fine. The nineteenth-century houses are log cabins, but on Beverly Hillbillies scale. The trunks of straight Siberian larch were so perfectly squared that the joints are almost invisible. The copper roofs are capped by ornate brick chimneys. Elaborate fretwork embellishes the doors and windows. This is the kind of place where Abraham Lincoln would have grown up—if his mother had been Martha Stewart. A frontiersman like Abe would recognize Siberia. Russia’s far east is our Wild West—the same fur traders, gold rushes, homesteadings, and murders of the people who lived there originally—always, however, with the slightly off- center Russian spin. For one thing the settlers still haven’t settled the place. Only the strip of land along the Trans-Siberian Railroad has a population density of more than twenty-five people per square mile. And the Russian version of Wagon Train has been going on since a cossack high-plains drifter named Yermak chased away the pesky Tartars in 1582. There’s also a whiff of the highbrow in Siberia. For a hick town, Irkutsk had too many opera houses, theaters, museums, and academic institutes. This is because, for hundreds of years, the smarty-pants reformers, annoying idealists, and know-it-all do-gooders were sent here for life. It’s as though everyone who voted for George McGovern was packed off to Lubbock, Texas. A mixed blessing for the locals, as you can imagine. Ivor was a local, and he considered the vast surrounding wilderness to be another mixed blessing. We drove for an hour southwest along the Angara River toward Lake Baikal, to a craggy overlook above a thousand square miles of virgin conifer forest. I was experiencing the egotistical swelling that comes upon urbanized man facing vast, uninhabited spaces. I was thinking, “There’s nothing! There’s nothing here! There’s nothing here but ME!” “There’s nothing here but bears,” said Ivor. “We call it Bear Angle.” Actually, Debris Corner would have been more like it. Trash lay all over the clearing. The largest rock on the hillcrest was covered halfway to its top with broken glass. “Did the place look like this under communism?” I asked. “Sure,” said Ivor. So there is no correlation between socialist systems and tidiness. Also, the surrounding bushes and trees were covered by small strips of cloth, tied to almost every branch and twig. “What’s that about?” I asked.
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