double sky when the clouds were coming in different sides, it ended with rain for two days, and the rain ended with icy clouds. But the sun shone in the morning, not paying attention to this conspiracy of the sky, and I hastened to go hunting with my camera. The rye sown by the soldiers came out of the ground: each of these soldiers was dressed in red right down to the ground, and the bayonet was green, and on each bayonet hung a huge lingonberry drop, sparkling in the sun, sometimes directly like the sun, sometimes iridescently like a diamond. . When I looked at the camera sight and a picture of troops in red shirts with green guns and individual suns sparkling for each soldier appeared to me, my delight was immeasurable. Not paying any attention to the dirt, I lay down on my stomach and tried in different ways to remove these shoots.
No, it turned out that it was impossible to remove it with my means: after all, the red shirts of the soldiers would certainly have come out dark and merged with the ground, and with a large aperture, only the front ones would come out with a large aperture, but if you stopped the aperture too much and put it on constant focus, they would come out too small. You can’t capture everything with a camera, but if it weren’t for the camera, I wouldn’t have laid down in the dirt and on my stomach and wouldn’t have noticed that the rising sandpipers looked like red soldiers with green guns.
"THE LAST FLOWERS"
Another frosty night. In the morning, in the field I saw a group of surviving blue bells - a bumblebee was sitting on one of them. I tore off the bell, the bumblebee did not fly off, I shook off the bumblebee, it fell. I put him under a hot beam, he came to life, recovered and flew. And on the cancer neck, in the same way, a red dragonfly became numb overnight and before my eyes recovered under the hot beam and flew away. And grasshoppers in huge numbers began to fall from under our feet, and among them were cracklings, flying up with a crash, blue and bright red.
The earth, loosened by the ants' work, was covered with lingonberries on top, and a mushroom appeared under the berries, and little by little, pushing with its elastic cap, it lifted up above itself a whole arch of lingonberries, and itself, completely white, appeared into the light.
"BIRCHES"
In winter, birch trees hide in coniferous forest, and in the spring, when the leaves unfurl, it seems as if birches from a dark forest are emerging to the edge. This happens until the foliage on the birch trees darkens and more or less matches the color coniferous trees. And it also happens in the fall, when the birch trees, before disappearing, say goodbye to us with their gold.
“THE HAT IS ON BURN”
It’s quiet in the gold, and everywhere on the grass, like canvases, the frost is real, visible, not the kind that the owners talk about, drizzle, which means cold dew. Only at eight in the morning did this real visible frost become covered in dew and the canvases under the birches disappeared. The leaf flowed everywhere. In the distance, spruce and pine trees say goodbye to birches, and tall aspens form a red cap over the forest, and for some reason from my distant childhood I remember a completely incomprehensible saying: “A thief’s cap burns.”
And the swallows are still here.
"PARACHUTE"
In such silence, when without grasshoppers in the grass in their own ears The grasshoppers sang, and a yellow leaf slowly flew down from a birch tree covered with tall spruce trees. He flew off in such silence that even the aspen leaf did not move. It seemed that the movement of the leaf attracted the attention of everyone, and everyone was eating, birch and pine trees with all their leaves, twigs, needles, and even the bushes, even the grass under the bushes, marveled and asked: “How could a leaf move and move in such silence?” And, obeying everyone’s request to find out whether the leaf moved by itself, I went to him and found out. No, the leaf did not move by itself; it was the spider, wanting to descend, he weighed it down and made it his parachute: a small spider landed on this leaf.
“ROW BERRY IS RED”
The morning is sparse. There are no cobwebs at all in the clearings. Very quiet. I can hear the yellowbird, the jay, and the thrush. The rowan tree turns very red, the birch trees begin to turn yellow. White butterflies, slightly larger than moths, occasionally fly over the mown grass.
"FACTORY"
Among the trees burned from a forest fire last year, one small aspen remained on the very edge of a high ravine, opposite our State Backwater. A haystack was placed near this aspen tree in the summer, and now in the fall it has become yellow over time, and the aspen tree is bright red and flaming. You can see this haystack and aspen tree in the distance and recognize our backwater, where there are as many catfish as in big city residents, where in the morning there is a rustle, scary predator, throws itself onto a school of fish and whips its tail through the water so much that the fish turn belly up, and the predator eats them.
There are so many small fish (fry) in the water that from the blow of the oar in front a school often jumps up to the top, as if someone had thrown it up. The fish are no longer taking the bait well, and the catfish go after the frog at night, only there are very few frogs this year due to the dry season, and there are also few spiders and these red ones autumn days There are no cobwebs in the forest at all.
The Gadgets didn’t listen to anything, they fussed, worried, and didn’t want to go down and go beyond their floor.
Or maybe,” we said to each other, “they are afraid of us.” Let's hide! - And they hid.
No! The chicks squealed, the parents squeaked, fluttered, but did not go down.
We guessed then that the birds, unlike ours in skyscrapers, cannot change floors: now it just seems to them that the entire floor with their chicks has disappeared.
Oh-oh-oh,” said my companion, “what fools you are!”
It became pitiful and funny: so nice and with wings, but they don’t want to understand anything.
Then we took that large piece in which the nest was located, broke the top of a neighboring birch tree and placed our piece with the nest on it exactly at the same height as the destroyed floor. We didn't have to wait long in ambush: after a few minutes happy parents met our chicks.
Live night
It began to quickly get warmer, summer clouds arrived, the first thunder struck, and all the frogs that were in the puddles became agitated so much that they caused the water to become agitated...
After the warm rain fell, Petya started fishing: he put nets for crucian carp in a peat pond and noticed the place where he had nets by small birch trees; there on the shore near the nets stood ten small, man-sized, birch trees. Their branches were still bare, without leaves.
The sun was setting plump, and when it set, it began live night: all the nightingales sang, all the frogs screamed...
But it happens so often in the world that when everyone is happy, a poor thought comes into the head of a poor person and does not allow him to rejoice. Petya also couldn’t sleep, and then it occurred to him that thieves had come and taken away the nets. That’s why Petya runs to his nets at dawn and already from a distance sees that where he set the nets, there are now people standing - it’s true, thieves.
In terrible anger, he runs there and suddenly stops, smiles, he is ashamed: these are not people - it was during the night that those ten birch trees were dressed in green and as if people were standing...
When he took out his first net, there were sixty-three crucian carp in it.
petin shoe
We had the following incident on this trip: Swat, a young spaniel, while playing, took Petya’s shoe into the thicket and buried it. No matter how much we searched, we could not find it. They resorted to tricks - they gave him another shoe in the hope that he would bring it to the first one and bury it in the same place, and we would take a peek. He did not refuse, grabbed another shoe, disappeared into the thicket, and while we were looking, he managed to bury the second shoe. In a vain search, with annoyance, I said to Petya, who had come up with this trick:
Petya, your cunning brought no benefit: we lost our second shoe.
But there’s no harm,” Petya answered. - You can’t go far in one shoe anyway.
I began to vehemently object to these words: not long before, in search of wintering cranberries, we found some pretty fresh bast shoes.
Now, if,” I said, “we now had a shoe, then it would be possible - one foot in a shoe, the other in a bast shoe - to walk perfectly through the swamp for berries.
Near the nest
The sarych, when it flies low over the forest, for some reason never whistles as usual, but grunts. This sound is probably associated with feeding his children; it is him approaching his nest.
Almost every bird that appears with a worm in its nose squeaks despite this. Today I watched how a nut, without letting go of the worm, sat down on a twig to rest and in an instant scratched both cheeks alternately on the twig.
The hazel grouse fluttered out and settled among the fir trees and birches, small, as big as a sparrow, but already excellent flight and watchful, just like the big ones. The mother sits close on a birch tree, very restrainedly and dully lets them know about herself, and when she makes a sound, her tail sways.
Woodpecker
I saw a woodpecker: short - it has a small tail, it flew with a large one on its beak fir cone. He sat down on a birch tree, where he had a workshop for peeling cones. He ran up the trunk with a bump on his beak to a familiar place. Suddenly he sees that in the crevice where his cones are pinched, a spent and undiscarded cone is sticking out and there is nowhere to put a new cone. And - what grief! - there is nothing to throw off the old one with: the beak is busy.
Then the woodpecker, just like a human would do, squeezed the new cone between his chest and the tree, freed his beak and quickly threw out the old cone with his beak. Then he placed the new one in his workshop and started working.
He is so smart, always cheerful, lively and businesslike.
Pike
We set up fixed nets in the river overnight and pulled out the pike the next morning. She was so entangled in the nets that she stood motionless in the water, like a branch. And so we see - the frog sat on it and latched onto it so tightly that for a long time we could not tear it off the pike with a stick. The pike was alive.
birch bark tube
I found an amazing birch bark tube. When a person cuts himself a piece of birch bark on a birch tree, the rest of the birch bark near the cut begins to curl into a tube. The tube will dry out and curl up tightly. There are so many of them on birch trees that you don’t even pay attention.
But today I wanted to see if there was anything in such a tube. And in the very first tube I found a good nut, grabbed so tightly that it was difficult to push it out with a stick.
There were no hazel trees around the birch tree. How did he get there?
“The squirrel probably hid it there, making its winter supplies,” I thought. “She knew that the tube would roll up tighter and tighter and grab the nut tighter and tighter so that it wouldn’t fall out.”
But later I guessed that it was not the squirrel, but the nutcracker bird who stuck the nut, maybe stealing it from the squirrel’s nest.
Looking at my birch bark tube, I made another discovery: I settled under the cover of a walnut - who would have thought? - the spider and the entire inside of the tube were covered with its web.
Top swimmers
A golden network of sunbeams trembles on the water. Dark blue dragonflies in reeds and horsetail trees. And each dragonfly has its own horsetail tree or reed: it flies off and will certainly return to it.
The crazy crows brought out the chicks and are now sitting and resting.
A leaf, the smallest one, on a spider’s web went down to the river and is spinning, spinning...
So I ride quietly down the river in my boat, and my boat is a little heavier than this leaf, made of fifty-two sticks and covered with canvas. There is only one paddle for it: a long stick with a spatula at the ends. Dip each spatula alternately from one side to the other. The boat is so light that no effort is needed: you touch the water with a spatula - and it floats, and it floats so silently that the fish are not at all afraid. There's just so much you can't see when you're quietly riding a boat like this on the river!
Here a rook, flying over the river, dropped a drop into the water, and this lime-white drop, tapping the water, immediately attracted attention small fish top melter In an instant, a real market of high-flying boats gathered around the rook drop. Noticing this gathering, a large predator - a shellfin fish - swam up and smacked its tail across the water with such force that the stunned apex fish turned upside down. They would have come to life in a minute, but the rustler is not some kind of fool: he knows that it doesn’t happen very often that a rook drops a drop and so many fools gather around one drop; grab one, grab another - they ate a lot, and those who managed to get away will henceforth live like scientists, and if something good drips from above them, they will keep an eye out for something bad coming from below.
Badger holes
That’s why the forest is called dark because the sun looks into it through the tops of the trees, as if through a window, but not everything in the forest can be seen.
So, he cannot see badger holes and near them a well-compacted sandy area where young badgers roll. There are a lot of holes dug by badgers here. Why do they need so many holes? And all because of the fox, which loves to settle in ready-made apartments and, with its untidiness, survives its owners - the badgers.
The badgers should go to a new place, away from the uninvited guest. But the place is wonderful, I don’t want to change it: a sandy hill, ravines on all sides, and everything is overgrown with such thickets that the sun looks out and can’t see anything through its window. So the badgers dig new holes.
Red cones
In sunny Summer morning I enter the forest.
Hello, familiar Christmas trees, how are you, what's new?
And they answer in their own way that everything is fine, that during this time the young red cones have reached half their real size.
And it’s true, it can be verified: old, brown, empty ones hang next to young, red ones, on the trees; you can count it, and it will be just half.
Since childhood, parents and boys and girls have been amazed at Arkasha Plastov.
he looks like a boy. His button nose is fair-haired, mischievous, funny, brave. In general, an ordinary boy.
But sometimes something seemed to come over Arkasha. For example, he will go out into the field, spread his arms and shout something.
Who are you, Arkashka? - the boys ask.
This is me saying hello to the wind. Do you hear him answering me?” says Arkasha. The boys listen, but hear nothing. Only the grass hums with the wind, and the larks whistle high in the sky.
Or they will send little Arkasha to graze the cattle, and he will squat on the edge of the forest and mutter something under his breath. His sister brought him lunch and asks:
Who are you talking to?
The ants told me that a bear stepped on their house with its paw. Now they have to carry food for the children and restore the anthill.
“Why doesn’t anyone hear anything? How to prove that the earth is actually alive and everything in it has its own voice?” thinks Arkasha.
Arkasha thought, he thought, but he didn’t think of anything and didn’t come up with anything.
Please help me find 2 simple sentences with introductory wordsSince childhood, parents and boys and girls have been amazed at Arkasha Plastov. He looks like a boy. He has a button nose, he is fair-haired, mischievous, funny, brave. In general, an ordinary boy.
But sometimes something seemed to come over Arkasha. For example, he would go out into a field, spread his arms and shout something.
“Who are you, Arkasha?” the boys ask.
“It’s me saying hello to the wind. Do you hear, he’s answering me?” says Arkasha. The boys listen, but hear nothing. Only the grass hums in the wind, and the larks whistle high in the sky.
Or they will send little Arkasha to graze the cattle, and he will squat on the edge of the forest and mutter something under his breath. His little sister will bring him lunch and ask:
-Who are you talking to?
-The ants told me that a bear stepped on their house with its paw. Now they have to carry food for the children and restore the anthill.
Parents get angry when Arkasha talks to the sunset in the evenings and gives advice to the growing grass in the spring.
“Why doesn’t anyone hear anything? How can we prove that the earth is actually alive and everything in it has its own voice?” thinks Arkasha.
There are people in the world who know many different languages. And they can speak them. There are not so few such people. It’s very cool to understand different people and be able to talk to them. But little Arkasha Plastov understood the language of his native land. Such people are rarely born!
Thank you very much in advance!)))
They will send little Arkasha to graze the cattle, and he will squat on the edge of the forest and mutter something under his breath. His little sister will bring him lunch and asks:
---- Who are you talking to?
---- Ants I was told that a bear stepped on their house with its paw. Now they have to carry food for the children and restore the anthill.
Parents get angry when Arkasha talks to the sunset in the evenings and gives advice to the growing grass in the spring.
[Why doesn’t anyone hear anything? How to prove that the earth is actually alive and everything in it has its own voice?] - thinks Arkasha.
Arkasha thought and thought, but didn’t come up with anything.
Short stories about nature in summer time The years of Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin in small miniature forms tell about how and what the forest lives in the summer, how nature experiences a season of growth and development, the author conveys in words the sensations of communicating with the surrounding natural world.
First cancer
Thunder rumbled and rain fell, and through the rain the sun shone and a wide rainbow spread from edge to edge. At this time, the bird cherry tree was blooming, and the wild currant bushes just above the water turned green. Then the first crayfish poked its head out of some crustacean oven and moved its whiskers.
Disgruntled frog
Even the water became agitated - that’s how the frogs jumped. Then they came out of the water and scattered across the land: in the evening, every step there was a frog.
On this warm night, all the frogs purred quietly, and even those who were dissatisfied with their fate purred: on such a night the dissatisfied frog felt good, and she lost her temper and, like everyone else, purred.
Aspen fluff
I removed the flagella from the aspen, spreading the fluff. Against the wind and the sun, bees flew like fluff; you couldn’t even tell whether it was fluff or a bee, whether a plant seed was flying for germination or an insect was flying after prey.
It’s so quiet that during the night, flying aspen fluff settled on the roads, on the creeks, and it all seemed to be covered with snow. I remembered aspen grove, where the fluff lay in a thick layer. We set it on fire, the fire rushed through the grove, and everything turned black.
Aspen fluff is the big event of spring. At this time, nightingales sing, cuckoos and orioles sing. But then the summer wrens are already singing.
Every time, every spring, the time of departure of aspen fluff upsets me with something: the waste of seeds here seems to be even greater than that of fish during spawning, and this depresses and worries me.
At a time when fluff flies from the old aspens, the young change from their brown baby clothes to green, just like village girls on an annual holiday show up for a walk in one outfit, then in another.
After the rain, the hot sun created a greenhouse in the forest with a stupefying aroma of growth and decay: the growth of birch buds and young grass and also fragrant, but in a different way, the decay of last year’s leaves. Old hay, straws, yellow tussocks - everything is overgrown with green grass. The birch catkins have also turned green. Seed caterpillars fly from aspen trees and hang on everything. Just recently, last year’s tall, thick panicle of whitebeard stuck out high; swaying, how many times she must have scared away both the hare and the bird. An aspen caterpillar fell on her and broke her forever, and a new green grass will make her invisible, but this will not happen soon, it will take a long time for the old yellow skeleton to dress up, to be overgrown with the green body of the new spring.
For the third day already the wind is sowing aspen, and the earth tirelessly demands more and more more seeds. The breeze rose and even more aspen seeds flew. The entire earth is covered with aspen worms. Millions of seeds fall, and only a few out of a million will germinate, and yet the aspen tree will initially grow so dense that a hare, meeting it on the way, will run around.
Between the small aspens, a struggle will soon begin with roots for the ground and branches for light. The aspen forest begins to thin out, and when it reaches the height of a person, the hare will begin to gnaw on the bark. When the light-loving aspen forest rises, shade-tolerant fir trees will go under its canopy, timidly clinging to the aspens, little by little they will overtake the aspens, strangling with their shadow the light-loving tree with its ever-quivering leaves.
When the entire aspen forest dies and in its place the Siberian wind howls in the spruce taiga, one aspen somewhere off to the side in the clearing will survive, there will be many hollows and knots in it, woodpeckers will begin to hollow it out, starlings will settle in the hollows of woodpeckers, wild pigeons, titmouse, visiting squirrel, marten. And when it falls a big tree, local hares will come in winter to gnaw the bark, foxes will follow these hares: there will be an animal club here. And so, like this aspen, it is necessary to depict the entire forest world connected by something.
I’m even tired of looking at this sowing: after all, I am a man and I constantly live in alternations of grief and joy. Now I’m tired, I don’t need these aspens, this spring, it seems to me that even my very “I” will dissolve in pain, even the pain itself will disappear - there is nothing. So on an old stump, with my head in my hands, my eyes on the ground, I sit, not paying any attention to the fact that aspen caterpillars are showering me. Nothing good or bad... I exist as a continuation of an old stump, showered with aspen seeds.
But now I rested, with surprise from the unusual pleasant sea I come to my senses with calmness, look around and again notice everything and rejoice at everything.
Red cones
Cold dews and a fresh wind during the day moderate the summer heat. And that’s the only reason you can still walk in the forest, otherwise there would now be horseflies, visible and invisible, during the day, and mosquitoes in the mornings and evenings. Now would really be the time for the horses, maddened by horseflies, to rush into the field right with the carts.
On a fresh sunny morning I walk through the forest fields. Working people rest peacefully, enveloped in the steam of their breath. The forest lawn is completely saturated with cold dew, insects are sleeping, many flowers have not yet opened their corollas. Only the leaves of the aspen are moving; on the smooth upper side the leaves are already dry; on the lower side the velvety dew is held in place by small beads.
Hello, familiar Christmas trees, how are you, what's new?
And they answer that everything is fine, that during this time the young red cones have reached half their real size. It’s true, you can check it: old empty ones hang on trees next to young ones.
From the spruce abysses I rise to the sunny edge, along the way in the wilderness I encounter a lily of the valley, it has still retained all its shape, but has turned slightly yellow and no longer smells.
Anthill stump
There are old stumps in the forest, all covered with holes like Swiss cheese, and retaining their strong shape. If, however, you have to sit on such a stump, then the partitions between the holes are obviously destroyed, and you feel that you yourself have sank a little on the stump. And when you feel that you have sunk a little, then get up immediately: from every hole of this stump under you a lot of ants will crawl out, and the spongy stump will turn out to be a solid anthill that has retained the appearance of a stump.
Sunset of the year
For everyone, it’s just the beginning of summer, and here we are at the end of the year: the days are already waning, and if the rye has bloomed, then you can count on your fingers when it will be harvested.
In the slanting morning rays at the edge of the forest there is a dazzling whiteness of birches, whiter than marble columns. Here, under the birch trees, the buckthorn is still blooming with its extraordinary flowers, I’m afraid that the rowan has not started well, and the raspberries are strong and the currants are strong, with large green berries.
Every day now, “peek-a-boo” is heard less and less often in the forest, and the well-fed summer silence with the roll call of children and parents grows more and more. As a rare case - the drum trill of a woodpecker. If you hear it close, you will even shudder and think: “is there anyone?” There is no more general green noise, here is the song thrush - he sings as well, but he sings alone. Maybe this song sounds better now - the best time is ahead, because this is the very beginning of summer, Semik is in two days. But all the same, that something is no longer there, it has passed, the sunset of the year has begun.
Dark forest
The dark forest is good on a bright sunny day - here there is both coolness and miracles of light. A thrush or a jay seems like a bird of paradise when, flying, they cross a sunbeam, the leaves of the simplest rowan tree in the undergrowth flash with a green light, as in Scheherazade’s fairy tales.
The lower you go down to the river, the thicker the thickets, the greater the coolness, until, finally, in the darkness of the shadow, between the alder trees curled with hops, the water of the barrel flashes and its wet sand appears on the shore. You have to walk quietly: you can see a turtle dove drinking water here. Afterwards, in the sand you can admire the prints of its paws and nearby - all kinds of forest inhabitants: now the fox has passed.
That is why the forest is called dark, because the sun looks into it as if through a window, and does not see everything. So he cannot see badger holes and near them a well-compacted sandy area where young badgers roll. There are a lot of holes dug here, and, apparently, it’s all because of the fox, which settles in badger holes and with its stench and untidiness the badger survives. But the place is wonderful, I don’t want to change it: a sandy hill, ravines on all sides, and everything is overgrown with such thickets that the sun looks out and can’t see anything through its small window.
Overgrown glade
Forest Glade. I went out and stood under the birch tree. What's being done! The fir trees, one after another, grew so dense and suddenly they all stopped at a large clearing. There, on the other side of the clearing, there were also fir trees and they also stopped, not daring to move further. And so all around the clearing there were thick, tall spruce trees, each sending a birch tree ahead of itself. The entire large clearing was covered with green hillocks. It was all once developed by moles and then became overgrown and covered with moss. On these hills dug up by moles, the seed fell and birch trees grew, and under the birch tree, under its maternal protection from frost and sun, a shade-loving Christmas tree grew. And so the tall spruce trees, not daring to openly send their babies into the clearing themselves, sent them out under the cover of birch trees and crossed the clearing under their protection.
Some years allotted for the tree will pass, and the entire clearing will be overgrown with only fir trees, and the patron birches will wither in the shade.
Rye pours
Rye pours. Heat. In the evenings the sun casts slanting rays on the rye. Then each strip of rye was like a feather bed: this happened because the water flowed well between the strips. This way, rye comes out better on a feather bed with stingrays. In the rays of the setting sun, now each strip of feather bed is so lush, so attractive that you yourself want to lie down and sleep on each one.
Spruce and birch
Spruce is good only in strong sunlight: then its usual blackness shines through with the thickest, strongest greenery. And the birch tree is cute both in the sun, and on the grayest day, and in the rain.
Woodpecker
I saw a woodpecker: it was flying short (its tail is small), having planted a large fir cone on its beak. He sat down on a birch tree where he had a workshop for peeling cones. Having run up the trunk with a cone on its beak to a familiar place, he saw that in the fork where the cones were pinched, a spent and undiscarded cone was sticking out, and he had nowhere to put the new cone. And he couldn’t, he had nothing to throw off the old one with: his beak was busy.
Then the woodpecker, just as a man in his position would have done, squeezed the new cone between his chest and the tree, and with his freed beak he quickly threw out the old cone, then placed the new one in his workshop and started working.
He is so smart, always cheerful, lively and businesslike.
Forest dwellings
We found an aspen tree with an old woodpecker nest, which was now favored by a pair of starlings. We also saw one old square hollow, apparently desirable, and a narrow long crack in the aspen tree, from which a nut jumped out.
We found two gaynas on the fir trees (Gaino - Squirrel's Nest), dark tangles of twigs in which you can’t see anything from below. Both gaynas were placed on medium-height fir trees, so that in the entire large forest the squirrels occupied the middle floor. We also managed to catch the squirrel below and drive it low into a tree. The squirrel was still covered in all its winter fur.
Buzzards hovered over the treetops, apparently also near the nest. The guard raven flew around almost half a kilometer from its nest, screaming.
The grouse rushed with extraordinary speed and successfully shot down the flight of the hawk pursuing it. Having missed, he sat down on a tree branch in disappointment. It had a white head: apparently it was a gyrfalcon or a falcon.
You have to look for woodpecker hollows in the same way as you do mushrooms: all the time you look intensely in front of you to the sides, as far as you can see, and down and down, although the woodpecker hollows are, of course, at the top. This is because it is at this time that woodpeckers begin to hollow out their nests and drop light debris onto the still dark ground, not covered with greenery. By these quarrels you will find out which tree the woodpecker has chosen for itself. Apparently, it is not so easy for him to choose a suitable tree for himself: you constantly see near the hollows made by a woodpecker starting them on this tree or on neighboring ones. It is remarkable that the vast majority of hollows we found were certainly located under aspen fungus. Whether this is done to protect the nests from rain, or whether the mushroom shows the woodpecker a place that is favorable to it, soft for chiselling, we still couldn’t decide.
It was interesting to see a hollow at the top of a small birch tree that was decaying from rotting. Its height was four meters, one hollow was at the very top, the other was made a little lower under the fungus. Next to this tree trunk lay its upper part, rotten, saturated, like a sponge, with water. And the trunk itself with the hollow did not hold up well - if you shook it a little, it would have fallen. But maybe the chiseling was not for the nest.
At the old stump
The forest is never empty, and if it seems empty, it’s your own fault.
Old dead trees, their huge old stumps are surrounded in the forest with complete peace, hot rays fall on their darkness through the branches, from the warm stump everything around warms up, everything grows, moves, the stump sprouts all sorts of greenery, is covered with all sorts of flowers. On just one bright sunny spot in a hot spot there were ten grasshoppers, two lizards, six large flies, two ground beetles... Tall ferns gathered around, like guests, rarely the gentlest breath of a rustling wind bursts into them, and here in the living room near an old stump, one fern leaned over to another, whispered something, and that one whispered to a third, and all the guests exchanged thoughts.
M. Prishvin "Seasons"