In Search of the Wild Wolf

At the very heart of the Putorana Plateau, inside the Putorana Strict Nature Preserve, picturesque Lake Ayan sprawls between high basalt cliffs. This remote location can only be reached by helicopter, and Norilsk, the nearest city, is 300 kilometers away through virginal taiga.

This is where Arctic researcher Vasily Sarana has decided to shoot a film on wild wolves, dragging along his friend, Valery Fidirkin. The two studied together in the geography department of Moscow State University, and have traveled widely since then, including on a number of joint exhibitions in Siberia. The film on wolves is their long cherished dream.

Sarana is a director and cinematographer, a scientist and investigator. He has worked on the Putorana Plateau for more than 20 years and was very deliberate in choosing Lake Ayan as the site for his film. Not only is this one of the most beautiful places on the Plateau, but it is home to wolves that have never come into contact with people.

 

Filming began last April and is expected to last three years.

 

The first, short northern summer of filming brought good results. They caught the master of the taiga – the brown bear – on film, as well as bald eagles, fox and sable. But not a single wolf. The predator has proven to be very cautious.

 

Fall arrived, and winter was not far behind... Very soon a herd of Northern Reindeer will be crossing the River Ayan, which flows out of the lake of the same name. Predators will follow the herd. Snows will fall, eventually exposing animal tracks. Perhaps finally they will succeed in filming the wolves – the impetus for their expedition.

 

 

 

Toward the end of summer, I received an unusual phone call. Based on the long string of numbers in the caller ID, I guessed that the call was from a satellite phone. I picked up the phone and immediately recognized Vasily’s voice. He was calling from Lake Ayan.

 

“Fly to Norilsk. The snow will start falling any day. You can help us shoot the Northern Lights.”

 

After landing in Norilsk, I quickly learned that I would not be traveling to the film site anytime soon. Fog had set in over the Putorana Plateau and it was impossible to fly there in such weather.

 

Breathing in Norilsk’s dirty air,[1] I thought of Putorana’s untouched nature. At night I dreamed of waterfalls and picturesque cliffs. In order to kill the time during the days, I spent a lot of time walking around this cold, northern city. I checked out Norilsk’s first wooden home, built by Nikolai Urvantsev in 1926, and visited the regional museum of history and culture on Prospect Lenin. But none of this was what I came here for. The days of waiting were interminably long.

 

Finally, my phone rang again, showing the same familiar number

 

“Vanya, you fly tomorrow! The weather has gotten better.”

 

Driving all around Norilsk, I stocked up on three months worth of goods – vegetables, fruits, grains and preserves – and packed up my equipment.

 

 

 

Taymyr Air’s orange MI-8 helicopter rose up into the sky. As it was impossible over the roar of the engine to make out the murmuring of rivers or the sound of waterfalls – of which the Plateau has a huge number, I focused on the view, which was truly spellbinding.[2] The foothills to the Plateau were replete with lakes and swamps, all stitched together by thin strings of rivers and rivulets. Evergreen and larch trees huddled on small islands, as if fleeing a flood.

 

Suddenly, steep mountain slopes came into view. Four-hundred-meter high cliffs, pierced by fast-flowing mountain streams, reminded of Norwegian fjords. I held my breath and pressed my face up against the window, rapt.

 

We flew across the central portion of the Plateau. It was a region of stone blocks and snow. The surface of the Putorana Plateau looked as if it had been smoothed out by a huge rolling pin, then dusted with basalt boulders. Spanning the banks of narrow river valleys, looking a bit like white seagulls, were ice bridges. The valley floors were overgrown with thick forests, and as we flew over the Khana-Makit ridge, I suddenly thought I heard the sound of a wolf’s howl. In the distance, the huge expanse of Lake Ayan spread before us.

 

 

The helicopter landed on a small, rocky island in the middle of shallow channel of the Ayan River, which flowed out of the lake of the same name. Once the blades stopped spinning, we set to hauling the provisions I had brought to the camp.

 

According to taiga tradition, Valera and Vasily immediately led the pilot and myself over to their fire. Guests must be fed and offered hot tea.

 

“Well, how’s it going? Found any wolves?” I immediately asked.

 

“We found an old burrow, but no one was there. We might get lucky finding their tracks, once the snow begins to fall,” Vasily answered.

 

“In other words, anything can happen.”

 

A succulent grayling was sizzling in the frying pan atop the fire. The air smelled of fallen leaves.

 

I looked around. A small, wooden house stood about 20 meters from the raging river, on a high wetland. The river would never jump that high over the banks. Two fold-up tables stood next to the fire: one for cleaning fish, the other for storing dishes. A chin-up bar had been erected between the river and the house, meaning that the mornings began with exercise.

 

I immediately understood that being a taiga resident meant attention to detail. And how. In order to live alone for six months, far from civilization, without any possibility of help from the outside, you need to not only have a deep knowledge of nature, but also be knowledgeable in a lot of other things. I was the youngest member of the team and was ready to learn everything that Vasily and Valery were willing to teach me.

 

My first lesson, courtesy of Vasily, was as follows:

 

“Vanya, put some clothes on! You’re never too warm in the taiga. Be more careful. Getting sick is not an option here. A medical evacuation flight costs R300,000.[3] You have that sort of money? Me neither.”

 

Despite the fact that the sun was shining, I pulled a warm sweater from the bottom of my rucksack and put it on right away.

 

The fall sun in Siberia is very treacherous. It only seems like it is warming. No matter how brightly the sun’s rays shine, they bring very little in the way of heat. And cold, fall winds come up quickly. You let your guard down and next thing you know you have a cold. There’s a reason they say that a Siberian is not one who does not freeze, but one who dresses warmly.

 

 

 

I gradually found my stride with the taiga lifestyle. Each day, after a hearty breakfast, we set out with video and still cameras in search of interesting stories.

 

Animal paths were everywhere in the forest. In fact, they were so numerous that at first I could not believe that they were made by reindeer and not people.

 

“Each year, some 400,000 migrate through the Putorana Plateau. The reindeer head south in the fall, but in the spring they return to the Taymyr tundra,” Vasily explained.

 

A large herd of reindeer should soon be passing through the Lake Ayan valley, and they were to be the second significant “character” in our film, after the wolves. In fact, we were afraid of missing the migration, so Vasily left his markers – sticks – along the paths. The reindeer tend to move through the forest in groups. If the reindeer pass along these paths, they will knock down the sticks, and it will be immediately clear that their migration has begun.

 

Occasionally we found an unusual tree along a path; usually they were large deciduous trees. Upon examination, you notice that one side of the tree has distinct markings, as if someone has stripped off the bark. These are “bear trees.” The bears trod along the paths and rub their powerful backs against the trees. Its how they mark the borders of their territory.

 

Learning that there were three bear trees surrounding our camp, I began to take along a signal gun whenever setting out alone. Thankfully, I never needed to use it. Apparently the bears were themselves afraid of us and would not approach the camp.

 

 

 

After lunch we did housework. The snows would begin soon and we hurried to get ready for winter.

 

We had to paint the house and cover its roof with ventilation fabric. This is the fabric used to make ventilation tubes for mine shafts; it is very tough and water resistant. Here, in the North, it is as widely used for roofing material as clay tiles are in Europe. The majority of dachas in the Norilsk region are covered with ventilation fabric, so I brought some with me on the helicopter from Norilsk. It was a certain Vadim’s present to Vasily. Vasily had once helped Vadim, so now Vadim was helping Vasily. Mutual assistance is the currency of the North.

 

When it got dark, we would turn on our small generator and use a notebook computer to review the footage from that day, discussing the scenario for our film or simply reading good books. As I came to understand later, a strict daily regime is vital on an expedition such as this. Here, as on the International Space Station, hovering 300 kilometers above the Earth, professionalism and the psychological climate among participants is vital. Therefore our daily schedule was always well planned out.

 

 

 

Hoarfrost began to appear on the branches of deciduous trees and it was getting so I could barely break up the ice that formed in the washbasin overnight. Winter would be here soon. The water level in the bed of the Ayan River was getting very low...

 

Ducks disappeared from the lake. The shores gradually began to birth icy cuirasses. Any birds that were capable of migrating had left. Those that remained readied for battle. Yellow-breasted Siberian jays grew thick down feathers that would help them make it through the hard frosts. Alongside our camp, they were eating vigorously to store up energy. We gladly fed them.

 

Finally, on September 25, the first snow fell. This is actually rather late for the Putorana Plateau. Often, when schoolchildren in Norilsk are attending the first day of school on September 1, snowflakes fall from the sky.

 

After waking up, I brought in water from the river and began my exercises. I was blinded by the whiteness all around. Ten centimeters of snow had fallen overnight.

 

From within the house I heard Vasily shouting out instructions:

 

“More vigorous movements, Vanya! You’ll freeze!”

 

When I returned to the warm house, semolina kasha was already waiting on the table.

 

Our leader, Vasily, has always cooked for himself. Semolina kasha was his favorite morning meal, and he didn’t want to hear about any other sort of kasha. And his semolina variant is very tasty, if you add some jam or raisins or dried apricots.

 

After our hearty breakfast, we set out.

 

 

 

The overnight snow was littered with tracks, large and small. Here, partridge had run about beneath a larch. The filigree pattern of their tracks led to the river and then was cut off – they had flown to the opposite bank. In another spot we saw signs that a sly fox had visited – its tiny paws leave a distinctive impression, but it was also rather mussed up. The wild animal had clearly played in the field, taking joy in the arrival of winter. There were also plentiful tracks of small squirrels and mice.

The wolverine’s tracks.

 

Sadly, tracks left by the fox’s elder brother, the careful and cunning wolf, were nowhere to be found...

 

We walked along the river to Lake Ayan. The lake was peaceful. In the icy silence, any sound traveled a kilometer or more... We reveled in the wintry scene that unfolded before us.

 

Suddenly, Vasily started to unsheathe his camera. With a meaningful nod, he signaled Valery to set up the tripod. At first, I didn’t understand what was going on. Then, looking around, I saw a dark spot a considerable distance away – some sort of large animal. Something, the likes of which I had never seen. It was not a reindeer, nor was it a bear. It moved along the banks with huge leaps, from time to time stopping and looking about.

 

“What is it? Could it be a wolf?” I worriedly asked Valery.

 

But Valery only placed a finger to his lips. When the camera is rolling, even speaking in whispers is not allowed.

 

Vasily leaned over the viewfinder. Maximizing the zoom of his camera, he was able to easily see our “quarry.” Meanwhile, Valery and I stood further back and tried to catch a glimpse of it through our binoculars.

 

The animal was the size of a large dog; its face was similar to a feline’s. It was jet black, with two white stripes in its fur. There was grace, power and confidence in its motions. Even from this distance, it was clear that its short paws possessed incredible strength. It would be dangerous to get any closer.

 

After a few short seconds, the animal looked about and saw us. Another moment, and it disappeared into the thicket of the forest.

 

“We have been lucky today,” Vasily said as he hit the stop button on the camera. “We captured a wolverine. Too bad he didn’t let us get any closer.”

 

“Maybe it’s for the best,” I say. “Who knows what a wolverine might get into its head to do?”

 

“Animals rarely attack humans,” Vasily said, cutting me off. “They fear us. You simply need to know their habits and not provoke a conflict. Yet, of course, a wolverine is one of the most unpredictable taiga residents.”

 

 

 

Time passed... The snows accumulated. The frost strengthened. My trekking boots were unable to cope with the cold. I was saved by an extra pair of valenki[4] that happened to be in the camp’s storage. The cold made it difficult to sit for hours in the blinds, waiting for animals.

 

The blind, where wild animal photographers wait for their quarry, offers protection from the wind and snow. We made several of them along the river and the animal paths. And in order to attract predators, we left in sight of our blinds fish we had caught in the Ayan.

 

One morning, about a hour before our normal time for getting up, I heard Vasily getting dressed. He grabbed his camera from under his bed and got ready to shoot.

 

“What’s going on?” I asked.

 

“An Arctic Fox is here.”

 

“Where?”

 

Vasily nodded toward the window. “There, between the two trees on the river island, where we left the bait.”

 

“Can I go with you?”

 

“Wait. First I’ll go out alone...”

 

I watched out the window as the fox hopped around by the bait we had left, while Vasily set up his camera. More successful footage for our collection.

 

Having captured his shot, Vasily returned to the house, shook the snow from his valenki and said, “That’s that. Now it’s your turn. Go and shoot.”

 

I quickly threw on my boots, grabbed my camera and headed to the crest of the hill, where I suspected I would be able to get some good shots. But the crunch of twigs underfoot scared off the fox.

 

“Don’t sweat it,” Vasily said soothingly. “The fox will visit us often now... It no longer fears us. We’re the first people to come into its life.”

 

And so it was. Not three days passed before the Arctic Fox, no longer afraid, took food directly from our hands, and even accompanied us on our rounds. We fell in love with our new pupil.

 

 

Valery Fidirkin and Whitey.

 

 

 

October 14. 11 o’clock in the evening. I set up my tripod and fixed my camera on wide angle, pushed the ISO to 1600 and the exposure to 15 seconds... The Aurora Borealis – the Northern Lights – were on display overhead.

 

I pressed the shutter and awaited the cherished image... 15, 14, 13... the camera’s red indicator light blinked...

 

It was 25 degrees below zero. The battery might not hold out long at this temperature... I raised my gaze skyward and reveled in the flashes of yellow-green light. The entire sky, from the Khana-Makit ridge to the tops of the nameless hills we climbed yesterday, was consumed with fire. The ominous flames even seemed as if they would lick the treetops. In the short time my camera’s shutter was open, the flames of the Northern Lights were born and died a thousand times. Yet my camera reduced this to just one image.

 

The snap of the shutter lets me know that the shot is done. I patiently wait while the camera works to create a preview on the back panel. Somewhere in the distance, the Ayan River peacefully murmurs. The moon shines brightly overhead, and the cold burrows into my bones.

 

“Rrrrr-tyaf! Rrrrr!!!”

 

Suddenly, from the white snow beneath my feet, something grabs onto my valenki.

 

In the darkness, I do not immediately grasp that our tame fox has rushed at me from the depths of the dark forest.

 

“Whitey, not now! Can’t you see I’m working? You’re bothering me. Go away!”

 

It was not to be. Whitey (what we named him), even after being shaken from my valenki, ran round me in a circle and latched on again, this time to my heel.

 

“Listen buddy, just give me a sec. I’ll get my shots and then we can go inside and warm up. It’s freakish cold out here. Can’t you see, I can’t even bend my fingers!”

 

Whitey, finally grasping that this was not the time, gave up. It must be hard for him in this fierce cold.

 

Satisfied with my first image, I set the camera to shooting in automatic mode and ran inside to get warm.

 

Vasily and Valery met me with warm tea.

 

“Getting anything?”

 

“Seems so. So long as the camera doesn’t freeze,” I said, smiling through blue lips.

 

In Vasily’s film, I am responsible for the time-lapse photography. One second of such video requires 25 photos, and each photo requires that the shutter be open for 15 seconds. Almost six and a half minutes of photography to get one second of film. My poor camera worked almost without rest throughout the night, only giving up the ghost in the early hours of morning...[5]

The Northern Lights

 

 

 

“Vanya, you the one who left the ladle in front of the house?”

 

This was the first question I heard the following morning.

 

“Yeah, what happened?”

 

“Go and find it in the taiga!” Vasily said in an angry voice, his face screwing up in a half-smile. “Where are we going to find another? We have to wash up somehow.”

 

“Who would have taken it?”

 

“Take a guess. Who would take our ladle in the night?”

 

Whitey, of course! Again the fox with his pranks!

 

Just you wait, you wretch, I thought. When I catch you, you’ll learn what it means to not put a ladle back where it belongs!

 

I looked for the ladle until lunchtime. And Whitey, mocking me, ran circles around my feet, biting and barking.

 

Exhausted by the pointless searching, I suddenly had a brilliant idea. I picked up a stick from the ground and held it out to Whitey.

 

“Here you go, Whitey, take it!”

 

The fox didn’t need to be asked twice. He seized the stick from my hands and headed aimlessly down the path. I followed quickly behind.

 

You foolish animal, go ahead and take the stick where you took the ladle, I thought. We’ll find your secret hiding place, won’t we?

 

Apparently I was thinking too loudly, because Whitey, as if reading my thoughts, stopped, looked back, then dropped the stick onto the path and rushed off into the forest.

 

You’ll never catch me you foolish human.

 

Damn. That was a really good ladle.

 

When I returned to the house, no one was there. The camera was gone too. Had the reindeer arrived? Finally! I put the teapot on the stove and waited for the cameramen to return.

 

They returned about half an hour later.

 

“What happened,” I asked, “have the reindeer arrived in the valley?”

 

“No,” Vasily replied, smiling, “our fox has a competitor. C’mon I’ll show you.”

 

About 100 meters from our home was a huge larch tree. At the very top of it I saw, shaking either from the cold or from fear, clung a Siberian sable.

 

Under the tsars, sable skins were Siberia’s main form of currency. Siberian hunters bartered them for salt, bullets, and the essentials of life from rich merchants, who then took the furs back to the cities to sell, where they fetched a very high price. A quality sable skin could buy a cow or a horse, and much more.

 

It was a very good business (unless you were a sable), but now times have changed. Sable are mainly raised in breeding farms. It is very rare to see the luxuriously furred beast in the wild.

 

We of course had no reason to kill the sable. We shot him in close up and left him alone...

 

 

 

 

November arrived. There was just a week before our planned departure for the “mainland” (as those in the taiga and remote parts of Russia call the civilized world). In two months we had succeeded in filming a partridge, a wolverine, a fox, a sable, and many beautiful landscapes.

 

But no reindeer or wolves.

 

The days were getting shorter. The polar night was drawing nearer... Despite this, we did not lose hope and continued with our work.

 

On one of those dark evenings, when the night sky was obscured by clouds and a fierce wind was blowing snowdrifts about the valley, our generator died. It was 38 degrees below zero and pitch black outside. We lit a candle... Valery went outside to see what was up.

 

I suddenly realized how far we were from humanity. Our friends and relatives were waiting for us in comfortable apartments, while we three were looking for wild wolves and reindeer in the boundless taiga. We had been searching for three months without any result.

 

Our lives here were full of danger, despite the fact that the experience of my elder comrades lowered those risks to a minimum. What was the point of it all? Getting some good film? Not just. I suddenly realized that when I flew home I would be nostalgic for this cold, northern realm, that I would look forward to any opportunity to revisit its beauty and dangers, just like right now I was looking forward to seeing my family again. Here in the taiga I had experienced things that would never be possible in the city. It’s not every person who is lucky enough to visit an untouched part of this shrinking planet.

 

Through their joint efforts, Vasily and Valery managed to fix the generator. The lights came back on in the house. The candle was extinguished. But all I could think about was how lucky I was to be at Lake Ayan.

 

 

 

November 3. The lake has frozen. Only where the Ayan River – now “dried up” from the cold – flows out of it, does steam swirl above the cold water. We walked across the lake to the other side of the river and began to descend into the valley. From time to time we sunk in the snow up to our belts, but we had to keep going. We could not leave without capturing the wolves on film. If we did not find them, we would have to film next year in some other place.

 

Thankfully, we got lucky.

 

We had walked fully seven kilometers along the opposite side of the river and were wiped out. But then, suddenly, beneath our feet we saw signs that could not be mistaken for anything else. They were paw prints of a wolf!

 

No, we will not succeed in filming the beautiful and cautious predator this year, we all thought in unison. To track him in the taiga, to find his lair, is a difficult task. It’s not something you do in a single day.

 

Yet we now knew there were indeed wolves along the Ayan. We would not have to move our camp next year. It was actually good to learn that the wolves were not that far from us. Perhaps in the future we would succeed in gradually penetrating their mysterious world.

 

We set back to our camp in excellent spirits.

 

Then, suddenly, coming directly at us, were reindeer!

 

It was definitely an excellent day.

 

There were large and small deer, in groups and alone. They trod the long and difficult path from the North in search of winter pastures. Their migration along the Ayan lasted just a few days.

 

For three days we filmed almost non-stop. We froze to the bone from hours sitting in our blind, but we were boundlessly happy. We had succeeded in filming the secondary subject of our film: Siberia’s largest migration of wild northern reindeer.

 

 

 

With each passing day, the sun became lazier and lazier. It barely rose above the horizon before it would dip below it again. The polar night was getting nearer...

 

It was time to fly home, but then, one day before our departure date, the weather took a serious turn for the worse. No helicopter would ever leave Norilsk airport in this weather. The wind howled and the snow drifted.

 

The arrival of the polar night in Norilsk signals the end of all flights to Putorana Plateau. We started to get worried. Will we succeed in flying out at all? Would we have to winter over on the lake?

 

On November 12 we heard the sounds of a helicopter. Running out of the house, we watched with baited breath as an orange dot on the horizon gradually transformed into a large, propeller-topped bird. A brave Norilsk pilot had taken advantage of a brief break in the weather and broken through the stormclouds to Ayan.

 

We quickly gathered our things and said our silent goodbyes to Ayan. Until next year. RL

 

 

 

NOTES:

 

1. Nickel ore is smelted at Norilsk. The Russian Federal State Statistics Service has named Norilsk the most polluted city in Russia.

 

2. See bit.ly/putorana14 for a video of Ivan’s first visit to Putorana.

 

3. Almost $10,000; Vanya is short for Ivan.

 

4. Shin-high boots made of felt.

 

5. See bit.ly/putoranalights for a video showing Ivan’s work.