Motherland. Pantry of the sun

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I
In one village, near the Bludov swamp, near the city of Pereslavl-Zalessky, two children were orphaned. Their mother died of illness, their father died in the Patriotic War.
We lived in this village just one house away from the children. And, of course, we, along with other neighbors, tried to help them as best we could. They were very nice. Nastya was like a golden chicken on high legs. Her hair, neither dark nor light, shimmered with gold, the freckles all over her face were large, like gold coins, and frequent, and they were cramped, and they climbed in all directions. Only one nose was clean and looked up.
Mitrasha was two years younger than his sister. He was only about ten years old. He was short, but very dense, with a broad forehead and a wide nape. He was a stubborn and strong boy.
“The little man in the bag,” the teachers at school called him smiling among themselves.
The little man in the bag, like Nastya, was covered in golden freckles, and his nose, clean, like his sister’s, looked up.
After their parents, their entire peasant farm went to their children: the five-walled hut, the cow Zorka, the heifer Dochka, the goat Dereza. Nameless sheep, chickens, golden rooster Petya and piglet Horseradish.

Along with this wealth, however, the poor children also received great care for all living beings. But did our children cope with such a misfortune during the difficult years of the Patriotic War! At first, as we have already said, their distant relatives and all of us neighbors came to help the children. But very soon the smart and friendly guys learned everything themselves and began to live well.
And what smart kids they were! Whenever possible, they joined in social work. Their noses could be seen on collective farm fields, in meadows, in barnyards, at meetings, in anti-tank ditches: their noses were so perky.
In this village, although we were newcomers, we knew well the life of every house. And now we can say: there was not a single house where they lived and worked as friendly as our favorites lived.
Just like her late mother, Nastya got up far before the sun, in the predawn hour, along the shepherd's chimney. With a twig in her hand, she drove out her beloved herd and rolled back to the hut. Without going to bed again, she lit the stove, peeled potatoes, made dinner, and so busied herself with the housework until nightfall.
Mitrasha learned from his father how to make wooden utensils: barrels, gangs, tubs. He has a jointer that is more than twice his height. And with this ladle he adjusts the planks one to another, folds them and supports them with iron or wooden hoops.
With a cow, there was no such need for two children to sell wooden utensils at the market, but kind people ask those who need a gang for the washbasin, those who need a barrel for dripping, those who need a tub of pickles for cucumbers or mushrooms, or even a simple vessel with cloves - to plant a home flower .
He will do it, and then he will also be repaid with kindness. But, besides cooperage, he is responsible for all the men's farming and social affairs. He attends all meetings, tries to understand public concerns and, probably, realizes something.
It is very good that Nastya is two years older than her brother, otherwise he would certainly become arrogant and in their friendship they would not have the wonderful equality they have now. It happens that now Mitrasha will remember how his father taught his mother, and, imitating his father, will also decide to teach his sister Nastya. But my sister doesn’t listen much, she stands and smiles. Then the “little guy in the bag” begins to get angry and swagger and always says with his nose in the air:
- Here's another!
- Why are you showing off? - my sister objects.
- Here's another! - brother is angry. - You, Nastya, swagger yourself.
- No, it's you!
- Here's another!
So, having tormented her obstinate brother, Nastya strokes him on the back of his head. And as soon as the sister’s little hand touches the wide back of his brother’s head, his father’s enthusiasm leaves the owner.
- Let's weed together! - the sister will say.
And the brother also begins to weed the cucumbers, or hoe the beets, or hill up the potatoes.
Yes, it was very, very difficult for everyone during the Patriotic War, so difficult that, probably, it has never happened in the whole world. So the children had to endure a lot of all sorts of worries, failures, and disappointments. But their friendship overcame everything, they lived well. And again we can firmly say: in the entire village no one had such friendship as Mitrash and Nastya Veselkin lived with each other. And we think, perhaps, it was this grief for their parents that united the orphans so closely.

II
The sour and very healthy cranberry berry grows in swamps in the summer and is harvested in late autumn. But not everyone knows that the best cranberries, the sweetest ones, as we say, happen when they have spent the winter under the snow. These spring dark red cranberries float in our pots along with beets and drink tea with them as with sugar. Those who don’t have sugar beets drink tea with just cranberries. We tried it ourselves - and it’s okay, you can drink it: sour replaces sweet and is very good on hot days. And what a wonderful jelly made from sweet cranberries, what a fruit drink! And among our people, this cranberry is considered a healing medicine for all diseases.
This spring, there was still snow in the dense spruce forests at the end of April, but in the swamps it is always much warmer: there was no snow there at that time at all. Having learned about this from people, Mitrasha and Nastya began to gather for cranberries. Even before daylight, Nastya gave food to all her animals. Mitrash took his father’s double-barreled Tulka shotgun, decoys for hazel grouse, and did not forget the compass. It used to be that his father, heading into the forest, would never forget this compass. More than once Mitrash asked his father:
“You’ve been walking through the forest all your life, and you know the whole forest like the palm of your hand.” Why else do you need this arrow?
“You see, Dmitry Pavlovich,” answered the father, “in the forest this arrow is kinder to you than your mother: sometimes the sky will be covered with clouds, and you cannot decide by the sun in the forest; if you go at random, you will make a mistake, you will get lost, you will go hungry.” Then just look at the arrow and it will show you where your home is. You go straight home along the arrow, and they will feed you there. This arrow is more faithful to you than a friend: sometimes your friend will cheat on you, but the arrow invariably always, no matter how you turn it, always looks north.
Having examined the wonderful thing, Mitrash locked the compass so that the needle would not tremble in vain along the way. He carefully, like a father, wrapped footcloths around his feet, tucked them into his boots, and put on a cap so old that its visor split in two: the upper crust rode up above the sun, and the lower one went down almost to the very nose. Mitrash dressed in his father’s old jacket, or rather in a collar connecting stripes of once good homespun fabric. The boy tied these stripes on his tummy with a sash, and his father’s jacket sat on him like a coat, right down to the ground. The hunter’s son also tucked an ax into his belt, hung a bag with a compass on his right shoulder, a double-barreled Tulka on his left, and thus became terribly scary for all birds and animals.
Nastya, starting to get ready, hung a large basket over her shoulder on a towel.
- Why do you need a towel? - asked Mitrasha.
“But what about,” Nastya answered, “don’t you remember how your mother went to pick mushrooms?”
- For mushrooms! You understand a lot: there are a lot of mushrooms, so it hurts your shoulder.
- And maybe we’ll have even more cranberries.
And just when Mitrash wanted to say his “here’s another”, he remembered what his father had said about cranberries, back when they were preparing him for war.
“You remember this,” Mitrasha said to his sister, “how my father told us about cranberries, that there is a Palestinian in the forest...
“I remember,” Nastya answered, “he said about cranberries that he knew a place and the cranberries there were crumbling, but I don’t know what he said about some Palestinian woman.” I also remember talking about the terrible place Blind Elan.
“There, near Yelani, there is a Palestinian,” said Mitrasha. “Father said: go to the High Mane and after that keep to the north, and when you cross the Zvonkaya Borina, keep everything straight to the north and you will see - there a Palestinian woman will come to you, all red as blood, from just cranberries. No one has ever been to this Palestinian land!
Mitrasha said this already at the door. During the story, Nastya remembered: she had a whole, untouched pot of boiled potatoes left from yesterday. Forgetting about the Palestinian woman, she quietly snuck over to the rack and dumped the entire cast iron into the basket.
“Maybe we’ll get lost,” she thought. “We have enough bread, we have a bottle of milk, and maybe some potatoes will come in handy too.”
And at that time the brother, thinking that his sister was still standing behind him, told her about the wonderful Palestinian woman and that, indeed, on the way to her was the Blind Elan, where many people, cows, and horses died.
- Well, what kind of Palestinian is this? - asked Nastya.
- So you didn’t hear anything?! - he grabbed.
And he patiently repeated to her, as he walked, everything that he had heard from his father about a Palestinian land unknown to anyone, where sweet cranberries grow.

III
The Bludovo swamp, where we ourselves wandered more than once, began, as a large swamp almost always begins, with an impenetrable thicket of willow, alder and other shrubs. The first man walked through this swamp with an ax in his hand and cut a passage for other people. The hummocks settled under human feet, and the path became a groove along which water flowed. The children crossed this marshland in the pre-dawn darkness without much difficulty. And when the bushes stopped obscuring the view ahead, at the first morning light the swamp opened up to them, like the sea. And yet, it was the same, this Bludovo swamp, the bottom of the ancient sea. And just as there, in the real sea, there are islands, just as there are oases in deserts, so there are hills in swamps. In the Bludov swamp, these sandy hills, covered with high forest, are called borins. After walking a little through the swamp, the children climbed the first hill, known as the High Mane. From here, from a high bald spot in the gray haze of the first dawn, Borina Zvonkaya could be barely visible.
Even before reaching Zvonkaya Borina, almost right next to the path, individual blood-red berries began to appear. Cranberry hunters initially put these berries in their mouths. Anyone who has never tasted autumn cranberries in their life and would have immediately had enough of spring ones would have taken their breath away from the acid. But the village orphans knew well what autumn cranberries were, and that’s why when they ate spring cranberries now, they repeated:
- So sweet!
Borina Zvonkaya willingly opened up her wide clearing to the children, which even now, in April, was covered with dark green lingonberry grass. Among this greenery of last year, here and there new flowers of white snowdrop and purple, small and fragrant flowers of wolf's bast could be seen.
“They smell good, try picking a wolf’s bast flower,” said Mitrasha.
Nastya tried to break the twig of the stem and could not do it.
- Why is this bast called a wolf’s? - she asked.
“Father said,” the brother answered, “the wolves weave baskets out of it.”
And he laughed.
-Are there still wolves here?
- Well, of course! Father said there is a terrible wolf here, the Gray Landowner.
- I remember: the same one who slaughtered our herd before the war.
- My father said: he lives on the Sukhaya River, in the rubble.
- He won’t touch you and me?
- Let him try! - answered the hunter with a double visor.
While the children were talking like this and the morning was moving closer and closer to dawn, Borina Zvonkaya was filled with bird songs, the howls, moans and cries of animals. Not all of them were here, on Borina, but from the swamp, damp, deaf, all the sounds gathered here. Borina with the forest, pine and sonorous on dry land, responded to everything.
But the poor birds and little animals, how they all suffered, trying to pronounce some common, one beautiful word! And even children, as simple as Nastya and Mitrasha, understood their effort. They all wanted to say just one beautiful word.
You can see how the bird sings on the branch, and every feather trembles with effort. But still, they cannot say words like we do, and they have to sing, shout, and tap.
- Tek-tek! - the huge bird Capercaillie taps barely audibly in the dark forest.
- Shvark-shwark! - The Wild Drake flew in the air over the river.
- Quack-quack! - wild duck Mallard on the lake.
- Gu-gu-gu! - beautiful bird Bullfinch on a birch tree.

The fairy tale “The Pantry of the Sun” is one of the most interesting works of Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin. In it he talks about the independent life of orphans Nastya and Mitrasha. Pictures describing the life of children are replaced by interesting adventures that befell them on the way to Blind Elan. Children are children, they often argue, disagree with each other, and defend their rightness. This almost cost Mitrash’s life. But the boy, once in the swamp, did not lose his head, showed ingenuity and courage, and therefore remained alive.
Travka is a kind and smart dog, she was used to helping Antipych hunt, so she followed Mitrasha’s voice.
Yearning for human affection after the death of his owner, Travka mistakes Mitrash for Antipych, and thanks to his ingenuity, the boy is saved from the quagmire. As a city dweller, I find it interesting to read stories about nature. It’s as if I’m traveling through the forest with the heroes, I get scared when I meet a snake and a moose, and I rejoice at Mitrasha’s happy deliverance from danger.
Such stories help you understand and love the surrounding nature, learn to read its mysterious pages

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Pantry of the sun

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About Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin

Along the streets of Moscow, still wet and shiny from watering, having had a good rest during the night from cars and pedestrians, a small blue Moskvich slowly drives at a very early hour. Behind the wheel sits an old chauffeur with glasses, his hat pushed back on his head, revealing a high forehead and steep curls of gray hair.

The eyes look both cheerfully and concentratedly, and somehow in a double way: both at you, a passer-by, dear, still unfamiliar comrade and friend, and inside themselves, at what is occupying the writer’s attention.

Nearby, to the right of the driver, sits a young, but also gray-haired hunting dog - a gray long-haired setter Zhalka and, imitating the owner, carefully looks ahead at the windshield.

The writer Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin was the oldest driver in Moscow. Until he was over eighty years old, he drove the car himself, inspected and washed it himself, and asked for help in this matter only in extreme cases. Mikhail Mikhailovich treated his car almost like a living creature and called it affectionately: “Masha.”

He needed the car solely for his writing work. After all, with the growth of cities, untouched nature became increasingly distant, and he, an old hunter and walker, was no longer able to walk for many kilometers to meet with it, as in his youth. That’s why Mikhail Mikhailovich called his car key “the key of happiness and freedom.” He always carried it in his pocket on a metal chain, took it out, jingled it and told us:

- What a great happiness it is to be able to feel the key in your pocket at any hour, go up to the garage, get behind the wheel yourself and drive off somewhere into the forest and there, with a pencil in a book, mark the course of your thoughts.

In the summer the car was parked at the dacha, in the village of Dunino near Moscow. Mikhail Mikhailovich got up very early, often at sunrise, and immediately sat down with fresh energy to work. When life began in the house, he, in his words, having already “signed off”, went out into the garden, started his Moskvich there, Zhalka sat next to him, and a large basket for mushrooms was placed. Three conventional beeps: “Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye!” - and the car rolls into the forests, many kilometers away from our Dunin in the direction opposite to Moscow. She'll be back by lunchtime.

However, it also happened that hours passed after hours, and still there was no Moskvich. Neighbors and friends converge at our gate, alarming assumptions begin, and now a whole team is about to go in search and rescue... But then a familiar short beep is heard: “Hello!” And the car rolls up.

Mikhail Mikhailovich comes out tired, there are traces of earth on him, apparently he had to lie somewhere on the road. The face is sweaty and dusty. Mikhail Mikhailovich carries a basket of mushrooms on a strap over his shoulder, pretending that it is very difficult for him - it is so full. His invariably serious greenish-gray eyes gleam slyly from under his glasses. On top, covering everything, lies a huge boletus in a basket. We gasp: “White!” We are now ready to rejoice at everything from the bottom of our hearts, reassured by the fact that Mikhail Mikhailovich has returned and everything ended well.

Mikhail Mikhailovich sits down with us on the bench, takes off his hat, wipes his forehead and generously admits that there is only one porcini mushroom, and under it there are all sorts of insignificant little things like russula - and it’s not worth looking at, but look what kind of mushroom he was lucky enough to meet! But without a white one, at least one, could he return? In addition, it turns out that the car sat on a stump on a sticky forest road, and I had to lie down and saw out this stump under the bottom of the car, but this is not quick and not easy. And not just sawing and sawing - in between he sat on tree stumps and wrote down thoughts that came to him in a book.

Pity, apparently, shared all the experiences of her owner; she looked satisfied, but still tired and somehow rumpled. She herself cannot tell anything, but Mikhail Mikhailovich tells us for her:

“I locked the car and left only the window for Zhalka.” I wanted her to rest. But as soon as I was out of sight, Zhalka began to howl and suffer terribly. What to do? While I was thinking what to do, Zhalka came up with something of her own. And suddenly he appears with an apology, revealing his white teeth with a smile. With her whole wrinkled appearance and especially this smile - her whole nose is on the side and all her lips are rags, and her teeth are in sight - she seemed to be saying: “It was hard!” - "And what?" – I asked. Again she has all her rags on one side and her teeth in plain sight. I understood: she climbed out the window.

This is how we lived in the summer. And in winter the car was parked in a cold Moscow garage. Mikhail Mikhailovich did not use it, preferring ordinary city transport. She, along with her owner, patiently waited through the winter in order to return to the forests and fields as early as possible in the spring.

Our greatest joy was to go somewhere far away with Mikhail Mikhailovich, but always together. The third would be a hindrance, because we had an agreement: to remain silent along the way and only occasionally exchange a word.

Mikhail Mikhailovich constantly looks around, thinks about something, sits down from time to time, and quickly writes in a pocket book with a pencil. Then he gets up, flashes his cheerful and attentive eye - and again we walk side by side along the road.

When at home he reads to you what he has written down, you are amazed: you yourself walked past all this and seeing - did not see and hearing - did not hear! It turned out as if Mikhail Mikhailovich was following you, collecting what was lost due to your inattention, and now bringing it to you as a gift.

We always returned from our walks loaded with such gifts.

I’ll tell you about one trip, and we had a lot of them in our life with Mikhail Mikhailovich.

The Great Patriotic War was going on. It was a difficult time. We left Moscow for remote places in the Yaroslavl region, where Mikhail Mikhailovich often hunted in previous years and where we had many friends.

We, like all the people around us, lived on what the earth gave us: what we grew in our garden, what we collected in the forest. Sometimes Mikhail Mikhailovich managed to shoot a game. But even under these conditions, he invariably took up pencil and paper from early morning.

That morning we gathered on one errand in the distant village of Khmelniki, ten kilometers from ours. We had to leave at dawn in order to return home before dark.

I woke up from his cheerful words:

- Look what's happening in the forest! The forester is doing laundry.

- In the morning for fairy tales! – I answered dissatisfied: I didn’t want to get up yet.

“Look,” repeated Mikhail Mikhailovich.

Our window looked straight out into the forest. The sun had not yet peeked out from behind the edge of the sky, but the dawn was visible through the transparent fog in which the trees floated. On their green branches were hung numerous light white canvases. It seemed like there was really a big wash going on in the forest, someone was drying all their sheets and towels.

- Indeed, the forester is doing laundry! - I exclaimed, and all my sleep fled. I immediately guessed: it was an abundant cobweb, covered with tiny drops of fog that had not yet turned into dew.

We quickly got ready, didn’t even drink tea, deciding to boil it on the way, at a rest stop.

Meanwhile, the sun came out, it sent its rays to the ground, the rays penetrated the thick thicket, illuminated every branch... And then everything changed: these were no longer sheets, but bedspreads embroidered with diamonds. The fog settled and turned into large drops of dew, sparkling like precious stones.

Then the diamonds dried up, and only the thinnest lace of spider traps remained.

“I’m sorry that the forester’s laundry is just a fairy tale!” – I noted sadly.

– Another thing, why do you need this fairy tale? - answered Mikhail Mikhailovich. – And without her there are so many miracles around! If you want, we will notice them together along the way, just be silent, don’t stop them from showing themselves.

- Even in a swamp? – I asked.

“Even in a swamp,” answered Mikhail Mikhailovich.

We walked through open areas, along the edge of the swampy bank of our river Veksa.

“I’d better get out onto the forest road, what a fairy tale it can be here,” I say, with difficulty pulling my feet out of the sticky peat soil. Every step is an effort.

“Let’s rest,” Mikhail Mikhailovich suggests and sits down on a snag.

But it turns out that this is not a dead snag, it is a living trunk of a tilted willow - it lies on the shore due to the weak support of the roots in the liquid swampy soil, and so - lying - it grows, and the ends of its branches touch the water with every gust of wind.

I also sit down near the water and with an absentminded eye I notice that throughout the entire space under the willow the river is covered, like a green carpet, with small floating grass - duckweed.

- Do you see? – Mikhail Mikhailovich asks mysteriously. – Here’s your first fairy tale – about duckweeds: how many there are, and all of them are different; small, but so agile... They gathered in a large green table near the willow, and gathered here, and everyone was holding on to the willow. The current tears off pieces, crushes them, and they, little green ones, float, but others stick and accumulate. This is how a green table grows. And on this table there are shells and shoes. But the shoes are not alone here, look closely: a large company has gathered here! There are riders - tall mosquitoes. Where the current is stronger, they stand right on clear water, as if they were standing on a glass floor, spread their long legs and rush down along with the water stream.

– The water near them often sparkles – why would that be?

– The riders raise a wave - it’s the sun playing in their shallow wave.

– Is the wave from the riders big?

- And there are thousands of them! When you look at their movement against the sun, all the water plays and is covered with small stars from the waves.

- And what’s going on under the duckweeds below! – I exclaimed.

There, hordes of tiny fry scurried about in the water, getting something useful from under the duckweeds.

Then I noticed on the green table there were windows like ice holes.

-Where are they from?

“You should have guessed it yourself,” Mikhail Mikhailovich answered me. “It’s a big fish that stuck its nose out - that’s where the windows remain.”

We said goodbye to the whole company under the willow, moved on and soon came out to a swamp - that’s what we call reed thickets in a shaky place, in a swamp.

The fog had already risen above the river, and wet, sparkling bayonets of reeds appeared. In the silence in the sunlight they stood motionless.

Mikhail Mikhailovich stopped me and said in a whisper:

- Freeze now, and look at the reeds, and wait for events.

So we stood, time passed, and nothing happened...

But then one reed moved, someone pushed it, and another was nearby, and another, and it went, and it went...

-What would that be up there? – I asked. - Wind, dragonfly?

- “Dragonfly”! – Mikhail Mikhailovich looked at me reproachfully. - This heavy bumblebee moves every flower, and the blue dragonfly - only she can sit on a water reed so that it does not move!

- So what is it?

- Not the wind, not the dragonfly - it was a pike! - Mikhail Mikhailovich triumphantly reveals the secret to me. “I noticed how she saw us and shied away with such force that you could hear her knocking on the reeds, and you could see them moving above as the fish moved. But these were just moments, and you missed them!

We were now walking through the most remote places of our quagmire. Suddenly we heard screams that vaguely resembled the sound of trumpets.

“These are the cranes trumpeting, rising from their overnight stay,” said Mikhail Mikhailovich.

Soon we saw them, they were flying above us in pairs, low and heavy, right above the reeds, as if they were doing some big, difficult task.

- They rush about, they work - to guard the nests, feed the chicks, enemies are everywhere... But they fly hard, but still they fly! The bird has a difficult life,” said Mikhail Mikhailovich thoughtfully. “I understood this when I once met the Master of the Reeds himself.

- With the merman? – I glanced sideways at Mikhail Mikhailovich.

“No, this is a fairy tale about the truth,” he answered very seriously. - I have it written down.

He read as if he were talking to himself.

– « Meeting with the Master of the Reeds, he began. “My dog and I walked along the edge of the marshy area near the reeds, behind which there was a forest. My steps through the swamp were barely audible. Perhaps the dog, while running, made noise with the reeds, and one by one they transmitted the noise and alarmed the Master of the Reeds, who was guarding his pullets.

Walking slowly, he parted the reeds and looked out into the open swamp... I saw in front of me, ten steps away, the long neck of a crane standing vertically among the reeds. He, expecting to see at most a fox, looked at me as if I were looking at a tiger, became confused, caught himself, ran, waved and finally slowly rose into the air.” “It’s a difficult life,” Mikhail Mikhailovich repeated and hid his book in his pocket.

At this time the cranes were trumpeting again, and then, while we were listening and the cranes were trumpeting, the reeds moved before our eyes and a curious water hen came out to the water and listened, not noticing us. The cranes screamed again, and she, little one, also screamed in her own way...

– I understood this sound for the first time! - Mikhail Mikhailovich told me when the chicken disappeared into the reeds. “She, little one, wanted to scream like the cranes, but she just wanted to scream in order to better glorify the sun.” Notice that at sunrise, everyone who knows how praises the sun!

The familiar trumpet sound was heard again, but somehow distant.

“These are not ours, these are nesting cranes in another swamp,” said Mikhail Mikhailovich. “When they shout from afar, it always seems as if they are doing something quite different from ours, it’s interesting, and you want to go and see them as soon as possible!”

- Maybe that’s why our people flew to them? – I asked.

But this time Mikhail Mikhailovich did not answer me.

Afterwards we walked for a long time and nothing else happened to us.

True, one more time long-legged large birds appeared in flight above us, I learned: they were herons. It was clear from their flight that they were not from the local swamp: they were flying from somewhere far away, high, businesslike, swiftly and straight, straight...

“It’s as if some aerial hedgehogs decided to divide the entire globe in half,” said Mikhail Mikhailovich and watched their flight for a long time, throwing back his head and smiling.

Here the reeds soon ran out, and we came out onto a very high dry bank above the river, where Bexa made a sharp bend, and in this bend the clear water in the sunlight was all covered with a carpet of water lilies. The yellow ones in large numbers opened their corollas towards the sun, the white ones stood in dense buds.

– I read in your book: “Yellow lilies open from sunrise, white ones open at ten o’clock. When all the whites have blossomed, the ball begins on the river.” Is it true that at ten? And why the ball? Maybe you came up with this as something about the forest man doing his laundry?

“Let’s make a fire here, boil some tea and have a snack,” Mikhail Mikhailovich told me instead of answering. - And as soon as the sun rises, in the heat of the moment we will already be in the forest, it’s not far away.

We hauled brushwood and branches, arranged a seat, hung a pot over the fire... Then Mikhail Mikhailovich began writing in his book, and I, unnoticed, dozed off.

When I woke up, the sun had already traveled quite a distance across the sky. White lilies spread their petals wide and, like ladies in crinolines, danced on the waves with gentlemen in yellow to the music of a fast-flowing river; the waves beneath them shimmered in the sun, also like music.

Multi-colored dragonflies danced in the air above the lilies.

On the shore, codfish danced in the grass - grasshoppers, blue and red, flying up like fire sparks. There were more red ones, but maybe it seemed so to us because of the hot sun glare in our eyes.

Everything moved, shimmered around us and smelled fragrant.

Mikhail Mikhailovich silently handed me his watch: it was half past ten.

– You overslept the opening of the ball! - he said.

The heat was no longer scary to us: we entered the forest and went deeper along the road. A long time ago, it was once laid with round timber: people did this to transport firewood to the rafting river. They dug two ditches and laid thin tree trunks between them one to one, like parquet. Then the firewood was taken away and the road was forgotten. And the round piece of wood sits there for years, rotting...

Now the tall, handsome Ivan-chai and the also tall, curvaceous beauty Lungwort stood along the drained edges. We walked carefully so as not to crush them.

Suddenly Mikhail Mikhailovich grabbed me by the hand and made a sign of silence: about twenty steps from us, a large bird in iridescent dark plumage with bright red eyebrows was walking along a warm round forest between fireweed and lungwort. It was a capercaillie. He rose into the air like a dark cloud and disappeared with a noise between the trees. In flight it seemed huge to me.

- Capercaillie Alley! They made it for firewood, but it was useful for birds,” said Mikhail Mikhailovich.

Since then, we have been calling this forest road to Khmelniki “grouse alley.”

We also came across two stacks of birch firewood forgotten by someone. Over time, the stacks began to rot and bow to each other, despite the spacers that had once been placed between them... And their stumps rotted nearby. These stumps reminded us that firewood trees once grew into beautiful trees. But then people came, cut them down and forgot, and now the trees and stumps rot uselessly...

- Maybe the war prevented the removal? – I asked.

- No, it happened a lot earlier. Some other misfortune prevented people from doing so,” answered Mikhail Mikhailovich.

We looked at the stacks with involuntary sympathy.

“Now they stand as if they were people,” said Mikhail Mikhailovich, “bent their temples towards each other...

Meanwhile, new life was already in full swing around the stacks: below, spiders connected them with cobwebs and wagtails ran across the spacers...

“Look,” said Mikhail Mikhailovich, “a young birch undergrowth is growing between them.” He managed to step over their height! Do you know where these young birch trees get such growth power? - he asked me and answered himself: - This birch firewood, when rotting, gives such violent power around itself. So,” he concluded, “the firewood came out of the forest and is returning to the forest.”

And we cheerfully said goodbye to the forest, going out to the village where we were heading.

This would be the end of my story about our hike that morning. Just a few more words about one birch tree: we noticed it as we approached the village - young, the size of a man, looking like a girl in a green dress. There was one yellow leaf on its head, although it was still the middle of summer.

Mikhail Mikhailovich looked at the birch tree and wrote something down in a book.

-What did you write down?

He read to me:

- “I saw the Snow Maiden in the forest: one of her earrings was made of a golden leaf, and the other was still green.”

And that was his last gift to me that time.

Prishvin became a writer this way: in his youth - it was a long time ago, half a century ago - he walked around the entire North with a hunting rifle on his back and wrote a book about this journey. Our North was wild then, there were few people there, birds and animals lived unafraid of humans. That’s what he called his first book – “In the Land of Unfrightened Birds.” Wild swans swam on the northern lakes at that time. And when many years later Prishvin came to the North again, the familiar lakes were connected by the White Sea Canal, and it was no longer swans who swam on them, but our Soviet steamships; During his long life, Prishvin saw a lot of changes in his homeland.

There is one old fairy tale, it begins like this: “The grandmother took a wing, scraped it along the box, broomed it along the bottom, took two handfuls of flour and made a funny bun. He lay there and lay there, and suddenly he rolled - from the window to the bench, from the bench to the floor, along the floor and to the doors, jumped over the threshold into the entryway, from the entryway to the porch, from the porch into the yard and through the gate - further, further ... "

Mikhail Mikhailovich attached his own ending to this fairy tale, as if he himself, Prishvin, followed this kolobok throughout the world, along forest paths and the banks of rivers, and the sea, and the ocean - he kept walking and following the kolobok. That’s how he called his new book “Kolobok.” Subsequently, the same magic bun led the writer to the south, to the Asian steppes, and to the Far East.

Prishvin has a story about the steppes, “The Black Arab,” and a story about the Far East, “Zhen-Shen.” This story has been translated into all the major languages of the peoples of the globe.

From end to end the bun ran around our rich homeland and, when it had looked at everything, began to circle near Moscow, along the banks of small rivers - there was some river Vertushinka, and Nevestinka, and Sister, and some nameless lakes named by Prishvin " eyes of the earth." It was here, in these places close to all of us, that the bun revealed to his friend, perhaps, even more miracles.

His books about Central Russian nature are widely known: “Calendar of Nature”, “Forest Drops”, “Eyes of the Earth”.

Mikhail Mikhailovich is not only a children's writer - he wrote his books for everyone, but children read them with equal interest. He wrote only about what he himself saw and experienced in nature.

So, for example, to describe how the spring flood of rivers occurs, Mikhail Mikhailovich builds himself a plywood house on wheels from an ordinary truck, takes with him a rubber folding boat, a gun and everything he needs for a lonely life in the forest, and goes to the place where our river floods. “The Volga also watches how the largest animals, moose, and the smallest, water rats and shrews, escape from the water that floods the land.

This is how the days pass: over a fire, hunting, with a fishing rod, a camera. Spring is moving, the earth begins to dry out, grass appears, the trees turn green. Summer passes, then autumn, finally white flies fly, and frost begins to pave the way back. Then Mikhail Mikhailovich returns to us with new stories.

We all know the trees in our forests, the flowers in the meadows, the birds, and various animals. But Prishvin looked at them with his special keen eye and saw something that we were unaware of.

“That’s why the forest is called dark,” writes Prishvin, “because the sun looks into it as if through a narrow window, and does not see everything that is happening in the forest.”

Even the sun doesn't notice everything! And the artist learns the secrets of nature and rejoices in discovering them.

So he found an amazing birch bark tube in the forest, which turned out to be the pantry of some hardworking animal.

So he attended the name day of the aspen tree - and we breathed with him the joy of spring blossom.

So he overheard the song of a completely unnoticeable little bird on the very top finger of the Christmas tree - now he knows what they are all whistling, whispering, rustling and singing about!

So the bun rolls and rolls along the ground, the storyteller follows his bun, and we go with him and recognize countless little relatives in our common House of Nature, learn to love our native land and understand its beauty.

V. Prishvina

About Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin

Nearby, to the right of the driver, sits a young, but also gray-haired hunting dog - a gray long-haired setter Zhalka and, imitating the owner, carefully looks ahead at the windshield.

Pity, apparently, shared all the experiences of her owner; she looked satisfied, but still tired and somehow rumpled. She herself cannot tell anything, but Mikhail Mikhailovich tells us for her:

We always returned from our walks loaded with such gifts.

I’ll tell you about one trip, and we had a lot of them in our life with Mikhail Mikhailovich.

That morning we gathered on one errand in the distant village of Khmelniki, ten kilometers from ours. We had to leave at dawn in order to return home before dark.

I woke up from his cheerful words:

- Look what's happening in the forest! The forester is doing laundry.

- In the morning for fairy tales! – I answered dissatisfied: I didn’t want to get up yet.

“Look,” repeated Mikhail Mikhailovich.

- Indeed, the forester is doing laundry! - I exclaimed, and all my sleep fled. I immediately guessed: it was an abundant cobweb, covered with tiny drops of fog that had not yet turned into dew.

In one village, near the Bludov swamp, near the city of Pereslavl-Zalessky, two children were orphaned. Their mother died of illness, their father died in the Patriotic War.

We lived in this village just one house away from the children. And, of course, we, along with other neighbors, tried to help them as best we could. They were very nice. Nastya was like a golden hen on high legs. Her hair, neither dark nor light, shimmered with gold, the freckles all over her face were large, like gold coins, and frequent, and they were cramped, and they climbed in all directions. Only one nose was clean and looked up like a parrot.

Mitrasha was two years younger than his sister. He was only about ten years old. He was short, but very dense, with a broad forehead and a wide nape. He was a stubborn and strong boy.

“The little man in the bag,” the teachers at school called him smiling among themselves.

The little man in the bag, like Nastya, was covered in golden freckles, and his clean nose, like his sister’s, looked up like a parrot.

After their parents, their entire peasant farm went to their children: a five-walled hut, a cow Zorka, a heifer Dochka, a goat Dereza, nameless sheep, chickens, a golden rooster Petya and a piglet Horseradish.

Along with this wealth, however, the poor children also received great care for all these living beings. But did our children cope with such a misfortune during the difficult years of the Patriotic War! At first, as we have already said, their distant relatives and all of us neighbors came to help the children. But very soon the smart, friendly guys learned everything themselves and began to live well.

And what smart kids they were! Whenever possible, they joined in social work. Their noses could be seen on collective farm fields, in meadows, in barnyards, at meetings, in anti-tank ditches: their noses were so perky.

In this village, although we were newcomers, we knew well the life of every house. And now we can say: there was not a single house where they lived and worked as friendly as our favorites lived.

Just like her late mother, Nastya got up far before the sun, in the predawn hour, along the shepherd's chimney. With a twig in her hand, she drove out her beloved herd and rolled back to the hut. Without going to bed again, she lit the stove, peeled potatoes, made dinner, and so busied herself with the housework until nightfall.

Mitrasha learned from his father how to make wooden utensils, barrels, gangs, and basins. He has a jointer that is more than twice his height. And with this ladle he adjusts the planks one to another, folds them and supports them with iron or wooden hoops.

When there was a cow, there was no such need for two children to sell wooden utensils at the market, but good people ask for someone who needs a bowl for the washbasin, someone who needs a barrel for dripping, someone who needs a tub of pickles for cucumbers or mushrooms, or even a simple vessel with scallops - homemade plant a flower.

He will do it, and then he will also be repaid with kindness. But, besides cooperage, he is responsible for all the men's farming and social affairs. He attends all meetings, tries to understand public concerns and, probably, realizes something.

It is very good that Nastya is two years older than her brother, otherwise he would certainly become arrogant and in their friendship they would not have the wonderful equality they have now. It happens that now Mitrasha will remember how his father taught his mother, and, imitating his father, will also decide to teach his sister Nastya. But my sister doesn’t listen much, she stands and smiles... Then the Little Man in the Bag begins to get angry and swagger and always says with his nose in the air:

- Here's another!

- Why are you showing off? - my sister objects.

- Here's another! - brother is angry. - You, Nastya, swagger yourself.

- No, it's you!

- Here's another!

So, having tormented her obstinate brother, Nastya strokes him on the back of his head, and as soon as her sister’s small hand touches her brother’s wide back of his head, her father’s enthusiasm leaves the owner.

- Let's weed together! - the sister will say.

And the brother also begins to weed cucumbers, or hoe beets, or plant potatoes.

Yes, it was very, very difficult for everyone during the Patriotic War, so difficult that, probably, it has never happened in the whole world. So the children had to endure a lot of all sorts of worries, failures, and disappointments. But their friendship overcame everything, they lived well. And again we can firmly say: in the entire village no one had such friendship as Mitrash and Nastya Veselkin lived with each other. And we think, perhaps, it was this grief for their parents that united the orphans so closely.