Amazing river Ragusha. Places of power
In the east of the Leningrad region there is an amazing river Ragusha. It originates in the Novgorod region. An unremarkable forest river flows through forests and swamps. However, a few kilometers before the mouth, its character changes. Ragusha begins to rapidly bite into the ground, forming a deep canyon. In ancient times, the limestones that make up the bed of the river cracked, and water ran along the cracks, dissolving the stone. Karst processes have begun. The underground streams got bigger and bigger, and finally, part of Ragushi started to flow underground. In the spring, during the flood, there is a lot of water in the river, and the surface channel is completely flooded. Water flows both above and below ground. In summer and autumn, the water level drops and the entire river goes into absorbing panoramas, so that after passing through unknown karst channels underground for several kilometers, it will reappear into the world.
Over the past fifteen years, the Ragusha River has become more accessible in every way. There were websites dedicated to Ragush, articles, chapters in books and guides. The way from St. Petersburg to the Boksitogorsk region has also become easier. The Murmansk Highway has been patched up and reconstructed in places. It’s nice to drive, if not for one thing - the narrow “bottlenecks” left in the unfinished highway since the 90s create huge traffic jams. At the village of Issad, a bridge across the Volkhov River and interchanges around it are being reconstructed. There are gaps, but not that big. But further, after turning to the Vologda highway, a chic, recently overhauled European-style road begins. Marking, chippers, sidewalks and fences. In some settlements, noise screens have been installed. The asphalt is perfectly level. And so on to the very village of Dymy and even somewhere further.
Now, reading your old report on a trip to those parts in 2000, you involuntarily recall how, turning off the Vologda highway in the village of Dymy, we ended up in a continuous realm of holes, craters and potholes on a ten-kilometer stretch of road leading to Boksitogorsk. locals did not go here. All transport went by a longer, but more decent road through the villages of Batkovo and Nizhnitsa. Now the road from the village of Dymy to the city of Boksitogorsk has been completely repaired.
From the turn in Selkhoztekhnika village to the road leading to Ragush and to the village of Kolbeki, in 2000 there was a frightening-looking asphalt, and then a grader began. Now the asphalt has reached the village of Mozolevo. The old section from Selkhoztekhnika village to Kolbeki village has been repaired, the pits have been patched up with “hole” repairs. Further to Mozolevo, the asphalt is completely new. Grader is also in good condition.
Near Ragushi itself, improvements are also visible. To the left of the road, about a kilometer before reaching the bridge over the river, there is a wooden arch with the inscription "Ragusha". If you go through it, then after a couple of tens of meters you will get to a landscaped clearing. It has a couple of gazebos, a fire pit, a barbecue, a toilet and a garbage dump disguised as a village well.
Behind the bridge, in the depths of the forest, there is another equipped parking lot. Previously, an ecological expedition from Boksitogorsk was based on it. This year the parking lot is empty. On the other side of Ragushi there are several more unequipped parking lots. On one of them these days there was some kind of children's camp.
During our first night at the ecologists' camp, we were disturbed by the sound of an engine on the road next to us, and then by the crackling of breaking branches and the clatter of an axe. We went out to look, reached the nearest turn, but found no one. We came back, and a few minutes later a man came to us. It turns out that they got stuck a little further, at the entrances to the camp. I had to start the car and pull them out in tow. It was one of the organizers and founders of our parking lot who came. With one of them, counselor Michael, we started talking. He said that there is no camp this year. They did not allocate money, or rather, they did not win any tender. What kind of tender might be needed to take the guys out into the countryside remains a mystery to us. Those who arrived complained that it seemed like their lovingly equipped camp was finished, and desolation would soon reign here. And desolation has already begun to penetrate here. Not far from the clearing there is another parking lot hidden in the forest. It also had a canopy and benches. Now the canopy has collapsed and partially collapsed. To our amazement, a gray fluffy cat was sitting on one of the benches. We do not know how he got into this wilderness, and the cat himself did not want to communicate with us and disappeared into the forest. Then we saw him again, early in the morning he passed the edge of the expedition clearing and again went into his forest.
From those who arrived, we tried to find out the details of interest to us about the surrounding rivers and the Yartsevsky mine. These rivers are interesting in that on the maps part of their channels are indicated by a dotted line, as well as the Ragushi channel. There is an assumption that other rivers can go underground in these places. Neither the counselor Michael nor his companion knew anything about these rivers. The Yartsevsky mine was better known. He interested us with picturesque views and the fact that this is one of the two not flooded mines of Boksitogorsk. All others are filled with water. Mikhail said that the short road from Mozolevo to the mine is broken up so that it is not even possible to pass on a quad bike, it is easier to go by another road, along the embankment of an old narrow gauge railway. The information has been helpful.
We made our first hike through the Ragushi Canyon right after dinner. June, white nights, you can walk at least until midnight. A wooden staircase leads from our camp to the canyon. Going down it, we saw a river murmuring among the stones. According to my recollections, in 2000 the water in the channel ended just somewhere here. And now the water is there and is not going to disappear. Let's go downstream. Holes with traces of streams can be seen on the sandy shores. These are dried-up ponors. Through them water, with its more high level, goes underground. On the banks and on the sandy islands, mint thickets, even in the air here and there is its aroma. Farther down the river to the right is a labyrinth of now dry ravines. At high water, part of the flow goes into these ravines and there through numerous ponors goes underground. On the coastal slopes you can clearly see where the water rises.
A little down, and the water in Ragush ends. The last ponor on the right takes all the remaining water. Forward, for another couple of meters, only a small standing puddle stretches. And along it grow ferns taller than human growth, and one can imagine that we are in prehistoric times.
This ended our evening walk. We returned to the camp and tried to fall asleep to the sound of mosquitoes.
The next day the weather improved. The sun came out, a warm breeze blew, driving away mosquitoes and midges. Today we are visiting the main part of the Ragushi canyon. Its height reaches, according to various sources, from 50 to 80, and even up to 100 m. Below the automobile bridge, the canyon is almost overgrown. Only a small path winds along the bottom. It can be seen that there is not much going here. Most of tourists prefer to go on horseback, trodden paths, and only go down if necessary. In doing so, they lose a lot. Ragush is interesting not only near vaucluses or waterfalls, but also in other places too (vaucluse - a source, an outlet for karst waters).
At first, the dry channel is a deposit of different-sized limestone fragments. Further on, the banks shrink, the trees lean towards the dried-up river and almost cover the sky with their branches. The bottom is cleared of debris in some places and a layer of limestone of the Carboniferous geological period, green from dampness and eternal shade, appears before the eyes. To the right and left, yellowish cliffs begin to rise. Small standing puddles appear at the bottom. The air becomes perceptibly humid.
Another turn, and the sound of water is clearly audible. The river Ragusha is reborn again. This is most impressive on the left bank. Here, under the green canopy of trees, there are two powerful vauclusions. The water pouring through them immediately forms a powerful stream, which flows into the mainstream after a dozen meters. A trail goes up from the vaucluses. This is the easiest way here - to go on horseback through the equipped parking lot, turn right onto the old road, and then go down along a well-marked path. No need to break your legs on the rubble of limestone and feed the evil insects that have found shelter in a shady canyon.
Then you have to go along the coast. Ragusha from a dry channel turned into a rocky, rapids river. The channel, walking along its bed, nestles now against one bank, then against the other. When water is scarce, you can move from shore to shore. But today the level is such that you can’t cross everywhere even in rubber boots. You have to rise from the water and follow a well-marked path along the left bank.
After a while, the cliffs again begin to come close to the river. The floodplain terrace disappears and the path begins to climb steeply. We have to hold on to the trunks of trees and branches of shrubs.
Having risen upward, the path departs a little from the river and nestles against a forested cliff, going somewhere up. Between the cliff and the river there is a stone wall. This part of the coastal cliff in ancient times broke away from the main massif. Geologists call such a fault a coastal resistance crack. Temperature fluctuations and bad weather partially destroyed the breakaway blocks, and they began to resemble ancient fortress walls. The trail passes between these natural ruins and then dives steeply down again to the floodplain terrace. The bank of the canyon on the left bank goes to the side, hides behind the trees, and then, after a hundred meters, having made a semicircle, again returns almost to the path itself. Soon streams appear, running down from somewhere above and flowing into Ragush. A little more and the trees thin out. On the left, the most famous cliff on Raguš opens up. Its height is impressive. Springs, gushing somewhere above, fall from the ledges in waterfalls and waterfalls, break up into small drops into a water cloud sparkling in the sun. Caps of green moss, also covered with water droplets, grow on wet shiny stones. The largest waterfall we saw consisted of two steps and was 30 meters high.
We take pictures of the waterfalls, get out to the very top of the canyon, and go on top to the camp. Returning to the camp, we had a leisurely lunch, broke camp and went to look for the abandoned Yartsevsky bauxite mine.
In Mozolevo, in front of the concrete bridge, a dirt road goes to the right and sharply upwards. Climbing a high embankment, she walks straight along it. The road is wide enough for two cars to pass. With anxiety, we peer ahead and, as luck would have it, we notice a car going towards us. We were lucky, the oncoming car found some kind of small extension and let us through. Let's go further. Suddenly, the thickets on the right and left disappeared, and we found ourselves on an open high embankment. But this is not an embankment, this is a bridge across the Volozhba. There are no fences on it, the width is slightly more than the width of the car, very impressive. Behind the bridge again stretched a high embankment. In one place it was blocked by a large pit with deep ruts, slurry and strewn with branches and sticks. Apparently, more than one car got stuck here. But people somehow drive through it. The “six” we met is an example of this. We also drove through, since the Niva has more funds to overcome such places. Further the road presents no difficulties. Small pits, some water, forgotten cross sleepers, that's, in general, that's all. We quickly reached the main, now abandoned road that once ran from Boksitogorsk to the mines. In addition to Yartsevsky, mine No. 7 and mine No. 10 should have come across on our way. However, judging by the map, they are flooded.
The road was full of variety. It then expanded, and the evening Sun flooded it, then narrowed to the width of the car, and the green branches hid it from daylight. In some places, the roadside forest in the struggle for a ray of sunshine grew to a decent height and the road became like a tall and narrow tunnel. The road itself is mostly rocky. In some places it is colored red by bauxites. There are not many pits and puddles and they are easy to drive through.
Mine No. 7 with its edge goes straight to the road. It is flooded and is of interest to fishermen. On its bank stood a "Niva-Chevrolet" and waders lay. There were no fishermen to be seen. After taking a few pictures, we moved on. Mine No. 10, located to the side, on the left. There is a semi-overgrown road leading to it. Judging by fresh traces, fishermen also go there.
Another kilometer, and the same short road from Mozolevo joined on the right. On the ground, however, it looked the other way around. From somewhere in the bushes, our road joined the much more well-worn road from Mozolev. Deciding to try to go back a short way, we drove on. The road left the forest and became even more picturesque. On the right, through the roadside bushes, views of the Volozhba valley began to appear. On the left, overgrown fields went up somewhere. The map suggested names former villages, and the current tracts. I really wanted to turn there and enjoy the views from the very top. However, there were no roads or just exits.
Finally, the road came to a fork. The most well-traveled turned right and went down. Something overgrown with barely noticeable old traces continued straight ahead. We turned right and realized that the well-trodden road simply descends to the bottom of the valley and continues along it. We returned to the fork and drove forward. This road began to climb up and, in the end, we got out of the valley to the very top. Again failure. There is no mine. It is felt that he is somewhere nearby, literally under your feet, but nothing is visible through the trees covering the slope.
We went down the road a little down, stopped and went on foot to a small clearing. There was a magnificent view right in front of us. The meadow broke off at our feet. A very steep, reddish slope went down. This color is given to it by bauxites. Somewhere below, at the bottom of the valley, among the abandoned fields, the Volozhba river meandered. Barely perceptible thread darkened the road on which we turned first. To the right, on the other side of the valley, one could see the village of Mozolevo. Somewhere almost opposite us should be the mouth of Ragushi. Coastal thickets made it impossible to see him. Silence. Only birds and a light wind break it. Such silence can only be heard far from populated areas, far from roads, far from civilization.
The sun is sinking lower and lower. Mid-June is on the calendar. White Nights. We decide to spend the night back to the camp on Ragusha. We go down to the fork. Somewhere halfway we notice a gap on the left. Apparently this is the road to the Yartsevsky mine that we did not find. We slow down, we look. On that road you can only move on foot, it is so overgrown. Then, already at home, we managed to understand where it was necessary to look for the way to the mine. It seems that at the fork, where the roads diverged up and down, there was also a kind of "middle" road. But it is overgrown so that it is unrealistic to find it without a thorough examination of the area. We recalled the words of Misha’s companion, the leader from the Ragush camp, that they drove into the mine from the other side, drove through it, drove along the old road from the mine, and eventually getting out onto the well-worn road, determined where this very road to the mine begins.
We decide to leave for Mozolevo along a short road. She turned out to be pretty decent. No, of course, it is much more broken than the road along the old embankment. But you can still drive without a tractor. There are a lot of potholes, pits with stones, puddles and cow parsnip on both sides. The car shakes and throws up. We drive straight through many puddles, it seems to us more risky to go around them on rolled bypass ruts.
A concrete bridge is thrown across the Volozhba river. It somehow does not correspond to the road on which we arrived. Behind the bridge again potholes and potholes. Abandoned fields around. At the very exit to the grader there is a dump.
We return to the camp on Ragush. Everything is quiet and deserted there. We put up a tent and make sure that this silence is deceptive. Along the edge of the camp, groups of people begin to pass back and forth. One trinity carries a bottle of cognac in their hands. Apparently, in a unique place, cognac goes better. By nightfall, the transit of vacationers across the clearing had stopped. You can climb into the tent and sleep peacefully.
The next morning we break camp and head back. Such an early departure is due to the fact that I want to skip the Murmansk highway before traffic jams form. We don't have much time. However, we still decide to spend part of it on inspecting two nearby rivers. Some of their channels are also marked on the maps with a dotted line, like the Ragushi channel. First we go to the Ponyr River, which flows into Lake Voloshino.
The very name Ponyr speaks for itself. It is noted on the map that at the intersection of the river by the road of the village of Polovnoye - the village of Zubakino there should be a piece of a dry channel. The dive at the bridge should flow along the bottom of a fairly deep ravine. And so it turned out. To the right and left of the road there is an overgrown ravine with a dry bottom. On the left, it is clay-silt with a lot of sticks, branches and other plant debris brought by water. To the right is a rocky area.
So, one issue is resolved. The diver also has a piece of dry bed, and the cards tell the truth. Of course, in order to say for sure that it flows underground, you need to at least find absorbing ponors, and make sure that the water goes underground, and not just dries up. There is neither time nor desire to wade through the thickets of the ravine. We'll have to leave the decision of this issue until better times. We get into the car and return to the crossroads in the village of Polovnoye. To complete the picture, it should be noted that the road to Ponyr is quite broken. Lots of holes of various sizes. Sometimes there are large stones. All the way you have to go in first gear.
At the crossroads in the village of Polovnoe, we turn left and drive out of the village. After a hundred meters, the map says that the Cherenka River here comes closest to the highway. We leave the car and through a small field we go south. The slopes of the steep and high banks of the Cherenka are overgrown with trees and shrubs. From above you can see only a small part of the river. You have to go down. It immediately catches the eye that the bottom and banks near the Cherenka are rocky, which means karst is possible. Little water, no current at all. Forest debris floating on the surface of the water stands in one place. Downstream the channel is quite straight. As far as the eye can see, the nature of the river does not change. A bit of almost stagnant water, a bare, stone shore a meter high, then a steep overgrown slope.
We return through the field back to the car. We pass the village of Polovnoe on the grader and stop at the automobile bridge over the Cherenka River. We walk up to the railing and look. There is much more water in the bridge area. There is a flow. Above the bridge and under the bridge there are rifts. The water is noisy and plays with highlights in the sun. Below the bridge, the current is calmer. At the turn, on the left bank there is a small stone cliff. Comparing the amount of water before and after the village, we can assume that some of it goes underground somewhere above where we were and returns to the surface in the area of the village. Perhaps in the summer low water, when the water level becomes even lower, the channel in some area dries up completely. Those. it turns out an analogue of Ragushi. When there is a lot of water, it flows both above and below the ground. When it is not enough - only underground. To find out for sure, you need to go along the channel and look for ponors and vaucluses. But a couple of hours will not do here, but there is no more time. We take some final photos from the bridge and start on the way back.
Places of power. 87th - OshevenskIn the Arkhangelsk region, it is sometimes difficult to determine the name of the place where you are. There is one name on the map, another in the guidebook, the natives call their village in a third way, and the post office is written in the fourth. The fact is that settlements bushes are located here, which are indicated either by a common name, or by the name of some of the villages of the bush, without a system. Perhaps the authorities, out of a great mind, specifically support this confusion - after all, the Plesetsk military cosmodrome is nearby. But the locals are good too. When you ask them, one says one thing, another another, and someone else comes up and remembers: Kaganovich's state farm!
Oshevensk consists of Pogost, Shiryaikha, Niz, Bolshoi and Maly Khaluyev, Gary. And it is called by the monastery, which, in turn, is called by the nickname of the father of its founder. Father's name was Nicephorus Ochevin. He was from the Belozersky peasants, lived on Veshchozero. His wife Photinia regularly gave birth to children, but suddenly stopped. Nicephorus reproached her: “There is some vice or sin in you, woman.” The poor thing suffered and prayed. Once I fell into a trance and saw the Mother of God with Kirill Belozersky. They promised to help. But Photinia misunderstood something and began to refrain from intimacy with her husband. However, in 1427 she gave birth to a boy, who was named Alexei. He turned out to be grasping for teaching, but slightly out of this world: he saw visions, prayed a lot, fasted, wanted to go to a monastery. Having reached the age of eighteen, he went on a pilgrimage to and did not return. Became a follower.
Meanwhile Nicephorus decided to move north. He lived for a year in Kargopol, and then went further down the Onega and settled about forty kilometers from Kargopol, in Volosovo. I am a place with this name: Volosovo, Vladimir region, where the Nikolo-Volosov Monastery operates. In general, there are many places in Russia with the basis of “hair” in the name. Such toponyms usually indicate the places of the cult of the Serpent-Volos, which in the Orthodox dual faith is encrypted under the name Nikola. Naturally, in Volosovo on Onega there was a church dedicated to Nikola.
One day, Osheven went hunting on the Churega River, which flows north parallel to the Onega, and found a place that he liked so much that he went to Novgorod, to the boyar who owned this land, and asked for a paper for the right to “gather a settlement” on Churega. Sloboda became known as Oshevneva.
While the father was developing this activity, the son was ascetic in Kirillov. In 1452 he took the vows as a monk with the name Alexander. He worked in a bakery (he could well knead the dough shoulder to shoulder with). Alexander, of course, heard that his father had moved to a new place, asked to visit the old man, but the abbot would not let him. In the Life, the desire to see relatives is somehow strangely intertwined with the desire to go into seclusion (which the abbot has already categorically forbidden). Well, the truth is: either you go into the wilderness, or you settle next to dad, mom and a whole brood of relatives who are already working in advance to organize deserts for you to live in ...
Still, after a while, the abbot allowed Alexander to go to his father. The road is famous: past the native Veshchozero - to Lake Vozhe, then along Svid to Lake Lache, and then down the Onega ... Here I am, dad! Osheven told his son that he had found an excellent place for a monastery on Churieg. At first, Alexander did not even want to watch it, but then he went with his brother and saw that the place was suitable: “There were swamps and impenetrable wilds everywhere around.” Stop, but what about the settlement under construction? There's something wrong here. Oshevensk, located not far from Onega, a busy transport artery, was not such a wilderness. "Swamps and wilds"? No, the attraction of this place is different.
When I first visited the Oshevensky Monastery four years ago, I was shocked by the silence of this place. In the fence of the monastery there was virgin, nowhere flattened grass. There was an impression that people never come here at all (although village houses could be seen across the river). I wandered among this silence, on unrumpled grass, and I had a haunting feeling that someone was walking nearby or watching from everywhere. Gradually, this feeling of an invisible presence concentrated on a rickety log house above an abandoned well. It lived there. Later, in Pogost, one granny said that people don’t drop into the monastery without special need, the place is unclean. I flicked the bottom of the well with a flash. Coins were found on the film after developing. Offerings to the genius of the place.
This year, I no longer felt that anxiety of the presence of God. The monastery is being repaired, workers, priests, tourists walk on the crumpled grass. The well was rebuilt and locked up. This, as they explained to me, is from Satanists, who - you never know what they can throw there. It's clear! Either clinical paranoia, or - the priests simply locked themselves away from the god who lives in the depths of the well.
Judging by the Life, Alexander was not going to found a monastery on Churieg. But, having arrived there, he erected a cross and prayed. And then he fell asleep and heard: "I have prepared for you a place where you came yourself, without a call." How is it "self"? The place for Alexander was prepared by his father. And not some heavenly, but earthly, Nicephorus. Here the hagiographer (the Life was written by the Oshevensky monk Theodosius in 1567) is clearly confused and blurted out (according to Freud). This is because he is trying to superimpose the cliché used to describe hermitage on something else. For what? I will not go on about how Alexander persuaded the Cyril Abbot, how he traveled to Novgorod for permission to create a monastery. But here's the interesting thing: having not yet received any permits, the monk ordered his father to prepare wood for the church, and a little later he hired workers to build a cell. Has anyone heard of a hermit hiring workers and making his father a foreman? No, this is not a hermitage, but rather a well-organized missionary operation. The monk was supposed to suppress the filth of the natives who incense to their gods.
Which gods? When Alexander first came to the site of the future monastery, he prayed that God "bless the place of the future monastery and help create it in the name of St. Nicholas." From this it is clear what kind of entity lives in this place: Serpent-Hair. This spirit of swampy shores and lowlands with springs is usually renamed Nikola. And so they conjure. Further - the painful immune process of the fusion of the local spirit with the paraphernalia of a Christian saint. The spirit does not want to take on an alien form, it sends illnesses and fears to those who are trying to remake it, the alien people. Alexander, for example, managed to quarrel even with his brothers. Other relatives simply fled from his sermons.
The Life says that demons threatened the saint: “Go away from this place, otherwise you will die painfully here!” And he “burned” them (him, the Serpent-Hair) with the power of prayer. Didn't add it. Yes, and could not add. The essence of the deity never changes, only the external form can change. Under the guise of a Byzantine bishop, Orthodox two-believers continue to pray to their Volos. Nikola of the Russian North is generally the most perfect Serpent, the guardian of the people. When the priests were driven away, he returned to his original state. It was this spirit that I felt as I wandered through the deserted monastery.
But if God doesn't change, then man can. As a result of the struggle with Volos, Alexander turned from a banal missionary into a local deity. Here is a story that is not in his Life: he once walked past the village of Khalui and asked for a drink, but the locals did not give him. According to another version, the monk initially wanted to create his own monastery in Halua, but was expelled from there. One way or another, the saint became so angry that he cursed the Khaluyans: “You will live by the water, but without water.” Indeed, the Halui River goes underground at one end of the village, and comes out at the other, one and a half kilometers from the place of departure.
Before leaving, the river splits into two branches. The water of the left enters a dead end with a steep bank and disappears in this funnel. An alarming sign of hopelessness. Up there is a cross hung with offerings. The right sleeve is of a different nature: the water in it flows, flows, and suddenly - everything, only foam. Further dry rocky riverbed. If you walk a little along it, you will find another, third, place where the river leaves (or reaches) in the flood. There is no failure. Yes, I don’t think that there are failures at all, the water, most likely, just seeps into the ground. My dog Osman decided to swim in the place where the sleeves parted, got to the bottom and suddenly began to sink into the sand ...
In short: a place very suitable for being the entrance to the realm of the dead, as you know, passes through the waters. I tried to find out what the locals think about traveling to the next world. But our guide Viktor Gorlov did not want to talk about it. Or - couldn't. Because he was drunk. However, he managed to tell about a blind boy who kept walking to this place and planing something. And as the planing began to see clearly. Gorlov did not explain how this process is connected with Alexander, but the fact is that as a result the blind man built a small chapel in the name of the reverend and then he finally received his sight. That chapel stood for a long time on the way to the wonderful place. And in Soviet times, some hunter dismantled it and built a winter camp out of logs. In which a poltergeist wound up: objects flew and strove to hit the owner in the forehead. He gave the winter quarters for cattle. She died. I gave it to the collective farm for firewood. Where is that collective farm? And the hunter is all rotten, starting with the legs.
The severity of this punishment makes one think about the mystical nature of Alexander. Who does the people revere him? Something is clarified by the legend, which was not included in the Life, that the saint expelled snakes from the Karogopol land. On the first Sunday of Peter's Lent, crowds of people gathered in the Oshevensky Monastery to honor the monk as a serpent fighter. Personally, I doubt that it was Alexander who accomplished this feat. Of course, he suppressed the cult of the Serpent-Hair, now locked in a well, and therefore can be considered a serpent fighter. But still, it is necessary to distinguish a real historical person (a missionary, the founder of a monastery on a family contract) from the divine Serpent Fighter. The place of power of the latter is also located in Oshevensk, but four and a half kilometers northwest of the monastery.
It is clearly seen from space that Oshevensk is stretched along the Churiega. Directly opposite the monastery is the village of Pogost with the Church of the Epiphany. Further to the north are Shiryaikha (not far from it there is a sacred grove with a lake and a stone with a trace of the saint) and Niz with St. George's chapel. Its threshold is a large boulder flat on top. Boulders are generally associated with the cult of Nikola-Volos, and the stone as the threshold of the chapel is a clear symbol of victory over the Serpent.
But let's move on: across the river, in the village of Bolshoy Khaluy mentioned above, there is also a chapel. If I say that it is dedicated to Ilya, everything will become completely clear. For Elijah (him and the Jewish prophet who lived 900 BC) is the Thunderer, who, like George, fights the Serpent. But only George is a military god, the patron of the squad and the prince who robs the people. And Ilya is the god of the people, the god of thunder, who sends rain. They especially pray to him when a great dry land comes, when the earth desperately needs a downpour. His lightning is as desirable to the Earth as is desired. The serpent is literally earthly lust, a target that the Thunderer must hit with his sexual perun. And then the earth will bloom.
Dry ascetics do not understand this. And they are angry: Ilya, they say, is struggling with evil spirits,. Yes, it's amazing! To the pleasure of both the Earth and the Serpent living in her hospitable bosom. The Thunderer has a goal: to eat, eat and eat her god mother soul. Serpent and lightning (which is male at least) tend to each other in order to defuse the field tension between heaven and earth, they complement each other as elements of a single process. And to those who do not see this unity, it seems that some kind of struggle is going on. So it seems to naive children, spying on their parents, that dad is the aggressor.
A river that goes underground and returns is the best symbol for the cosmic thirst for intercourse and cannot be found. Such obvious signs in nature are not so often found, therefore, in Halui, there was undoubtedly a sanctuary, where, to the best of their ability, people repeated the exploits of the Thunderer. Victims? They went to the funnel of the left sleeve, which, it can be assumed, was specially arranged by people (more precisely, modified) for sacred purposes.
In general, the place is very comfortable. Where the river goes underground, the dry channel of Khaluy makes a sharp bend, forming along the top. Alexander, perhaps, would like to build a monastery here, but who will let a monk into such a treasured place. I don’t even know how he was allowed to go there, where the monastery was nevertheless built, because the sanctuary of the Thunderer on Khaluya and the sanctuary of the Serpent on Churyeg clearly complement each other. Well, nothing, but temples were built in which the Russian spirit expressed itself to the fullest. This spirit has a tinned stomach, he was able to digest both the Jewish god and his servants. Only names, shells remained. Here is Alexander Oshevensky - one of the names (the other is Ilya) of Perun-Gromovnik. After all, the natives worship not a missionary, but a severe lightning thrower.
By the way, the story of how Alexander cursed the inhabitants of Khalui, I first heard on the bell tower of the Church of the Epiphany in Pogost, from a handsome starley of the space troops. Maly came to Oshevensk for a friend's wedding and fell under the stupefying propaganda of Father Victor (Pantin), a St. Petersburg specialist in Leskov in the past, and now a priest from Osheven, who also looks after the monastery. The priest entrusted the cosmic starley with the key to the bell tower, and he took everyone there, asking if they had a cross on them? Everyone I saw there answered honestly: no. Nothing, the good guard of the bell tower allowed everyone to board his wooden starship, talked to everyone, taught everyone. Being a complete neophyte, he sees the solution to our problems in praying to the Jewish God and thus being a patriot of Russia.
Oh, the retired philologists of Russian Georgiev will drive them to impotence. How is it with Leskov? "Shooting is not good"?
MAP OF POINTS OF POWER OLEG DAVYDOV - ARCHIVE OF PLACES OF POWER -
Clouds no longer reflect in the waters of these rivers, neither trees nor grass grow along their banks. These streams of water flow in dark dungeons, and above usual life metropolis. But sometimes some of them show their character and break out, bringing unpleasant surprises to the big city.
The Moscow Kremlin, when viewed from above, has the shape of a triangle. With its walls, it is inscribed in a cape formed by the Moscow River and its left tributary, the Neglinka. In ancient times, water under the walls was a boon, additional protection. But the city went beyond its river boundaries, and now the excess of "moisture" has become a problem. Today's Moscow, which has covered almost 1000 km² of the Russian Plain with its numerous rivers, streams and swamps with dense urban development and a road network, has sent most of them underground, into collectors. To date, about 150 watercourses in the city flow underground. If all collectors are connected in a line, then it will stretch from Moscow almost to Nizhny Novgorod.
What is wrong with the rivers?
Today, local historians can, sighing nostalgically, walk along the routes of the former channels and look for traces of the former banks in the surrounding relief, but the construction of collectors was a forced measure. Rivers were removed underground not only in Moscow, but also in many other major cities peace. The Fleet River has disappeared in the bowels of London, the Parisian Bièvre is hidden in the ground, the streams of New York run in the collectors. The reasons why water streams began to be cleaned underground are similar. Ravines and swampy shores hindered the development of cities, disrupting the connectivity of districts, and hindering the development of territories. In high water and during heavy rains, even small rivers flooded, flooding streets, houses and temples. But, perhaps, the main reason was that in those ancient times they did not care about ecology and any water flow in the middle of the city, it necessarily turned into a sewer, where sewage was poured and garbage was thrown out. Moscow rivers like the Neglinka, Rachka, Sorochka, flowing in the very center of the city, became a big problem hundreds of years ago, and in the 18th century the authorities began to take drastic measures.
A rare case - the collector of the Filka River was built already in the USSR (1960s), however, brick was chosen as a building material, and not concrete, common for that time. Another infrequent feature is that heating pipes are laid under the ceiling of the collector.
How are they hidden underground?
The construction of a collector for a river, like the laying of metro tunnels, can be done in two ways - open or closed. During the construction of river collectors in Moscow, the open method is more often used, and in the old days it was the only one used. A trench was dug next to the channel (or a natural ravine formed by the river was used), a collector was erected in it, water was redirected there, the collector and the old channel were covered with earth. The closed method involves the use of special machines - tunneling shields - and is rarely used. In the 19th century, river collectors were built mainly of red brick, and many of them are still in excellent condition and look impressive. However, there were exceptions - for example, the collector of the Yauza tributary of the Chernogryazka River was built of white stone and has an unusual oval cross section. At the beginning of the 20th century, they experimented with concrete, but without iron reinforcement. The material turned out to be of poor quality, and many culverts built in those years collapsed. Almost all rivers buried under the ground in Soviet times flow in collectors made of precast concrete of round or rectangular cross section, brick sections are a rarity. Occasionally there are steel pipes and monolithic reinforced concrete. Nowadays, plastic is beginning to spread.
What happened to Neglinka?
Today, Neglinka does not bother the city, but this calmness did not come easily and not immediately. It took almost two centuries to “pacify” the river, during which the collector was repeatedly completed and rebuilt, as a result of which you can see almost all the technologies that were used in this area, starting from the first half of XIX century. For the first time, Neglinka was removed into the chimney in 1817-1819 during the reconstruction of Moscow after the invasion of Napoleon. But even after the construction of the collector, the river continued to fill with sewage, garbage, and even, probably, corpses of criminal origin, which horrified the brave reporter Gilyarovsky, who descended into the Moscow "cloaca" in the 1880s. At the turn of the last and the century before last, a city sewerage system appeared in Moscow, and discharges of sewage into rivers for the most part ceased. But besides the impurities, there was another problem. The collector, built in the 19th century, was of a small section, and in heavy rains it was not enough to quickly pass all the incoming water. After each heavy downpour, one could literally swim in a boat along Trubnaya Square. Gagarin had already flown, Leonov went into outer space, and the city was still suffering from violent floods: on June 25, 1965, Neglinka emerged from its underground banks and flooded Moscow from the Kremlin walls to Samotechnaya Street. It did not help that in the first half of the 1960s, a new collector was built from Theater Square, under which the river passes, to the Moskva River using a shield method. It was not laid parallel to the old one, but along a completely different trajectory in the direction of Moskvoretskaya embankment.
Thus, the Neglinka appeared two mouths at a decent distance from each other. However, above the Theater Square, the river was crowded in an old pipe. The situation was aggravated by the fact that during the existence of the collector, the area around was densely built up and covered with asphalt. If earlier part of the rainwater, as happens in nature, was absorbed into the ground, now up to 80% of the runoff ended up in storm sewers.
The problem had to be solved radically. In the 1970s, a large collector was built in an open pit, starting almost from Suvorovskaya Square and ending near Teatralnaya. This typical Soviet building has a rectangular cross section and is made of concrete slabs. Here, nothing resembles the brick vaults under which Gilyarovsky traveled. But there were no more serious floods on the Neglinka.
Collector of the Chechera River built in the 1930s, near the mouth. On the right is the underground mouth of the Chernogryazka River. The mouths of both rivers were artificially moved downstream of the Yauza, below the Syromyatnichesky hydroelectric complex (initially, the rivers flowed into it separately). If this had not been done, the collectors of the rivers would have been flooded by the rising waters of the Yauza.
What is Khokhlovsky Pond?
However, it cannot be said that the problem of flooding is completely absent. You will not find Khokhlovsky Pond on the map of Moscow - this is how the locals jokingly call the flood zone, which regularly occurs during heavy rains in the area of \u200b\u200bKhokhlovsky Lane. This is the Rachka River coming out of the collector, hidden underground in the 18th century. The old narrow sewer can't cope with the powerful influx of water from the streets, and the newly built new section has not yet solved the problem. Flooding can be caused not only by the initially small cross section of the collector, but also by its narrowing due to debris and sediment. Garbage enters the rivers through drain grates and wells, where it is dumped by "conscious" citizens, granite chips washed off the streets, sand perfectly clog the pipes, active construction has become a serious threat. From construction sites, a lot of clay and bentonite, a swelling material, is washed off into the drainage. This leads to the fact that sediment is deposited at the bottom, which, moreover, becomes hard as a stone over time. One of the famous examples is the Tarakanovka River. Its collector is clogged with hardened deposits for several kilometers, in some places by two-thirds of the section. This is a consequence of the construction of the Alabyano-Baltic tunnel, from the construction site of which a lot of bentonite got into the river.
Are the rivers underground clean?
Moscow uses a separate sewerage system. The storm sewer is independent of the fecal one, and industrial and domestic effluents do not flow through it. But you can't call it completely clean either. This is not surprising - water from city streets cannot be clean by definition. In addition, despite the official ban on the discharge of industrial and domestic waste, there are illegal cuts into the drainage system, in some places there is a smell of oil products, although in most collectors there are no unpleasant odors, contrary to popular beliefs of the inhabitants. Also, emergency overflows have been made between the fecal sewage and underground rivers. If suddenly the sewer collapses, wastewater fall into the river. This is bad, but better than flooding the city streets with them. Most of the water from underground rivers without purification enters the Moscow River, but some of them still have treatment facilities.
Underground life and waterfalls
Eternal darkness and dirty water is not the best place for different kind living creatures, but there is life in the collectors. Tree roots and grass hang from the ceiling, mushrooms grow on the walls, here you can see spiders, cockroaches, wood lice, and sometimes mice and rats. There are underground rivers that connect with clean ponds in parks and are clean on their own, for example, Setunka, Bitsa, Bibirevka. Sometimes fish swim into their collectors from ponds in search of warm water and food.
Waterfall in the storm sewer collector in Mitino. Water from a high elevation flows into the open river Skhodnya, overcoming several cascades, similar to the one shown in the picture.
Under the ground, you can often find waterfalls, which are usually not found near lowland rivers. This is because steeply sloping sewers are more difficult to build and operate. Instead, they build ordinary collectors with a slight slope and connect them with a “step”, which forms a waterfall. To prevent falling water from breaking concrete or brick, a water pit is arranged under the waterfall. There may be several cascades.
There are others hydraulic structures- small dams that redirect water flows through different pipes, sedimentation tanks, snow-alloy chambers left over from the time when snow was dumped into underground rivers. There are also unique structures, such as a two-story collector, where one river flows over another.
Is there something good in underground rivers?
Of course there is. First, as already mentioned, all storm sewers are based on them, and only where the rivers are far away, separate systems are built for drainage. Secondly, in the floodplains of the rivers hidden underground, the soil is loose and unstable, and therefore these valleys are not built up without special need. Therefore, we often see spacious boulevards in the place of river beds, along which it is so good to walk. These are, for example, Tsvetnoy Boulevard and Samotechny Square along the path of Neglinka or Zvezdny and Rocket Boulevards over the Kopytovka River. Thirdly, Muscovites owe many well-known ponds and cascades of ponds to the rivers, which are no longer on the surface. For example, the pond in the Moscow Zoo was originally filled with the waters of the hidden Presnya River, the Sadka Pond is located on the Kolomenka River, and the Kalitnikovsky Pond is on the Kalitnikovsky Creek. True, today, as a rule, the main part of the water from these rivers goes past the ponds through bypass collectors, so that the ponds do not overflow their banks and are not polluted by sewage.
The rivers that have gone underground have left a memory of themselves in the form of street names, relief features and even preserved bridges. An example is the Humpback Bridge, which was once used to cross the Presnya. Isn't it worth thinking about placing memorial signs or information stands along the path of these rivers, telling the residents of the city about the secret hydrography of the capital?
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