The Death Trap by the Bikin River
The hunter blows the dirt off the sugar lumps in the open box and mixes Grusian tea into the
bog water boiling on the open fire. He knocks the dead insects off the bottom of the enameled
cups and pours. "Drink," he says.
We could use a fortifying drink, because one of us came within a hair's breadth of
ending his days in the death trap right behind us.
We've been walking almost twenty kilometers through virgin forests around the upper
regions of the Bikin river and are nearing a hunter's shack hidden in the forest where the
hunter promises to make us some tea. He hands me the sweater he's been carrying and cocks
his rifle. Carefully, we approach the tiny log cabin. With the rifle leading the way we reach
the open door: not a sound. The hunter peeks in: no bear. He places the rifle by the door and
climbs in with a limber step.
Our tall Englishman gets ready to follow and already has one foot in the door when the
hunter pushes him aside. The wide plank covering the threshold starts a well-planned chain
reaction. Step on the plank, and you activate a mechanism whereby an enormous log is
loosened that will fall down and crush the skull of the intruder.
The hunter himself stepped over the plank and now he is laughing hard at the
Englishman, who has narrowly escaped being the subject of one of the more sensational
obituaries in The Times. He throws out the rotting head of a deer that has served as bait and
grabs a tea pot and mugs. As he walks down to the bog to fetch water we look around,
suspiciously. There is a small pile of logs nearby, a hole that looks suspect, and felled trees
rigged up above tree stumps that look as if one shouldn't get too close. The whole place is a
death trap; you really have to watch your step.
I've read a lot about traditional hunting methods in Siberia, but never have I read about
a cabin rigged up as a bear trap.
I'm so delighted about this that our tall Englishman gets quite sore. Was it really that
funny? It's hard to explain that one can get so exhilarated by something that should inspire
aversion. But it can't be denied that human inventiveness is inspiring. There are few things I
appreciate more than good practical sense, and here I stand, delighted with a bear trap I
haven't read about in literature. A clever people, these Udege.It's been very instructive to be
out with them in the woods. The hunter treads lightly as a feather through the forest. He
follows the game trails and ridges and hollows and walks like a whisper through the woods.
We are five foreigners who follow in his tracks, and the forest gives room to all of us, quietly
and cooperatively. When we move on our own, it sounds like a whole regiment is barging
through. There is a sound of sharp shots as we step on twigs and branches and the thick
vegetation snaps and moans as we force our way through it. Only if you are familiar with the
forest and know how to walk do you stop making noise and get a chance to listen and look
around.
The forest is full of bear tracks. Scat, prints, claw marks on the trunk of a tree, a
disturbed ant hill, abandoned winter lairs. When we find a lair that the hunter hadn't known
about before he is very happy. With his knife he cuts some deep signs in a nearby tree: next
winter will be the end of this bear. I crawl into a lair that is surprisingly dry, pleasant, and
well-ventilated. Yes, a person too could survive a severe snowstorm in this one.
But what if the bear is home? Well, then it is a bear that has learned to hate people.
There is quite a lot of hunting going on in these forests. Even now in the spring, when the
animals are protected, one sees unused traps for sable and game birds and musk deer, and a
few rusty traps no longer in use with claws strong enough to hold a bear.
A group of Udege have their hunting camp up here. The Udege are the original
inhabitants along the Bikin river and its tributaries on both sides of the Sikhote Alin mountain
chain. Even after the revolution, many of them remained hunters and trappers, often as
members of a hunting collective. Our collective has now remade itself into a hunting enterprise
and has taken on the task to be our guides during a brief week by the Bikin. Their villages lie
a three day journey to the south. Over three days, they have worked their way past rapids and
sandbanks, two men per flat-bottomed river-boat with an outboard engine behind, in order to
get to their seasonal camp up in the virgin forest.
They look strong and are in an excellent mood. They have brought their own
provisions, plenty of fine moose meat. With that, they drink enormous amounts of tea. I keep
wishing I could understand what they are talking about as they are sitting peacefully by their
campfire, conversing quietly in Udege. Men of the forest don't shout, but if need be, they'll
fire off some piercing shots. The rifle has a language for those who are familiar with the code.
As we approach the river after a hike of twenty-five kilometers, we still have a couple of
kilometers left to the camp through difficult terrain. That's when our hunter points his rifle
into the air and fires off three quick sharp shots, and soon enough one of the boats comes up
the river to fetch us.
There is much in the life of the hunting collective that seems well thought out, practical
and admirable to me. When they travel the river it is in a given order of rank, and the same
two men always man the same boat. The youngest person in the group is perhaps eighteen
years old and is in the process of learning the river. That is why he's travelling with the most
experienced boatman in the lead boat. In the camp, he sits a bit to the side and doesn't say
much. But he is attentive, and he has reason to be. When I talk about the Bikin river I use the
word to cover the whole network that is formed by the river and its many tributaries, streams,
and eddies. Our branch of the Bikin is actually called the Zeva, and from the Zeva, smaller
streams flow out.
The Bikin itself is a tributary to the great Ussuri river that in turn has lent its name to
the region of Ussuriland in the farthermost corner of the Russian Far East. Down here one is
far away from the permafrost, in a climate that is dominated by the monsoon winds. In
protected areas, the vegetation is luxuriant, and fauna shows many southern features.
Somewhere in Ussuriland, the giant Siberian tiger still walks around on soft paws. Farthest in
the South you can find Asian black bear in addition to the common brown bear. The Sika deer
is abundant, but even more common, judging from the heaps of gleaming droppings, is
probably the small musk deer.
Once again, I'm forced to say "still" when discussing nature in Siberia. During the
time of the Soviet Union, nature was fairly well protected in those areas that were not
exploited for their natural resources. The tigers that could still stray into cities like
Vladivostok and Khabarovsk in the first part of this century had declined in number but
weren't threatened by extinction. Today, on the other hand, there is a market for tiger skins on
the free market, and poaching is well in the process of making extinct the largest of existing
tigers.
What poaching cannot do, large scale forest cutting can. I was especially interested in
coming to Ussuriland since the rich forests of the area are the first ones in turn once South
Korean and Japanese interests get a foothold in Siberia. The South Koreans are in full swing;
Japan is poised to start. Ussuriland has enormous resources of lumber and is frighteningly
well-placed geographically.
One really only needs to study the wood piles in villages and cities in order to
understand how limitless the supplies are. Even in the spring, when the reserves of winter
should be almost gone, giant wood piles rise up from all back yards. I have never seen more
perfect wood. What a joy it must be to saw and chop such straight, branchless trunks! And
what a waste, you realize as you see an area that has been cut at the edge of the forest and
notice that only the very best timber has been taken out while the rest is left there to rot.
But the cutting of firewood is still only a miniscule part of what's being cut. Along the
small roads that lead into the main road between Khabarovsk and Vladivostok an even stream
of trucks are plowing by with huge loads of timber; and at the railroad crossings we remain
standing for a long time while railroad car after railroad car loaded with giant logs slowly
groans by.
One can conduct further studies from the air. We have hired a helicopter that will take
us from Khabarovsk down to the Bikin over the mountains of the Sikhote Alin chain. It is just
about the limit of what the helicopter can manage at one time. We are carrying an extra fuel
tank for the return. The highest peaks are covered by snow and the slopes of the mountains are
bare, but at lower elevations the taiga climbs up and down the mountains and spreads out in
the valleys and over the plateaus. One is tempted to go on about the enormous wilderness
down there under the clouds, but as a matter of fact, you can spot the signs of beginning
timber cutting almost all along the way. The signs are clearest close to Khabarovsk, but even
far out on the taiga you can see the ruts of wheels crawling their way to some cutting area.
One doesn't have to be a visionary to see how these ruts slowly will develop into forest roads
and how the cutting areas will spread.
On the ground, the forest seems limitless. Here, at the Zeva, it has never been cut. The
old growth forest sometimes reverberates with aging trees that crash to the ground.
Everywhere you go you step on a bed of decomposing trees. It is a hunting forest that is used
relatively intensely, as attested to by all the traps and the Udege's familiarity with it.
The indigenous peoples of Siberia were never numerous. Their hunting methods rarely
extinguished the game in their surroundings. The threat today also doesn't come from the
trappers but from a wider exploitation that has its roots in the densely populated industrial
societies.
The Udege belong to the less numerous peoples. Officially, they are estimated to
number around 1500, even if a more generous classification surely would increase that
number. Earlier, they lived on both sides of the Sikhote Alin; today their main area is limited
to a few of the tributaries of the Bikin river. But they are numerous enough to keep a language
and a sense of group affiliation alive. The ghost of extinction doesn't seem to haunt the men
who are negotiating the stone-studded rapids of the river with such ease.
What is a small people like that to do in order to be accepted by the majority? This is
what I'm thinking about when I meet an intelligent and pleasant English teacher farther south
by the Iman river. We talk about this and that, finally also about her school. I ask her whether
she has any pupils who belong to some of the minorities in the area.
She claims she does not. In her school, she explains, everyone is equal. I hasten to say
that I understand this, but add that I myself belong to a minority and that I therefore am
interested in hearing about the ways in which the cultural and linguistic needs of the
indigenous peoples have been considered in education.
I assume that we all have areas where we are less broadminded than others. The
English teacher, whom I like, seems to guess at my own opinions in this question and makes a
supreme effort to be fair and objective when she answers me.
Hard times are upon us in Russia now, she says. We have problems, we have very
great problems. It's going to take many years. We don't know how we're going to make it.
Decent people suffer great deprivation. So it isn't right that some people, for example the
Udege, should possess privileges that others don't have. Ordinary people are forced to do
without while they get rations of all kinds, pretty much anything they want. It's always been
like that. It isn't fair.
I remember the jars with Grusian tea, the huge cups that the hunters were swilling
down. I recall the solid white lumps of sugar. Yes, I can understand that these could seem like
senseless privileges. Under the Soviet system the hunting peoples were allotted food and gear
in exchange for the pelts that they brought in, and it's clear that it is this that rubs the local
Russians the wrong way. Now my answer is vague and I feel sad, not the least because it
looks as if the indigenous peoples will find it difficult to hold their own within a freewheeling
market economy.
The hunters along the Bikin were strong and well-nourished and capable; I remember
their wide friendly faces. Language and culture are more resilient than one ordinarily thinks.
The hunting collective I was in touch with is already adapting to the market economy. I think
they greeted us with genuine delight, the first tourists who hopefully will be followed by more;
ornithologists, botanists, entomologists, sport hunters.
In spite of the areas of forest that are being cut, enormous areas of forest remain in the
region. It is only a question of time before there is an influx of hard currency from western
big game hunters with a permit to hunt bear and wolf, moose and deer. With this influx of
capital, the native hunters can continue to set their traps for sable and forest birds. As before,
they can collect ginseng roots and catch musk deer that they can sell to the Chinese across the
border.
There is no real reason to predict the extinction of the hunting culture. But in some
way, this bear does look like a symbol for the way things are going, standing still on the
treeless tundra high up among the Sikhote Alin mountains.
He is an enormous bear, massive and motionless as a rock. We have landed with the
helicopter on the opposing fell. He has heard the frightful smattering noise but has not been
able to locate it. He has nowhere to go up on that treeless fell and can only stand completely
still. We are too far away for him to catch our scent, and whatever he might perceive of the
orange-colored Aeroflot helicopter tells him nothing. Intrusively, we study his hesitation
through the telescope. He is standing there, totally vulnerable, in an environment that offers
him no protection. Earlier on, he was out of the reach of the hunters and the traps up here, but
no longer. We have him in our sights: now we'll take his soul.
Translated from the Finland-Swedish by
Stina Katchadourian
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Fiction from The Literary Review