Short stories about the nature of Russian writers. A story about nature, in general. Mikhail Prishvin "Spider Captain"
Mikhail Prishvin (1873 - 1954) was in love with nature. He admired her grandeur and beauty, studied the habits of forest animals and knew how to write about it in a fascinating and very kind way. short stories Prishvina for children are written plain language understandable even to kindergartners. Parents who want to awaken in their children a kind attitude towards all living things and teach them to notice the beauty of the world around them should read Prishvin's stories more often to both kids and older children. Children love this kind of reading, after which they return to it several times.
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Prishvin's stories about nature
The writer liked to observe the life of the forest. “It was necessary to find in nature something that I had not yet seen, and perhaps no one had ever met this in their lives,” he wrote. In Prishvin's children's stories about nature, the rustle of leaves, the murmur of a stream, the breeze, forest smells are so accurately and reliably described that any little reader is involuntarily transported in his imagination to where the author has been, begins to sharply and vividly feel all the beauty of the forest world.
Prishvin's stories about animals
Since childhood, Misha Prishvin treated birds and animals with warmth and love. He was friends with them, tried to learn to understand their language, studied their life, trying not to disturb. In Prishvin's stories about animals, entertaining stories about the author's meetings with various animals are conveyed. There are funny episodes that make the children's audience laugh and be surprised at the intelligence and ingenuity of our smaller brothers. Is there sad stories about animals in trouble, evoking a feeling of empathy and a desire to help the children.
In any case, all these stories are filled with kindness and, as a rule, have a happy ending. It is especially useful for our children growing up in dusty and noisy cities to read Prishvin's stories more often. So let's get started as soon as possible and dive with them into the magical world of nature!
Who doesn't remember their first books? Probably no such person exists. From the first thick pages of "baby" books, children begin to get acquainted with the world around them. They learn about the inhabitants of the forest and their habits, about domestic animals and their benefits to humans, about the life of plants and the seasons. Books gradually, with each page, bring kids closer to the world of nature, teach them to take care of it, to live in harmony with it.
A special, unique place among literary works, intended for children's reading, are occupied by Prishvin's stories about nature. An unsurpassed master of the short genre, he subtly and clearly described the world of forest dwellers. Sometimes a few sentences were enough for this.
Observation of a young naturalist
As a boy, M. Prishvin felt his vocation for writing. Stories about nature appeared in the first notes of his own diary, which began in the childhood of the future writer. He grew up as an inquisitive and very attentive child. The small estate where Prishvin spent his childhood was located in the Oryol province, famous for its dense forests, sometimes impenetrable.
Fascinating stories of hunters about encounters with the inhabitants of the forest early childhood excite the boy's imagination. No matter how the young naturalist asked to hunt, for the first time his desire was fulfilled only at the age of 13. Until that time, he was allowed to walk only in the district, and for such solitude he used every opportunity.
First forest impressions
During his favorite walks in the forest, the young dreamer listened with pleasure to the singing of birds, carefully looked at the slightest changes in nature and looked for meetings with its mysterious inhabitants. Often he got from his mother for a long absence. But the boy's stories about his forest discoveries were so emotional and full of delight that parental anger was quickly replaced by mercy. The little naturalist immediately wrote down all his observations in his diary.
It was these first recordings of impressions from meetings with the secrets of nature that entered the stories about the nature of Prishvin and helped the writer find those exact words that even the little ones can understand.
Attempt at writing
The writing talent of the young nature lover was first truly noticed at the Yelets Gymnasium, where the writer V. Rozanov worked as a geography teacher at that time. It was he who noted the attentive attitude of the teenager to native land and the ability to accurately, concisely, very clearly describe their impressions in school essays. The teacher's recognition of Prishvin's special powers of observation subsequently played important role in deciding to devote himself to literature. But it will be accepted only by the age of 30, and all previous years his diary will become a treasury of naturalistic impressions. Many of Prishvin's stories about nature, written for young readers, will appear from this piggy bank.
Member of the expedition to the northern regions
The craving of the future writer for biology manifested itself first in the desire to acquire the profession of an agronomist (he studied in Germany). Then he successfully applied the acquired knowledge in agricultural science (he worked at the Moscow Agricultural Academy). But the turning point in his life was his acquaintance with academician-linguist A.A. Chess.
The general interest in ethnography prompted the writer to go on a scientific expedition to the northern regions of Russia to study folklore and collect local legends.
The nature of native places has overcome doubts
The virginity and purity of the northern landscapes made an indelible impression on the writer, and this fact became a turning point in determining his destination. It was on this journey that his thoughts were often carried away to childhood, when as a boy he wanted to escape to distant Asia. Here, among the untouched forest expanses, he realized that native nature became for him that same dream, but not distant, but close and understandable. “Only here for the first time did I understand what it means to live on my own and be responsible for myself,” Prishvin wrote on the pages of his diary. Stories about nature formed the basis of impressions from that trip and were included in the naturalistic collection "In the land of fearless birds." The wide recognition of the book opened the doors for its author to all literary societies.
Having received invaluable experience as a naturalist in his travels, the writer gives birth to books one after another. Travel notes and essays by a naturalist will form the basis of such works as "Behind the Magic Kolobok", "Light Lake", "Black Arab", "Bird Cemetery" and "Glorious Tambourines". In Russian literary circles, it is Mikhail Prishvin who will be recognized as the “singer of nature”. The stories about nature written by this time were already very popular and served as an example for the study of literature in primary school gymnasiums.
nature singer
In the 1920s, Prishvin's first stories about nature appeared, marking the beginning of a whole series of short sketches about the life of the forest - children's and hunting. Naturalistic and geographical notes at this stage of creativity receive a philosophical and poetic coloring and are collected in the book "Calendar of Nature", where "the poet and singer clean life"becomes Prishvin himself. Nature stories are now all about celebrating the beauties that surround us. The kind, humane and easy-to-understand language of the narration cannot leave anyone indifferent. In these literary sketches, little readers not only discover new world forest dwellers, but also learn to understand what it means to be attentive to them.
The moral core of M. Prishvin's children's stories
Having received a certain baggage of knowledge in the first years of life, children continue to replenish it, having crossed the threshold of the school. Thrift to natural wealth of the earth is formed both at the stage of cognition and in the process of their creation. Man and nature in Prishvin's stories are the very basis for the education of moral values, which should be laid from early childhood. And fiction has a special impact on the fragile feelings of children. It is the book that serves as a platform of knowledge, a support for the future integral personality.
The value of Prishvin's stories for the moral education of children lies in his own perception of nature. The main character on the pages short stories becomes the author himself. Reflecting his childhood impressions through hunting sketches, the writer conveys to the kids an important idea: it is necessary to hunt not for animals, but for knowledge about them. He went hunting for starlings, quails, butterflies and grasshoppers without a gun. Explaining this strangeness for experienced foresters, he said that his main trophy was finds and observations. The hunter for finds very subtly notices any changes around, and under his pen, between the lines, nature is filled with life: it sounds and breathes.
Live pages with sounds and breath
From the pages of the books of the writer-naturalist you can hear the real sounds and dialect of forest life. The inhabitants of the green spaces whistle and cuckoo, yell and squeak, buzz and hiss. Grass, trees, streams and lakes, paths and even old stumps - all live real life. In the story "Golden Meadow" simple dandelions fall asleep at night and wake up at sunrise. Just like people. A mushroom familiar to everyone, with difficulty lifting foliage on its shoulders, is compared with a hero in "Strongman". In "The Edge", children through the eyes of the author see a spruce tree, similar to dressed in long dress lady, and her companions - herringbones.
Prishvin's stories about nature, so easily perceived by children's imagination and forcing kids to look at the natural world with the eyes of joy and surprise, undoubtedly indicate that the writer kept the world of the child in his soul until old age.
This story is about late autumn, about the onset of winter. Stories about the last autumn days and the first winter days. Stories about the first snow, about the winter forest.
Air track. Author: N. I. Sladkov
The river froze over at night. And as if nothing had changed: as it was quiet and black, it remained quiet and black. Even the domestic ducks were deceived: with a quack they fled down the hill, immediately rushed and rolled on the ice on their stomachs!
I walked along the shore and looked at the black ice. And in one place I noticed an incomprehensible white stripe - from the coast to the middle. Like the Milky Way in the night sky - from white dots-bubbles. When I pressed on the ice, the bubbles crawled under it, stirred, began to overflow. But why did the air bubbles run in such a narrow and long path?
The answer didn't come right away. Only on the third day, and in a completely different place, did I see an animal swimming under the ice: air bubbles marked its path! The air path was immediately explained. There was a muskrat hole under the shore; while diving, the muskrat “breathed” its amazing trail from the air!
Time to sleep.
Grunting angrily, a fat badger hobbled into his hole. He is dissatisfied: damp in the forest, dirty. It's time to go deeper underground - to a dry, clean sandy lair. Time to fall asleep.
Little disheveled forest crows - kukshas - fought in the thicket. Wet colors flicker coffee grounds. Shouting with sharp crow voices.
An old raven croaked muffledly from the top: he saw carrion in the distance. It flew, shining with the varnish of blue-black wings.
Quiet in the forest. Gray snow falls heavily on the blackened trees, on the brown earth. A leaf rots on the ground.
The snow is thicker, thicker. It went in big flakes, covered the black branches of trees, covered the ground ...
Whisper of snow. Author: I. D. Poluyanov
Snow is falling on the brown thickets of meadowsweet and green juniper with a bluish blue. Snow rustles, rustles, as if whispering, colliding in slow flight with tree branches. A rustle in the forest. The rustle of snowflakes. It merges into an incessant whisper, quiet and a little sad.
Each tree has its own way of meeting snow. Having smelled the needles like fur coats, the spruces stretch out towards the snowflakes the very tips of their heavy furry paws. Well, hello, hello ... Fly past! They make it clear: we are fine without you, snow, in winter!
Absent-mindedly, in detached thoughtfulness, the pines take on the snow, and it accumulates between the smoky needles. The mountain ash, from which the thrushes did not peck all the berries in autumn, shows a crimson frozen bunch: please, fall asleep, there is a snowball, one is left ... The birches lowered their flexible branches. Dry, sharp snow flies, barely touching them, and accumulates in the forks of branches. Snow falls and falls. And the birches do not move, the branches have dropped. They let us down, prompting: here ... here more rashes, cover our legs. Chill, cover them warmer!
And the young Christmas tree exposes all its paws to the snow. Like snow again. Surrenders, she looks at his spiky crystals. Snow whispers, and she whispers: good-sh-sho ... good!
Snowfall in the forest. Whispers in the forest. What do white snowflakes want to tell the world?
Les is listening. The fields are frozen and listening. In a lonely hut on a hillock, windows flashed - as if eyes were opened on a forest, on a field with hedges, stacks of straw. The hut is listening, her eyes are wide open; she will understand, old, with a rickety porch, what the snows whisper about!
Whisper, whisper... Snowflakes fall gently, gently on the fields and trees, on the blades of grass and on the roof of the hut. They go down and whisper. And it seems to me that this whisper is understandable: if you touch the trees, grasses and the white roof of the hut, then you need to touch it as carefully as snowflakes in a soft winter snowfall.
Has anyone seen a white rainbow? It happens in the swamps at the very good days. For this, it is necessary that mists rise in the morning hour, and the sun, showing itself, pierces them with rays. Then all the mists gather into one very dense arc, very white, sometimes with a pink tinge, sometimes creamy. I love white rainbow.
Today, looking at the tracks of animals and birds in the snow, this is what I read from these tracks: a squirrel made its way through the snow into the moss, took out two nuts hidden there since autumn, ate them right away - I found the shells. Then she ran a dozen meters, dived again, again left the shell on the snow and after a few meters she made the third climb.
What a miracle You can't think that she could smell a nut through a thick layer of snow and ice. So, since the fall, she remembered her nuts and the exact distance between them.
I heard in Siberia, near Lake Baikal, from one citizen about a bear and, I confess, I did not believe it. But he assured me that in the old days, even in a Siberian magazine, this case was published under the title: "The Man with the Bear Against Wolves."
There lived one watchman on the shore of Lake Baikal, he caught fish, shot squirrels. And once, as if this watchman sees through the window - a big bear runs straight to the hut, and a pack of wolves is chasing him. That would be the end of the bear. He, this bear, don’t be bad, in the hallway, the door behind him closed itself, and he also leaned on her paw himself.
Direct wet snow pressed down on the branches all night in the forest, broke off, fell, rustled.
The rustle drove the white hare out of the forest, and he probably realized that by morning black box becomes white and he, completely white, can lie quietly. And he lay down in a field not far from the forest, and not far from him, also like a hare, lay the skull of a horse, weathered over the summer and whitewashed by the sun's rays.
I found an amazing birch bark tube. When a person cuts a piece of birch bark for himself on a birch, the rest of the birch bark near the cut begins to curl up into a tube. The tube will dry out, 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, stuck so tightly that I could hardly push it out with a stick. There was no hazel around the birch. How did he get there?
“Probably, the squirrel hid it there, making its winter supplies,” I thought. “She knew that the pipe would curl up tighter and tighter and grab the nut tighter so it wouldn’t fall out.”
I know that few people sat in the swamps in early spring, waiting for the grouse current, and I have few words to even hint at all the splendor of the bird concert in the swamps before sunrise. Often I noticed that the first note in this concerto, far from the very first hint of light, is taken by the curlew. This is a very thin trill, completely different from the well-known whistle. Later, when the white partridges cry, the black grouse and the current grouse chirp, sometimes near the hut itself, it starts its mumbling, then it’s not up to the curlew, but then at sunrise at the most solemn moment you will certainly pay attention to the new curlew song, very cheerful and similar to dancing: this dancing is as necessary for meeting the sun as the cry of a crane.
When the snow ran down into the river in the spring (we live on the Moskva River), white chickens came out on the dark hot earth everywhere in the village.
Get up, Julie! I ordered.
And she came up to me, my beloved young dog, a white setter with frequent black spots.
I fastened a long leash to the collar with a carbine, wound on a reel, and began to teach Zhulka how to hunt (train) first on chickens. This teaching consists in the dog standing and looking at the chickens, but not trying to grab the chicken.
So we use this dog's pull so that it indicates the place where the game is hidden, and does not stick forward behind it, but stands.
A golden network of sunbeams trembles on the water. Dark blue dragonflies in reeds and horsetail herringbones. And each dragonfly has its own horsetail tree or reed: it will fly off and will certainly return to it.
Crazy crows brought out the chicks and now they are sitting and resting.
At night, with electricity, snowflakes were born from nothing: the sky was starry, clear.
The powder formed on the pavement not just like snow, but an asterisk over an asterisk, without flattening one another. It seemed that this rare powder was taken straight out of nothing, and meanwhile, as I approached my dwelling in Lavrushinsky Lane, the asphalt from it was gray.
Joyful was my awakening on the sixth floor. Moscow lay covered with stellar powder, and like tigers on the ridges of mountains, cats walked everywhere on the roofs. How many clear traces, how many spring romances: in the spring of light, all the cats climb onto the roofs.
Works are divided into pagesStories of Prishvin Mikhail Mikhailovich
Many parents are quite serious about the choice of children's works. Books for children must awaken good feelings in the gentle children's heads. Therefore, many stop their choice on small stories about nature, its magnificence and beauty.
Whomever M. M. Prishvina love to read our children, who else could create such wonderful works. Among the huge number of writers, he, although not so many, but what stories he came up with for little kids. He was a man of extraordinary imagination, his children's stories are truly a storehouse of kindness and love. M. Prishvin like his fairy tales already long time remains an unattainable author for many modern writers, since in children's stories he has practically no equal.
A naturalist, a connoisseur of the forest, a wonderful observer of the life of nature is a Russian writer Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin(1873 - 1954). His novels and stories, even the smallest ones, are simple and immediately understandable. The skill of the author, his ability to convey all the immensity surrounding nature truly admire! Thanks to stories about the nature of Prishvin children are imbued with sincere interest in it, cultivating respect for it and its inhabitants.
Small but filled with extraordinary colors stories by Mikhail Prishvin wonderfully convey to us what we so rarely encounter in our time. The beauty of nature, the deaf forgotten places - all this today is so far from dusty megacities. It is quite possible that many of us are happy to go hiking in the forest right now, but not everyone will succeed. In this case, we will open the book of Prishvin's favorite stories and move on to beautiful, distant and dear places.
Stories by M. Prishvin designed to be read by both children and adults. A huge number of fairy tales, novels and stories can be safely read even to preschoolers. Other read Prishvin's stories possible, starting from the school bench. And even for the most grown-ups Mikhail Prishvin left his legacy: his memoirs are distinguished by a very scrupulous narrative and description of the surrounding atmosphere in the unusually difficult twenties and thirties. They will be of interest to teachers, lovers of memories, historians and even hunters. On our website you can see online a list of Prishvin's stories, and enjoy reading them absolutely free.
Mikhail Prishvin "My Motherland" (From childhood memories)
My mother got up early, before the sun. Once I also got up before the sun, in order to place snares on quails at dawn. My mother treated me to tea with milk. This milk was boiled in an earthenware pot and was always covered with a ruddy froth on top, and under this froth it was unusually tasty, and tea from it became excellent.
This treat decided my life in a good way: I started getting up before the sun to get drunk with my mother delicious tea. Little by little, I got so used to this morning rising that I could no longer sleep through the sunrise.
Then I got up early in the city, and now I always write early, when the whole animal and plant world wakes up and also begins to work in its own way. And often, often I think: what if we rose like this for our work with the sun! How much health, joy, life and happiness would then come to people!
After tea, I went hunting for quails, starlings, nightingales, grasshoppers, turtledoves, butterflies. I didn’t have a gun then, and even now a gun is not necessary in my hunting.
My hunting was then and now - in the finds. It was necessary to find in nature something that I had not yet seen, and maybe no one else had ever met with this in their life ...
My farm was large, the paths were countless.
My young friends! We are the masters of our nature, and for us it is the pantry of the sun with the great treasures of life. Not only do these treasures need to be protected - they must be opened and shown.
Needed for fish pure water Let's protect our waters.
There are various valuable animals in the forests, steppes, mountains - we will protect our forests, steppes, mountains.
Fish - water, bird - air, beast - forest, steppe, mountains. And a man needs a home. And to protect nature means to protect the homeland.
Mikhail Prishvin "Hot Hour"
It is melting in the fields, but in the forest there is still snow untouched by dense pillows on the ground and on the branches of trees, and the trees are in snow captivity. Thin trunks crouched to the ground, froze and are waiting any hour for release. At last this hot hour comes, the happiest for the motionless trees and the most terrible for animals and birds.
A hot hour has come, the snow is imperceptibly melting, and now in complete forest silence it seems to be moving spruce branch and downloads. And just under this tree, covered with its wide branches, a hare is sleeping. In fear, he gets up and listens: the twig cannot move by itself. The hare was scared, and then before his eyes another, third branch moved and, freed from snow, jumped. The hare darted, ran, again sat down in a column and listened: where did the trouble come from, where should he run?
And as soon as he stood on his hind legs, he just looked around, how he jumped up in front of his very nose, how he straightened up, how a whole birch swayed, how a branch of a Christmas tree waved nearby!
And it went, and it went: branches jump everywhere, escaping from snow captivity, the whole forest moves around, the whole forest has gone. And the mad hare rushes about, and every beast gets up, and the bird flies out of the forest.
Mikhail Prishvin "The conversation of trees"
The buds open, chocolate-colored, with green tails, and a large transparent drop hangs on each green beak. You take one kidney, rub it between your fingers, and then for a long time everything smells like the fragrant resin of birch, poplar or bird cherry.
You sniff a bird cherry bud and immediately remember how you used to climb up a tree for berries, shiny, black and lacquered. I ate them in handfuls right with the bones, but nothing but good came from this.
The evening is warm, and such silence, as if something should happen in such silence. And now the trees begin to whisper among themselves: a white birch with another white birch from afar echoes; a young aspen came out into the clearing like a green candle, and calls to itself the same green candle - aspen, waving a twig; bird cherry gives the bird cherry a branch with open buds. If you compare with us, we echo with sounds, and they have a fragrance.
Mikhail Prishvin "Forest Master"
That was on a sunny day, otherwise I’ll tell you how it was in the forest just before the rain. There was such silence, there was such tension in anticipation of the first drops, that it seemed that every leaf, every needle was trying to be the first and catch the first drop of rain. And so it became in the forest, as if each smallest essence received its own, separate expression.
So I go in to them at this time, and it seems to me: they all, like people, turned their faces to me and, out of their stupidity, they ask me, like a god, for rain.
“Come on, old man,” I ordered the rain, “you will torment us all, go, go, start!”
But the rain did not listen to me this time, and I remembered my new straw hat: it will rain - and my hat is gone. But then, thinking about the hat, I saw an unusual Christmas tree. She grew up, of course, in the shade, and that is why her branches were once lowered down. Now, after selective felling, she found herself in the light, and each branch of her began to grow upwards. Probably, the lower boughs would have risen over time, but these branches, having touched the ground, released their roots and clung ... So, under the tree with the branches raised up below, a good hut turned out. Having cut the spruce branches, I compacted it, made an entrance, and laid the seat below. And as soon as I sat down to start a new conversation with the rain, as I see it, it is burning very close against me. a big tree. I quickly grabbed a spruce branch from the hut, gathered it into a broom and, quilting over the burning place, little by little extinguished the fire before the flame burned through the bark of the tree around and thus made it impossible for the juice to flow.
Around the tree, the place was not burned by a fire, cows were not grazed here, and there could not be undershepherds on which everyone blamed for the fires. Remembering my childhood robber years, I realized that the tar on the tree was most likely set on fire by some boy out of mischief, out of curiosity to see how the tar would burn. As I descended into my childhood years, I imagined how pleasant it was to strike a match and set fire to a tree.
It became clear to me that the pest, when the tar caught fire, suddenly saw me and disappeared immediately somewhere in the nearest bushes. Then, pretending that I was continuing my way, whistling, I left the place of the fire and, having taken several dozen steps along the clearing, jumped into the bushes and returned to the old place and also hid.
I did not have long to wait for the robber. A fair-haired boy of seven or eight years old came out of the bush, with a reddish sunny bake, bold, open eyes, half-naked and with an excellent build. He looked hostilely in the direction of the clearing where I had gone, raised fir cone and, wanting to let it into me, he swung so hard that he even turned over around himself. This didn't bother him; on the contrary, like a real master of the forests, he put both hands in his pockets, began to look at the place of the fire and said:
- Come out, Zina, he's gone!
A girl came out, a little older, a little taller, and with a large basket in her hand.
“Zina,” the boy said, “you know what?
Zina looked at him with large calm eyes and answered simply:
— No, Vasya, I don't know.
- Where are you! said the owner of the forests. “I want to tell you: if that person hadn’t come, if he hadn’t put out the fire, then, perhaps, the whole forest would have burned down from this tree.” If only we could have a look!
- You are fool! Zina said.
“True, Zina,” I said, “I thought of something to brag about, a real fool!”
And as soon as I said these words, the perky owner of the forests suddenly, as they say, "flee away."
And Zina, apparently, did not even think of answering for the robber, she calmly looked at me, only her eyebrows rose a little in surprise.
At the sight of such a reasonable girl, I wanted to turn the whole story into a joke, win her over and then work together on the master of the forests.
Just at this time, the tension of all sentient beings waiting for rain reached its extreme.
“Zina,” I said, “look how all the leaves, all the blades of grass are waiting for the rain. There, the hare cabbage even climbed onto the stump to capture the first drops.
The girl liked my joke, she graciously smiled at me.
- Well, old man, - I said to the rain, - you will torment us all, start, let's go!
And this time the rain obeyed, went. And the girl seriously, thoughtfully focused on me and pursed her lips, as if she wanted to say: “Jokes are jokes, but still it started to rain.”
“Zina,” I said hurriedly, “tell me, what do you have in that big basket?”
She showed: there were two white mushrooms. We put my new hat in the basket, covered it with a fern, and headed out of the rain to my hut. Having broken another spruce branch, we covered it well and climbed in.
“Vasya,” the girl shouted. - It will fool, come out!
And the owner of the forests, driven by the pouring rain, did not hesitate to appear.
As soon as the boy sat down next to us and wanted to say something, I raised my index finger and ordered the owner:
- No hoo-hoo!
And all three of us froze.
It is impossible to convey the delights of being in the forest under a Christmas tree during a warm summer rain. A crested hazel grouse, driven by the rain, burst into the middle of our thick Christmas tree and sat down right above the hut. Quite in sight under a branch, a finch settled down. The hedgehog has arrived. A hare hobbled past. And for a long time the rain whispered and whispered something to our tree. And we sat for a long time, and everything was as if the real owner of the forests was whispering to each of us separately, whispering, whispering ...
Mikhail Prishvin "Dead Tree"
When the rain passed and everything around sparkled, we went out of the forest along the path broken by the feet of passers-by. At the very exit, there was a huge and once mighty tree that had seen more than one generation of people. Now it stood completely dead, it was, as the foresters say, "dead."
Looking around this tree, I said to the children:
“Perhaps a passer-by, wanting to rest here, stuck an ax into this tree and hung his heavy bag on the ax. After that, the tree got sick and began to heal the wound with resin. Or maybe, fleeing from the hunter, a squirrel hid in the dense crown of this tree, and the hunter, in order to drive it out of the shelter, began to knock on the trunk with a heavy log. Sometimes just one blow is enough to make a tree sick.
And many, many things can happen to a tree, as well as to a person and to any living creature, from which the disease will be taken. Or maybe lightning struck?
It started with something, and the tree began to fill its wound with resin. When the tree began to fall ill, the worm, of course, found out about it. The bark climbed under the bark and began to sharpen there. In its own way, the woodpecker somehow found out about the worm and, in search of a stub, began to hollow out a tree here and there. Will you find it soon? And then, perhaps, it’s so that while the woodpecker is hammering and gouging so that it could be grabbed by him, the stump will advance at that time, and the forest carpenter needs to hammer again. And not just one shorthand, and not one woodpecker too. This is how woodpeckers hammer a tree, and the tree, weakening, fills everything with resin. Now look around the tree at the traces of fires and understand: people walk along this path, stop here to rest and, despite the ban on making fires in the forest, they collect firewood and set it on fire. And in order to quickly kindle, they cut off a resinous crust from a tree. So, little by little, from the cutting, a white ring formed around the tree, the upward movement of the juices stopped, and the tree withered. Now tell me, who is to blame for the death of a beautiful tree that has stood for at least two centuries in its place: disease, lightning, stalks, woodpeckers?
- A shorthand! Vasya said quickly.
And, looking at Zina, he corrected himself:
The children were probably very friendly, and fast Vasya was used to reading the truth from the face of the calm, clever Zina. So, probably, he would have licked the truth from her face this time, but I asked her:
- And you, Zinochka, what do you think, my dear daughter?
The girl put her hand around her mouth, looked at me with intelligent eyes, as at school at a teacher, and answered:
“Maybe people are to blame.
“People, people are to blame,” I picked up after her.
And, like a real teacher, I told them about everything, as I think for myself: that the woodpeckers and the squiggle are not to blame, because they have neither a human mind nor a conscience that illuminates the guilt in a person; that each of us will be born a master of nature, but only has to learn a lot to understand the forest in order to get the right to dispose of it and become a real master of the forest.
I didn’t forget to tell about myself that I still study constantly and without any plan or idea, I don’t interfere in anything in the forest.
Here I did not forget to tell about my recent discovery of fiery arrows, and about how I spared even one cobweb. After that, we left the forest, and it always happens to me now: in the forest I behave like a student, and I leave the forest as a teacher.
Mikhail Prishvin "Forest floors"
Birds and animals in the forest have their own floors: mice live in the roots - at the very bottom; various birds, like the nightingale, build their nests right on the ground; thrushes - even higher, on bushes; hollow birds - woodpecker, titmouse, owls - even higher; at different heights along the tree trunk and at the very top, predators settle: hawks and eagles.
I once had to observe in the forest that they, animals and birds, with floors are not like ours in skyscrapers: we can always change with someone, with them each breed certainly lives on its own floor.
Once, while hunting, we came to a clearing with dead birches. It often happens that birch trees grow to a certain age and dry up.
Another tree, having dried up, drops its bark on the ground, and therefore the uncovered wood soon rots and the whole tree falls, while the bark of a birch does not fall; this resinous, white bark on the outside - birch bark - is an impenetrable case for a tree, and a dead tree stands for a long time, like a living one.
Even when the tree rots and the wood turns into dust, weighed down by moisture, in appearance White birch stands as if alive.
But it is worthwhile, however, to give such a tree a good push, when suddenly it will break everything into heavy pieces and fall. Cutting down such trees is a very fun activity, but also dangerous: with a piece of wood, if you don’t dodge it, it can really hit you on the head.
But still, we, hunters, are not very afraid, and when we get to such birches, we begin to destroy them in front of each other.
So we came to a clearing with such birches and brought down quite tall birch. Falling, in the air it broke into several pieces, and in one of them there was a hollow with a nest of a Gadget. Little chicks were not injured when the tree fell, only fell out of the hollow together with their nest.
Naked chicks, covered with feathers, opened wide red mouths and, mistaking us for parents, squeaked and asked us for a worm. We dug up the earth, found worms, gave them a snack, they ate, swallowed and squeaked again.
Very soon parents arrived, titmouse, with white chubby cheeks and with worms in their mouths, they sat on nearby trees.
“Hello, dear ones,” we said to them, “misfortune has come; we didn't want that.
The Gadgets could not answer us, but, most importantly, they could not understand what had happened, where the tree had gone, where their children had disappeared. They were not at all afraid of us, fluttering from branch to branch in great alarm.
- Yes, here they are! We showed them the nest on the ground. - Here they are, listen how they squeak, what your name is!
Gadgets did not listen to anything, fussed, worried and did not want to go downstairs and go beyond their floor.
“Maybe,” we said to each other, “they are afraid of us. Let's hide! - And they hid.
Not! The chicks squeaked, the parents squeaked, fluttered, but did not go down.
We guessed then that the birds are not like ours in skyscrapers, they cannot change floors: now it just seems to them that the whole floor with their chicks has disappeared.
“Oh-oh-oh,” said my companion, “well, what fools you are! ..
It became a pity and funny: they are so nice and with wings, but they don’t want to understand anything.
Then we took that big piece, in which the nest was located, they broke the top of the neighboring birch and put our piece with the nest on it just at the same height as the destroyed floor.
We did not have long to wait in ambush: in a few minutes happy parents met their chicks.
Mikhail Prishvin "Old Starling"
The starlings hatched and flew away, and their place in the birdhouse has long been occupied by sparrows. But until now, on the same apple tree, on a good dewy morning, an old starling flies and sings.
That's strange! It would seem that everything is already over, the female brought out the chicks a long time ago, the cubs grew up and flew away ... Why does the old starling fly every morning to the apple tree where his spring passed, and sing?
Mikhail Prishvin "Spider Web"
It was a sunny day, so bright that the rays penetrated even into the darkest forest. I walked forward along such a narrow clearing that some trees on one side were bent over to the other, and this tree whispered something with its leaves to another tree on the other side. The wind was very weak, but still it was: and aspens babbled above, and below, as always, the ferns swayed importantly. Suddenly I noticed: from side to side across the clearing, from left to right, some small fiery arrows constantly fly here and there. As always in such cases, I concentrated my attention on the arrows and soon noticed that the movement of the arrows was in the wind, from left to right.
I also noticed that on the Christmas trees their usual shoots-paws came out of their orange shirts and the wind blew away these unnecessary shirts from each tree in a great multitude: each new paw on the Christmas tree was born in an orange shirt, and now how many paws, so many shirts flew off - thousands, millions...
I could see how one of these flying shirts met with one of the flying arrows and suddenly hung in the air, and the arrow disappeared. I realized then that the shirt was hanging on a cobweb invisible to me, and this gave me the opportunity to go point-blank to the cobweb and fully understand the phenomenon of the arrows: the wind blows the cobweb to the sunbeam, the brilliant cobweb flares up from the light, and from this it seems as if the arrow is flying. At the same time, I realized that there were a great many of these cobwebs stretched across the clearing, and, therefore, if I walked, I tore them, without knowing it, by the thousands.
It seemed to me that I had such an important goal - to learn in the forest to be its real master - that I had the right to tear all the cobwebs and make all the forest spiders work for my goal. But for some reason I spared this cobweb that I noticed: after all, it was she who, thanks to the shirt hanging on her, helped me unravel the phenomenon of arrows.
Was I cruel, tearing thousands of cobwebs? Not at all: I did not see them - my cruelty was the result of my physical strength.
Was I merciful in bending my weary back to save the gossamer? I don’t think: in the forest I behave like a student, and if I could, I wouldn’t touch anything.
I attribute the salvation of this cobweb to the action of my concentrated attention.
Mikhail Prishvin "Slappers"
Grow, grow green pipes; come, come from the marshes here heavy mallards, waddling, and behind them, whistling, black ducklings with yellow paws between the bumps behind the uterus, as between mountains.
We are sailing on a boat across the lake into the reeds to check whether there will be many ducks this year and how they, young, grow: what they are now - they fly, or are still just diving, or running away through the water, flapping their short wings. These slappers are a very entertaining audience. To the right of us, in the reeds, there is a green wall and to the left a green one, but we are driving along a narrow lane free from aquatic plants. Ahead of us, two of the smallest chiren whistlers in black fluff swim out into the water from the reeds and, seeing us, begin to run away with all their might. But, strongly resting on the bottom of the oar, we gave our boat a very fast move and began to overtake them. I was already stretching out my hand to grab one, but suddenly both chirenka disappeared under the water. We waited a long time for them to emerge, when we suddenly noticed them in the reeds. They crouched there, sticking their noses out between the reeds. Their mother, a teal whistle, flew around us all the time, and very quietly - it seems to happen when a duck, deciding to go down to the water, at the very last moment before contact with water, as if standing in the air on its paws.
After this incident, with small chiryats in front, on the nearest stretch, a mallard duck appeared, quite large, almost the size of a uterus. We were sure that such a big one could fly perfectly, so we hit the oar to make it fly. But, it’s true, he hasn’t tried to fly yet and started clapping away from us.
We also set off after him and quickly overtook him. His situation was much worse than those little ones, because the place was so shallow that there was nowhere for him to dive. Several times, in his last despair, he tried to peck at the water with his nose, but there the land appeared to him, and he only lost time. In one of these attempts, our boat caught up with him, I extended my hand ...
At this moment of the last danger, the duckling gathered his strength and suddenly flew away. But this was his first flight, he still did not know how to manage. He flew exactly the same way as we, having learned to sit on a bicycle, start it with the movement of our legs, but we are still afraid to turn the steering wheel, and therefore the first trip is all straight, straight, until we stumble on something - and bang to one side. So the duckling flew straight ahead, and in front of him was a wall of reeds. He still did not know how to soar over the reeds, caught on his paws and cheburahnuls down.
It was exactly the same with me when I jumped, jumped on a bicycle, fell, fell, and suddenly sat down and rushed straight at the cow with great speed ...
Mikhail Prishvin "Golden Meadow"
My brother and I, when dandelions ripen, had constant fun with them. We used to go somewhere to our trade - he was in front, I was in the heel.
"Seryozha!" - I will call him in a businesslike manner. He'll look back, and I'll blow a dandelion right in his face. For this, he begins to watch for me and, as you gape, he also fuknet. And so we plucked these uninteresting flowers just for fun. But once I managed to make a discovery. We lived in the village, in front of the window we had a meadow, all golden from many blooming dandelions. This was very beautiful. Everyone said: “Very beautiful! Golden Meadow. 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 he squeezed his petals, as if our fingers were yellow on the side of the palm of our hand and, clenched into a fist, we would close the yellow. In the morning, when the sun rose, I saw how dandelions open their palms, and from this the meadow becomes golden again.
Since then, dandelion has become for us one of the most interesting colors because dandelions went to bed with us children and got up with us.
Sergey Aksakov "Nest"
Noticing the nest of some bird, most often the dawn or redstart, we each time went to see how the mother sits on the eggs.
Sometimes, by negligence, we scared her away from the nest, and then, carefully parting the thorny branches of the barberry or gooseberry, we looked at how small, small, motley eggs lay in the nest.
It sometimes happened that the mother, bored with our curiosity, abandoned the nest; then we, seeing that for several days the bird was not in the nest and that it did not cry out and did not spin around us, as it always happened, we took out the testicles or the whole nest and took them to our room, believing that we were the legal owners of the dwelling left by the mother .
When the bird was safely hatching its testicles, despite our interference, and we suddenly found instead of them naked cubs, with a mournful quiet squeak, constantly opening huge mouths, we saw how the mother flew in and fed them flies and worms ...
My God, what joy we had!
We never stopped watching how the little birds grew up, gave gifts and finally left their nest.
Konstantin Paustovsky "Gift"
Every time autumn approached, talk began that much in nature is not arranged the way we would like. Our winter is long, protracted, summer is much shorter than winter, and autumn passes instantly and leaves the impression of a golden bird flashing outside the window.
The grandson of the forester Vanya Malyavin, a boy of about fifteen, liked to listen to our conversations. He often came to our village from his grandfather's gatehouse from Lake Urzhensky and brought either a bag of porcini mushrooms, or a sieve of lingonberries, otherwise he just ran to stay with us: listen to conversations and read the magazine "Around the World".
Thick, bound volumes of this magazine lay in the closet, along with oars, lanterns, and an old beehive. The hive was painted with white adhesive paint. It fell off the dry wood in large pieces, and the wood smelled of old wax under the paint. One day Vanya brought a small birch dug up by the roots. He overlaid the roots with damp moss and wrapped in matting.
“This is for you,” he said, and blushed. - Gift. Plant it in a wooden tub and put it in a warm room - it will be green all winter.
"Why did you dig it up, weirdo?" Reuben asked.
“You said that you feel sorry for the summer,” Vanya answered. “Grandfather made me think. “Run away, he says, to last year’s burnt-out place, where two-year-old birch trees grow like grass, there is no passage from them. Dig it up and take it to Rum Isaevich (as my grandfather called Reuben). He worries about the summer, so he will have a summer memory for the icy winter. It is, of course, fun to look at a green leaf when the snow is falling like a sack in the yard.
- I'm not only about summer, I regret autumn even more, - said Reuben and touched the thin leaves of a birch.
We brought a box from the barn, filled it to the top with earth and transplanted a small birch into it. The box was placed in the brightest and warmest room by the window, and a day later the drooping branches of the birch tree rose, all of it cheered up, and even its leaves were already rustling when a through wind rushed into the room and slammed the door in their hearts. Autumn settled in the garden, but the leaves of our birch remained green and alive.
The maples burned with a dark purple, the euonymus turned pink, the wild grapes dried up on the arbor. Even in some places yellow strands appeared on the birches in the garden, like the first gray hair of a still young person. But the birch in the room seemed to be growing younger. We did not notice any signs of wilting in her.
One night the first frost came. He breathed cold on the windows in the house, and they fogged up, sprinkled grainy frost on the roof, crunched underfoot.
Only the stars seemed to rejoice at the first frost and sparkled much brighter than on warm summer nights. That night I woke up from a long and pleasant sound - a shepherd's horn sang in the dark. Outside the windows, the dawn was barely perceptible.
I got dressed and went out into the garden. The sharp air washed his face with cold water - the dream immediately passed. Dawn broke out. The blue in the east was replaced by a crimson haze, like the smoke of a fire.
This haze brightened, became more and more transparent, through it the distant and tender countries of golden and pink clouds were already visible.
There was no wind, but the leaves kept falling and falling in the garden. During that one night the birch trees turned yellow to the very tops, and the leaves fell from them in a frequent and sad rain.
I returned to the rooms: they were warm, sleepy. In the pale light of dawn, a small birch stood in a tub, and I suddenly noticed that almost all of it had turned yellow that night, and several lemon leaves were already lying on the floor.
Room warmth did not save the birch. A day later, she flew around all over, as if she did not want to lag behind her adult friends, crumbling in cold forests, groves, in spacious glades damp in autumn. Vanya Malyavin, Reuben and all of us were upset. We have already got used to the idea that on winter snowy days the birch will turn green in rooms lit by the white sun and the crimson flame of cheerful stoves. The last memory of summer is gone.
A familiar forester chuckled when we told him about our attempt to save the green foliage on the birch.
“It's the law,” he said. - Law of nature. If the trees did not shed their leaves for the winter, they would die from many things - from the weight of the snow that would grow on the leaves and break the thickest branches, and from the fact that by autumn many salts harmful to the tree would accumulate in the foliage, and, finally, from the fact that the leaves would continue to evaporate moisture even in the middle of winter, and the frozen earth would not give it to the roots of the tree, and the tree would inevitably die from the winter drought, from thirst.
And grandfather Mitriy, nicknamed "Ten Percent", having learned about this little story with a birch, interpreted it in his own way.
- You, my dear, - he said to Reuben, - live with mine, then argue. And then you argue with me all the time, but you can see that you still didn’t have enough time to think with your mind. We, the old ones, are more capable of thinking. We have little concern - so we figure out what is what on earth is hewn and what explanation it has. Take, say, this birch. Don't tell me about the forester, I know in advance everything he will say. The forester is a cunning man, when he lived in Moscow, they say, he cooked his own food on an electric current. Can it be or not?
“Maybe,” Reuben replied.
“Maybe, maybe!” his grandfather teased. - And you this electricity seen? How did you see him when he has no visibility, sort of like air? You hear about the birch. Is there friendship between people or not? That is what is. And people get carried away. They think that friendship alone is given to them, they boast in front of every living being. And friendship is, brother, everywhere you look. What can I say, a cow is friends with a cow and a chaffinch with a chaffinch. Kill the crane, so the crane will wither away, cry, it will not find a place for itself. And every grass and tree, too, must have friendship sometimes. How can your birch not fly around when all its companions in the forests flew around? With what eyes will she look at them in the spring, what will she say when they suffered in the winter, and she warmed herself by the stove, warm, but full, and clean? You also need to have a conscience.
“Well, it’s you, grandfather, who turned it down,” said Reuben. “You don’t run into.
Grandpa giggled.
- Weak? he asked caustically. - Are you giving up? You don't start with me, it's useless.
Grandfather left, tapping with a stick, very pleased, confident that he had won all of us in this dispute and, along with us, the forester.
We planted the birch in the garden, under the fence, and collected its yellow leaves and dried them between the pages of Around the World.
Konstantin Paustovsky "Collection of Miracles"
Everyone, even the most serious person, not to mention, of course, boys, has his own secret and slightly funny dream. I also had such a dream - be sure to get to Borovoye Lake.
It was only twenty kilometers from the village where I lived that summer to the lake. Everyone tried to dissuade me from going - and the road was boring, and the lake was like a lake, all around there was only forest, dry swamps and lingonberries. Famous painting!
- Why are you rushing there, to this lake! the garden watchman Semyon was angry. - What didn't you see? What a fussy, grasping people went, Lord! Everything he needs, you see, he has to snatch with his hand, look out with his own eye! What will you see there? One reservoir. And nothing more!
— Have you been there?
- And why did he surrender to me, this lake! I don't have anything else to do, do I? That's where they sit, all my business! Semyon tapped his brown neck with his fist. - On the hump!
But I still went to the lake. Two village boys, Lyonka and Vanya, followed me.
Before we had time to go beyond the outskirts, the complete hostility of the characters of Lenka and Vanya was immediately revealed. Lyonka estimated everything that he saw around in rubles.
“Here, look,” he said to me in his booming voice, “the gander is coming.” How much do you think he pulls?
- How do I know!
- Rubles for a hundred, perhaps, it pulls, - Lyonka said dreamily and immediately asked: - But how much will this pine tree pull? Rubles for two hundred? Or all three hundred?
— Accountant! Vanya remarked contemptuously and sniffled. - At the very brains of a dime are pulled, but he asks the price of everything. My eyes would not look at him.
After that, Lyonka and Vanya stopped, and I heard a well-known conversation - a harbinger of a fight. It consisted, as is customary, of only questions and exclamations.
- Whose brains are they pulling on a dime? My?
- Probably not mine!
— You look!
— See for yourself!
- Don't grab it! They did not sew a cap for you!
“Oh, how I wouldn’t push you in my own way!”
- Don't be afraid! Don't poke me in the nose!
The fight was short but decisive.
Lyonka picked up his cap, spat, and went, offended, back to the village. I began to shame Vanya.
- Of course! Vanya said, embarrassed. - I got into a heated fight. Everyone fights with him, with Lyonka. He's kinda boring! Give him free rein, he hangs prices on everything, like in a general store. For every spike. And he will certainly bring down the whole forest, chop it for firewood. And I am most afraid of everything in the world when they bring down the forest. Passion as I fear!
- Why so?
— Oxygen from forests. Forests will be cut down, oxygen will become liquid, rotten. And the earth will no longer be able to attract him, to keep him near him. He will fly away to where he is! Vanya pointed to the fresh morning sky. - There will be nothing for a person to breathe. The forester explained to me.
We climbed the izvolok and entered the oak copse. Immediately, red ants began to seize us. They clung to the legs and fell from the branches by the scruff of the neck. Dozens of ant roads strewn with sand stretched between oaks and junipers. Sometimes such a road passed, as if through a tunnel, under the knotty roots of an oak tree and again rose to the surface. Ant traffic on these roads was continuous. In one direction, the ants ran empty, and returned with the goods - white grains, dry paws of beetles, dead wasps and hairy caterpillars.
- Bustle! Vanya said. — Like in Moscow. An old man from Moscow comes to this forest for ant eggs. Every year. Takes away in bags. This is the most bird food. And they are good for fishing. The hook needs to be tiny, tiny!
Behind the oak copse, on the edge, at the edge of the loose sandy road, stood a lopsided cross with a black tin icon. Red, flecked with white, ladybugs crawled along the cross.
A gentle wind blew in your face from the oat fields. Oats rustled, bent, a gray wave ran over them.
Behind the oat field we passed through the village of Polkovo. I noticed a long time ago that almost all regimental peasants differ from the neighboring inhabitants by their high growth.
- Stately people in Polkovo! our Zaborevskys said with envy. — Grenadiers! Drummers!
In Polkovo, we went to rest in the hut of Vasily Lyalin, a tall, handsome old man with a piebald beard. Gray tufts stuck out in disorder in his black shaggy hair.
When we entered the hut to Lyalin, he shouted:
- Keep your heads down! Heads! All of my forehead on the lintel smash! It hurts in Polkovo tall people, but slow-witted - the huts are put on a short stature.
During the conversation with Lyalin, I finally found out why the regimental peasants were so tall.
- History! Lyalin said. "Do you think we've gone up in the air for nothing?" In vain, even the Kuzka-bug does not live. It also has its purpose.
Vanya laughed.
- You're laughing! Lyalin observed sternly. — Not enough learned yet to laugh. You listen. Was there such a foolish tsar in Russia - Emperor Pavel? Or was not?
“I was,” Vanya said. - We studied.
— Yes, he swam. And he made such business that we still hiccup. The gentleman was fierce. The soldier at the parade squinted his eyes in the wrong direction - he is now inflamed and begins to thunder: “To Siberia! To hard labor! Three hundred ramrods!” That's what the king was like! Well, such a thing happened - the grenadier regiment did not please him. He shouts: “Step march in the indicated direction for a thousand miles! Campaign! And after a thousand versts to stand forever! And he shows the direction with his finger. Well, the regiment, of course, turned and marched. What will you do! They walked for three months and walked to this place. Around the forest is impassable. One hell. They stopped, began to cut huts, knead clay, lay stoves, dig wells. They built a village and called it Polkovo, as a sign that a whole regiment built it and lived in it. Then, of course, liberation came, and the soldiers settled down to this area, and, read it, everyone stayed here. The area, you see, is fertile. There were those soldiers - grenadiers and giants - our ancestors. From them and our growth. If you don't believe me, go to the city, to the museum. They will show you the papers. Everything is written in them. And just think, if they had to walk another two versts and come out to the river, they would have stopped there. So no, they did not dare to disobey the order - they just stopped. People are still surprised. “Why are you, they say, regimental, burrowed into the forest? Didn't you have a place by the river? Terrible, they say, tall, but guesswork in the head, you see, is not enough. Well, explain to them how it was, then they agree. “Against the order, they say, you can’t trample! It is a fact!"
Vasily Lyalin volunteered to accompany us to the forest, show the path to Borovoye Lake. First we passed through a sandy field overgrown with immortelle and wormwood. Then thickets of young pines ran out to meet us. The pine forest met us after the hot fields with silence and coolness. High in the sun's slanting rays, blue jays fluttered as if on fire. Clean puddles stood on the overgrown road, and clouds floated through these blue puddles. It smelled of strawberries, heated stumps. Drops of dew, or yesterday's rain, glittered on the hazel leaves. The cones were falling.
- Great forest! Lyalin sighed. - The wind will blow, and these pines will hum like bells.
Then the pines gave way to birch trees, and water glistened behind them.
— Borovoye? I asked.
- Not. Before Borovoye still walk and walk. This is Larino Lake. Let's go, look into the water, look.
The water in Larino Lake was deep and clear to the very bottom. Only near the shore did she tremble a little - there, from under the mosses, a spring poured into the lake. At the bottom lay several dark large trunks. They gleamed with a faint, dark fire as the sun reached them.
“Black oak,” said Lyalin. - Seared, age-old. We pulled one out, but it's hard to work with it. The saw breaks. But if you make a thing - a rolling pin or, say, a rocker - so forever! Heavy wood, sinks in water.
The sun shone in the dark water. Beneath it lay ancient oak trees, as if cast from black steel. And above the water, reflected in it with yellow and purple petals, butterflies flew.
Lyalin led us to a deaf road.
“Go straight ahead,” he pointed, “until you run into msharas, into a dry swamp.” And the path will go along the msharams to the very lake. Just go carefully - there are a lot of pegs.
He said goodbye and left. We went with Vanya along the forest road. The forest grew taller, more mysterious and darker. Gold resin froze in streams on the pines.
At first, the ruts, long overgrown with grass, were still visible, but then they disappeared, and the pink heather covered the whole road with a dry, cheerful carpet.
The road led us to a low cliff. Msharas spread out under it - thick birch and aspen undergrowth warmed to the roots. Trees sprouted from deep moss. On the moss here and there were scattered small yellow flowers and lay dry branches with white lichen.
A narrow path led through the mshary. She walked around high bumps. At the end of the path, the water shone with a black blue — Borovoye Lake.
We cautiously walked along the msharams. Pegs, sharp as spears, stuck out from under the moss—the remains of birch and aspen trunks. The lingonberry bushes have begun. One cheek of each berry - the one that turned to the south - was completely red, and the other was just beginning to turn pink.
A heavy capercaillie jumped out from behind a bump and ran into the undergrowth, breaking dry wood.
We went to the lake. Grass rose above the waist along its banks. Water splashed in the roots of old trees. A wild duck jumped out from under the roots and ran across the water with a desperate squeak.
The water in Borovoye was black and clean. Islands of white lilies bloomed on the water and smelled sickly. The fish struck and the lilies swayed.
- That's a blessing! Vanya said. Let's live here until our crackers run out.
I agreed.
We stayed at the lake for two days. We saw sunsets and twilight and the tangle of plants that appeared before us in the firelight. We heard the calls of wild geese and the sound of night rain. He walked for a short time, about an hour, and tinkled softly across the lake, as if stretching thin, like cobweb, trembling strings between the black sky and the water.
That's all I wanted to tell.
But since then, I will not believe anyone that there are places on our earth that are boring and do not give any food to either the eye, or hearing, or imagination, or human thought.
Only in this way, exploring some piece of our country, you can understand how good it is and how we are attached with our hearts to each of its paths, springs, and even to the timid squeaking of a forest bird.
Konstantin Paustovsky "Farewell to Summer"
For several days he poured without ceasing, cold rain. A damp wind blew in the garden. At four o'clock in the afternoon we were already lighting kerosene lamps, and it involuntarily seemed that summer was over forever and the earth was moving farther and farther into dense fogs, into uncomfortable darkness and cold.
It was the end of November - the saddest time in the village. The cat slept all day, curled up in an old armchair, and shuddered in his sleep when dark water lashed at the windows.
The roads were washed out. A yellowish foam, like a downed squirrel, was carried along the river. The last birds hid under the eaves, and for more than a week no one has visited us: neither grandfather Mitriy, nor Vanya Malyavin, nor the forester.
The best time was in the evenings. We fired up the stoves. The fire roared, crimson reflections trembled on the log walls and on the old engraving - a portrait of the artist Bryullov.
Leaning back in his chair, he looked at us, and it seemed, just like us, putting down the open book, thinking about what he had read and listening to the hum of rain on the boarded roof. The lamps burned brightly, and the invalid copper samovar sang and sang its simple song. As soon as it was brought into the room, it immediately became comfortable in it - perhaps because the glass was fogged up and you could not see the lone birch branch that knocked on the window day and night.
After tea we sat by the stove and read. On such evenings, it was most pleasant to read very long and touching novels by Charles Dickens or leaf through the heavy volumes of the Niva and Picturesque Review magazines from the old years.
At night, Funtik, a little red dachshund, often cried in his sleep. I had to get up and wrap him up with a warm woolen rag. Funtik thanked through a dream, carefully licked his hand and, sighing, fell asleep. The darkness rustled behind the walls with the splashing of rain and the blows of the wind, and it was terrible to think of those who might have been caught by this rainy night in the impenetrable forests.
One night I woke up with a strange sensation.
I thought I went deaf in my sleep. I lay with my eyes closed, listened for a long time, and finally realized that I had not gone deaf, but simply that an unusual silence had set in outside the walls of the house. Such silence is called "dead". The rain died, the wind died, the noisy, restless garden died. All you could hear was the cat snoring in his sleep.
I opened my eyes. White and even light filled the room. I got up and went to the window - behind the panes everything was snowy and silent. In the foggy sky, a lone moon stood at a dizzying height, and a yellowish circle shimmered around it.
When did the first snow fall? I approached the walkers. It was so bright that the arrows were clearly black. They showed two hours.
I fell asleep at midnight. This means that in two hours the earth has changed so unusually, in two short hours the fields, forests and gardens have been fascinated by the cold.
Through the window, I saw a large gray bird perched on a maple branch in the garden. The branch swayed, snow fell from it. The bird slowly got up and flew away, and the snow continued to fall like glass rain falling from a Christmas tree. Then everything was quiet again.
Reuben woke up. He looked out the window for a long time, sighed and said:
— The first snow is very befitting the earth.
The earth was ornate, like a shy bride.
And in the morning everything crunched around: frozen roads, leaves on the porch, black nettle stalks sticking out from under the snow.
Grandfather Mitriy came to tea and congratulated me on the first trip.
- So the earth was washed, - he said, - with snow water from a silver trough.
— Where did you get that, Mitriy, such words? Reuben asked.
- Is there something wrong? grandfather chuckled. - My mother, the deceased, told me that in ancient times, beauties washed themselves with the first snow from a silver jug, and therefore their beauty never withered. It was before Tsar Peter, my dear, when robbers ruined merchants through the local forests.
It was hard to stay at home on the first winter day. We went to the forest lakes. Grandfather walked us to the edge. He also wanted to visit the lakes, but "did not let the bones ache."
It was solemn, light and quiet in the forests.
The day seemed to be dozing. Lonely snowflakes occasionally fell from the cloudy high sky. We carefully breathed on them, and they turned into pure drops of water, then became cloudy, froze and rolled down to the ground like beads.
We wandered through the forests until dusk, walked around familiar places. Flocks of bullfinches sat, ruffled, on snow-covered mountain ash.
We plucked several bunches of red rowan, caught in the frost - this was the last memory of summer, of autumn. On a small lake - it was called Larin's Pond - there was always a lot of duckweed swimming. Now the water in the lake was very black, transparent - all the duckweed sank to the bottom by winter.
A glass strip of ice has grown along the coast. The ice was so transparent that even up close it was hard to see. I saw a flock of boats in the water near the shore and threw a small stone at them. The stone fell on the ice, rang, the rafts, flashing with scales, darted into the depths, and a white granular trace from the impact remained on the ice. That's the only reason we guessed that a layer of ice had already formed near the shore. We broke off individual pieces of ice with our hands. They crunched and left a mixed smell of snow and lingonberries on the fingers.
Here and there in the meadows birds flew and chirped plaintively. The sky overhead was very bright, white, and towards the horizon it thickened, and its color resembled lead. From there were slow, snow clouds.
It grew darker and quieter in the forests, and finally, thick snow began to fall. He melted in the black water of the lake, tickled his face, powdered the forest with gray smoke.
Winter began to take over the land, but we knew that under the loose snow, if you rake it with your hands, you can still find fresh forest flowers, we knew that fire would always crackle in the stoves, that tits stayed with us to winter, and winter seemed to us the same as beautiful as summer.
Konstantin Ushinsky "The Leprosy of the Old Woman-Winter"
The old woman-winter got angry, she decided to kill every breath from the world. First of all, she began to get to the birds: they bothered her with their cry and squeak. Winter blew cold, tore the leaves from the forests and oak forests and scattered them along the roads. There is nowhere for the birds to go; they began to gather in flocks, to think a thought. Gathered, shouted and flew for high mountains, behind blue seas in warm countries. There was a sparrow, and he huddled under the eaves.
Winter sees that she cannot catch up with the birds: she attacked the animals. She covered the fields with snow, covered the forests with snowdrifts, dressed the trees with ice crust and sends frost after frost. The frosts are getting worse one another, they jump from tree to tree, crackle and click, scare the animals. The animals were not afraid: some have warm fur coats, others hid in deep holes; a squirrel in a hollow gnaws nuts, a bear in a den sucks its paw; a hare, jumping, warms up, and horses, cows, lambs have long been chewing ready-made hay in warm barns, drinking warm swill.
Winter is more angry - it gets to the fish: it sends frost after frost, one more fiercely than the other. Frosts run briskly, they tap loudly with hammers: without wedges, without shackles on lakes, bridges are built along rivers.
Rivers and lakes froze, but only from above, and the fish all went deeper: under the ice roof it is even warmer.
- Well, wait, - thinks winter, - I will catch people, and frost after frost will send, one more angrier than the other. The frosts have clouded the patterns of the windows in the windows; they knock on the walls and on the doors, so that the logs burst. And people flooded the stoves, baked hot pancakes for themselves, and laughed at the winter. It happens that someone goes to the forest for firewood - he will put on a sheepskin coat, felt boots, warm mittens, and how he starts waving an ax, even sweat will break through. On the roads, as if to laugh at winter, the carts stretched: steam pours from the horses, cabbies stamp their feet, pat their mittens. They twitch their shoulders, praise the frosts.
It seemed most offensive to winter that even small children - and they are not afraid of it!
They skate and sled, play snowballs, make women, build mountains, pour water on them, and even cry out in the cold: “Come help!”
Winter will pinch with the anger of one boy by the ear, another by the nose, they will even turn white, and the boy will grab the snow, let's rub it - and his face will flare up like fire.
Winter sees that she can’t take anything, she cried with anger.
From the eaves, winter tears dripped ... it can be seen that spring is not far away!
Konstantin Ushinsky "Four Wishes"
Mitya rode on a sledge from an icy mountain and skated on a frozen river, ran home ruddy, cheerful and said to his father:
How fun in winter! I wish it were all winter.
“Write down your wish in my pocket book,” said the father.
Mitya wrote.
Spring came.
Mitya ran plenty of colorful butterflies across the green meadow, picked flowers, ran to his father and said:
What a beauty this spring is! I wish it were all spring.
Father again took out a book and ordered Mitya to write down his wish.
It's summer. Mitya and his father went to haymaking.
The boy had fun all day long: he fished, picked berries, tumbled in fragrant hay, and in the evening he said to his father:
"I've had a lot of fun today!" I wish there was no end to summer.
And this desire of Mitya was written down in the same book.
Autumn has come. In the garden they picked fruits - ruddy apples and yellow pears.
Mitya was delighted and said to his father:
Autumn is the best of all seasons!
Then the father took out his notebook and showed the boy that he said the same thing about spring, and about winter, and about summer.