WanderLand

Behind Olkhon Island’s haphazard homestead, on the edge of Lake Baikal, there is a moment where it is just you wrapped inside the quilt of the earth. Here, the dun hills knit the cobalt water to the opal sky. The wind could impale you with its force. Shaman’s Rock emerges magisterially from the water, your only company.

In this place, it is only you, this, and the demons therein.

I visit these cliffs several times a day during my lonely tramps around the island. See, I’m here because someone in Irkutsk told me to go up to Olkhon for “energy work.” But when I arrived, I found winter coming fast, the cafes shuttered and the yogis gone. Mangy dogs clung to anyone who set foot on the dusty streets; visitors learned to walk with a rock in hand, just in case.

About the energy work, the receptionist at my lodging laughed bitterly: “Shamans don’t work with tourists. What they do is very serious.”

Welcome to Siberia: cold and without concern for your feelings. It expects you to fend for yourself.

I stay three days and am alone for most of it. The morning I am to leave, I make one last visit to the cliffs. The dog with swollen nipples is ranging the beach again in search of food for her newborn pups. A mottled cow brays from the top of the hill.

I take a seat on a grainy rock by a squat, windworn tree. The branches are knotted in bright prayer cloths and the ground underneath is scattered with small coins, broken vodka bottles, and many cigarettes–offerings in the region’s shamanic tradition.

A man surprises me when he appears. “Dobre den,” I mumble warily. I am alone and he is the only person in sight.

He’s a local by the look of his clothes and the way his skin creases prematurely. He lays a cigarette at the base of the tree and lights one to smoke. We try to speak Russian but I don’t actually speak it, so we give up quickly and just watch Shaman’s Rock.

“Ruble,” he says, standing and pointing to the base of the tree. Leave a coin as an offering.

I smile tightly and pull the change from my pocket. He picks the large rubles – about fifty cents US – from my hand and kneels to place them at the base of the tree, just like his cigarette.

Then, ever so quick, he palms my coins instead.

This too is Siberia: taking as much as it gives, but spirited with survival.

The yips of puppies carry up on the wind. His own cigarette remains untouched at the base of the tree. I hold a loose smile. He has a grin on his face. We walk back together, complicit in his con.