The minute you start saying something, “Ah, how beautiful! We must photograph it!” you are already close to the view of the person who thinks that everything that is not photographed is lost, as if it had never existed, and that therefore, in order really to live, you must photograph as much as you can, and to photograph as much as you can you must either live in the most photographable way possible, or else consider photographable every moment of your life. The first course leads to stupidity; the second to madness.
Italo Calvino, Difficult Loves (1985)
We have learned, or better said, got used to recording our lives. Career and life coaches around the world are trying to sell another random idea of improving one’s life through being mindful and living in the present. Well maybe many of us are not living in the present quite well enough, but I have a hunch that many of us have already become experts in consuming the present. There are many moments when we just want to catch every single second we are experiencing, many moments, where we want to record every single picture we see, every sound we hear. Instagram material overload.
Share. Yeah, maybe nobody really gives any fuck about the shaky video of your last year’s New Year’s Eve, maybe I’m receiving minimum attention by your random pictures of forests you have been to, food you have devoured (and eventually shitted out), and fishes you have seen in the dark aquarium. But oh man, the illusion that somebody lives this with us, the illusion that for a second, we are not living the moment in total solitude, feels good, right.
Yet even for the most hard-core uploading maniac out there, there are moments, when you just want to stand still and let a tear slowly crawl out of your astonished eyes, let it slowly freeze up on your cheek, let it form a clear crystal of awe. And keep your smartphone in your pockets. Partly also because your balls are freezing off.
The shores of Lake Baikal produced exactly this moment, just few second after getting out of an old-school bus and a 40 minutes ride from Irkutsk.
With a maximum width of almost 80km and maximum length of more than 600km, Lake Baikal is more than just a lake. It is the largest reservoir of fresh water on Earth (covering ~20% of all fresh water), the home to a population of Omuls, local (extremely delicious) fish, and a source of extreme power, as shamans used it for various rituals for the past many many centuries.
Not that I would believe in any of that bullshit, but the fact that my balls didn’t freeze off immediately after getting off the bus actually was quite magical.
But first things first. I put on one more layer of clothes (it was around -15 degrees Celsius) and went for a walk to the center of Listvianka – a small village located at the shore. Listvianka is extremely small and except for few small buildings, a souvenir&fish market, and a tiny grocery shop comprises mostly tourists and sellers. I went to the grocery shop and bought three things – water, sponge cakes, and ice cream. The best companions for my upcoming 2 hours of lake-walking joy.
Destination unknown. Just walk one way for an undefined amount of time and then eventually come back. The whole lake was basically just a white plane so it was impossible to get lost. Moreover, it was freezing cold and cars were driving on the shore so I was not afraid that the ice wouldn’t hold me. And lastly, I have seen a couple with a guide earlier in the morning with some food and other things on plastic bobsleds, obviously planning to cross the river to the other border. It was a nice, 35km walk – not impossible, yet with the deep snow occasionally letting the foot sink for 5-10cm, quite demanding.
My goal was much more ambition-less. I just wanted to walk a bit. I have seen the cars, roaming the shores, I have seen dogsleds and people playing curling on the ice, but I wasn’t interested in none of that. I mean I love all of that. But now, my brain was working in a different mode. It made up crazy ideas (the dogs are stinky. The interiors of the cars are surely stinky. And god, look at those frozen stones being hurled around, now imagine how stinky they have to be) to keep me on my agenda – walk the surface of Lake Baikal, breath deeper, and bring freshness again to my brain.
And oh my did it feel good. The sound of delicately breaking snow under my feet, the truly never-ending width of the scenery, the crazy intensive white. I would love to describe it better but I can’t. I wasn’t taking enough photos nor notes.
After 2 hours of walking around my feet started to feel cold so I decided to return to the town market and perhaps buy some small things.
At this point, I would never expect the feelings that would await me in the small marketplace.