A brief retelling of "what paradise looks like" Paustovsky. Question: a brief retelling of "What heaven looks like" Paustovsky Summary of what heaven looks like Paustovsky

An adventure story about a hunter yang, who was seized by the idea of ​​shooting a giant deer, nicknamed the deer of the sandy hills. for several years, I learned the habits of deer, looked for their rooming houses, read footprints in the snow, but his search could not be successful. once a yang, hunting deer, almost shot an Indian who was also hunting in this territory. his name was chaska. they became friends, but soon dispersed and never saw each other again. on another occasion I shot a female deer of the sand hills and this murder left a deep impression on his soul when he saw what he had done. the wet eyes of a wounded female, bleeding on the snow-white snow, seemed to say: "What have I done wrong to you?" I spent the whole night in doubt. but the next morning he resumed his hunt for the deer of the sandpits, and this time his pursuit was successful. when he drove the deer into the countryside, surrounded on all sides by swamps, I was already looking forward to victory over this noble animal. suddenly the deer appeared right in front of him and froze, looking directly into the eyes of the yan. Yang could kill him, but under the gaze of deer eyes, he could not do it. the deer could not tell him anything, he just stood and looked Jan in the eyes, and in his eyes I read a lot. people, deer and all living things are children of the same mother nature. and hunting is the killing of defenseless animals. Ian understood this and did not kill the giant deer. he spared him and

Answer posted by: Guest

Logic, philosophy

Answer posted by: Guest

happy hours are not - happy people do not notice how time passes. how a happier person the faster time passes for him.

and the smoke of the fatherland is sweet and pleasant for us - having missed the homeland and being close to feel the smell of native expanses becomes pleasant.

houses are new, and prejudices are old - houses can be renewed, and prejudices are the success of all mankind.

Answer posted by: Guest

lived in the same kingdom a poor girl named Goldilocks. Her parents had nothing but a small abandoned mill.

once they sent Goldilocks to the thicket for mushrooms. During this walk, she dreamed that someday her parents would live in prosperity and happiness. Thinking about it, she even burst into tears.

a kind sorceress flew past, fulfilling any desires. Hearing the cry of the girl, she flew closer to her and asked:

Girl why are you crying?

I remembered my parents and I felt sorry for them.

Maybe I can do it for you. I have a magic wand and a wish box. Hit the box with a wand and your wish will come true.

Goldilocks turned away from modesty, but she wanted a sorceress.

now she said, full of joy:

casket, take me back to my parents' house and make them live in delivery. When the goldilocks returned, she saw more than she expected. In front of her was a huge house with beautiful windows and painted walls.

at that time, the young prince was about to get rich. the prince, passing by the house of the goldilocks, noticed her and fell in love at first sight. the goldilocks also noticed him and also fell in love. willingly under your desires.

Yes, I agree to marry you.

the day of the wedding was appointed. All the relatives of the newlyweds were invited to the wedding. And since then they all lived happily ever after.

Read in 15 minutes

One spring I was sitting in the Mariinsky Park and reading Stevenson's Treasure Island. Sister Galya sat nearby and also read. Her summer hat with green ribbons lay on the bench. The wind stirred the ribbons, Galya was short-sighted, very trusting, and it was almost impossible to get her out of a good-natured state.

It had rained in the morning, but now the clear spring sky shone above us. Only belated drops of rain fell from the lilacs.

A girl with bows in her hair stopped in front of us and started jumping over the rope. She made it difficult for me to read. I shook the lilac. A little rain fell noisily on the girl and on Galya. The girl stuck her tongue out at me and ran away, while Galya shook the raindrops off the book and continued to read.

And at that moment I saw a man who poisoned me for a long time with dreams of my unrealizable future.

A tall midshipman with a tanned, calm face walked lightly along the alley. A straight black broadsword hung from his lacquered belt. Black ribbons with bronze anchors fluttered in the quiet wind. He was all in black. Only the bright gold of the stripes set off his strict form.

In overland Kiev, where we hardly saw sailors, it was a stranger from the distant legendary world of winged ships, the Pallada frigate, from the world of all oceans, seas, all port cities, all winds and all the charms that were associated with the picturesque work of seafarers . An old broadsword with a black hilt seemed to have appeared in the Mariinsky Park from the pages of Stevenson.

The midshipman passed by, crunching on the sand. I got up and followed him. Due to myopia, Galya did not notice my disappearance.

All my dream of the sea was embodied in this man. I often imagined the seas, foggy and golden from the evening calm, distant voyages, when the whole world is replaced, like a fast kaleidoscope, behind the glass of the porthole. My God, if someone would have guessed to give me at least a piece of petrified rust, beaten off from an old anchor! I would keep it like a treasure.

The midshipman looked back. On the black ribbon of his peakless cap, I read the mysterious word: "Azimuth." Later I learned that this was the name of the training ship of the Baltic Fleet.

I followed him along Elizavetinskaya Street, then along Institutskaya and Nikolaevskaya. The midshipman saluted the infantry officers gracefully and casually. I was ashamed in front of him for these baggy Kyiv warriors.

Several times the midshipman looked back, but at the corner of Meringovskaya he stopped and called me.

Boy, he asked mockingly, why were you trailing me in tow?

I blushed and didn't answer.

Everything is clear: he dreams of being a sailor, - the midshipman guessed, speaking for some reason about me in the third person.

Let's get to Khreshchatyk.

We went side by side. I was afraid to raise my eyes and saw only the midshipman's strong boots polished to an incredible shine.

On Khreshchatyk, the midshipman went with me to the Semadeni coffee shop, ordered two servings of pistachio ice cream and two glasses of water. We were served ice cream on a small three-legged marble table. It was very cold and covered with figures: stock exchange dealers gathered at Semadeni and counted their profits and losses on the tables.

We ate ice cream in silence. The midshipman took from his wallet a photograph of a magnificent corvette with sailing equipment and a wide pipe and handed it to me.

Take it as a memento. This is my ship. I rode it to Liverpool.

He shook my hand firmly and left. I sat for a while longer, until the sweaty neighbors in the boater began to look back at me. Then I awkwardly got out and ran to the Mariinsky Park. The bench was empty. Galya left. I guessed that the midshipman took pity on me, and for the first time I learned that pity leaves a bitter residue in the soul.

After this meeting, the desire to become a sailor tormented me for many years. I rushed to the sea. The first time I saw him briefly was in Novorossiysk, where I went for a few days with my father. But that wasn't enough.

For hours I sat over the atlas, examined the coasts of the oceans, looked for unknown seaside towns, capes, islands, estuaries.

I came up with a difficult game. I made a long list of steamships with sonorous names: polar Star”, “Walter Scott”, “Khingan”, “Sirius”. This list is growing every day. I was the owner of the largest fleet in the world.

Of course, I was sitting in my shipping office, in the smoke of cigars, among colorful posters and timetables. Wide windows overlooked, of course, the embankment. The yellow masts of steamships stuck out near the windows, and good-natured elms rustled behind the walls. The steamer's smoke flew freely through the windows, mingling with the smell of rotten brine and new, cheerful matting.

I came up with a list of amazing voyages for my steamboats. There was not the most forgotten corner of the earth, wherever they went. They even visited the island of Tristan da Cunha.

I rented boats from one voyage and sent them to another. I followed the navigation of my ships and knew unmistakably where the Admiral Istomin was today and where the Flying Dutchman was: the Istomin was loading bananas in Singapore, and the Flying Dutchman was unloading flour on the Faroe Islands.

In order to manage such a vast shipping enterprise, I needed a lot of knowledge. I read guidebooks, ship handbooks and everything that had even a remote connection with the sea.

That was the first time I heard the word “meningitis” from my mother.

He will go to god knows what with his games, - my mother once said. - As if all this did not end with meningitis.

I heard that meningitis is a disease of boys who have learned to read too early. So I just chuckled at my mother's fears.

It all ended with the fact that the parents decided to go with the whole family for the summer to the sea.

Now I guess that my mother hoped to cure me of my excessive passion for the sea with this trip. She thought that I would be disappointed, as I always do, at a direct encounter with what I so passionately sought in my dreams. And she was right, but only partly.

One day, my mother solemnly announced that the other day we were leaving for the Black Sea for the whole summer, to the small town of Gelendzhik, near Novorossiysk.

Couldn't have chosen best place than Gelendzhik, in order to disappoint me in my passion for the sea and the south.

Gelendzhik was then a very dusty and hot town without any vegetation. All the greenery for many kilometers around was destroyed by the cruel Novorossiysk winds - the Nord-Osts. Only thorny bushes of the tree and stunted acacia with yellow dry flowers grew in the front gardens. From the high mountains it was hot. At the end of the bay, a cement plant smoked.

But the Gelendzhik bay was very good. In its clear and warm water, large jellyfish swam like pink and blue flowers. Spotted flounders and goby-eyed gobies lay on the sandy bottom. The surf washed ashore with red algae, rotten balber floats from fishing nets, and pieces of dark green bottles rolled by the waves.

The sea after Gelendzhik has not lost its charm for me. It only became simpler and therefore more beautiful than in my fancy dreams.

In Gelendzhik, I became friends with an elderly boatman, Anastas. He was a Greek, originally from the city of Volo. He had a new sailboat, white with a red keel and grating washed to gray.

Anastas rode summer residents on a boat. He was famous for his dexterity and composure, and my mother sometimes let me go alone with Anastas.

Once Anastas came out of the bay with me into the open sea. I will never forget the horror and delight that I experienced when the sail, inflated, heeled the boat so low that the water rushed at the level of the side. Noisy huge shafts rolled towards them, translucent with greenery and dousing their faces with salty dust.

I grabbed the shrouds, I wanted to go back to the shore, but Anastas, clamping the pipe between his teeth, purred something, and then asked:

How much did your mom pay for these dudes? Hey good dudes!

He nodded at my soft Caucasian shoes - dudes. My legs were trembling. I didn't answer. Anastas yawned and said:

Nothing! Small shower, warm shower. You will dine with gusto. No need to ask - eat for mom and dad!

He turned the boat casually and confidently. She scooped up water, and we rushed into the bay, diving and jumping out on the crests of the waves. They left from under the stern with a menacing noise. My heart sank and died.

Suddenly Anastas began to sing. I stopped shaking and listened to this song in bewilderment:

From Batum to Sukhum - Ai-wai-wai!

From Sukhum to Batum - Ai-wai-wai!

A boy was running, dragging a box - Ai-wai-wai!

The boy fell, broke the box - Ai-wai-wai!

To this song, we lowered the sail and with acceleration quickly approached the pier, where the pale mother was waiting. Anastas picked me up, put me on the pier and said:

Now you have it salty, madam. Already has a habit to the sea.

Once my father hired a ruler, and we drove from Gelendzhik to the Mikhailovsky Pass.

At first, the gravel road went along the slope of bare and dusty mountains. We passed bridges over ravines where there was not a drop of water. On the mountains all day, clinging to the peaks, the same clouds of gray dry cotton wool lay.

I was thirsty. The red-haired Cossack driver turned around and told me to wait until the pass - there I would get drunk and tasty. cold water. But I didn't trust the driver. The dryness of the mountains and the lack of water frightened me. I longingly looked at the dark and fresh strip of the sea. You couldn't drink from it, but at least you could swim in its cool water.

The road rose higher and higher. Suddenly, a breath of freshness hit our face.

The most pass! - said the driver, stopped the horses, got down and put iron brakes under the wheels.

From the crest of the mountain we saw huge and dense forests. They waved over the mountains to the horizon. In some places, red granite cliffs protruded from the greenery, and in the distance I saw a peak burning with ice and snow.

Nord-Ost does not reach here, - said the driver. - It's heaven!

The line began to descend. Immediately a thick shadow covered us. In the impenetrable thicket of trees we heard the murmur of water, the whistle of birds and the rustle of leaves stirred by the midday wind.

The lower we descended, the denser the forest became and the shadier the Road. A clear stream was already running along its side. He washed multi-colored stones, touched purple flowers with his jet and made them bow and tremble, but he could not tear them off the rocky ground and take them down into the gorge with him.

Mom took water from the stream in a mug and gave me a drink. The water was so cold that the mug was immediately covered with sweat.

It smells like ozone, - said the father.

I took a deep breath. I did not know what it smelled like around, but it seemed to me that I was heaped with a pile of branches moistened with fragrant rain.

Creepers clung to our heads. And here and there, on the slopes of the road, some shaggy flower poked out from under the stone and looked with curiosity at our line and at the gray horses, who lifted their heads and performed solemnly, as in a parade, so as not to break loose and roll the line.

There the lizard! Mom said. Where?

Over there. Do you see the hazel? And to the left is a red stone in the grass. See above. Do you see the yellow halo? This is an azalea. A little to the right of the azaleas, on a fallen beech, near the very root. There, you see such a shaggy red root in dry earth and some tiny blue flowers? So next to him.

I saw a lizard. But while I found it, I made a wonderful journey through hazel, redstone, azalea flower and fallen beech.

“So this is what it is, the Caucasus!” I thought.

Here is paradise! repeated the driver, turning off the highway into a grassy narrow clearing in the forest. - Now let's unharness the horses, we'll swim.

We drove into such a thicket and the branches hit us so hard in the face that we had to stop the horses, get off the line and continue on foot. The line moved slowly behind us.

We came to a clearing in a green gorge. Like white islands, crowds of tall dandelions stood in the lush grass. Under thick beeches we saw an old empty barn. He stood on the bank of a noisy mountain stream. She poured tight over the stones clear water, hissed and dragged along with water a lot of air bubbles.

While the driver was unharnessing and walking with my father for brushwood for the fire, we washed ourselves in the river. Our faces burned with heat after washing.

We wanted to immediately go up the river, but my mother spread a tablecloth on the grass, took out provisions and said that until we had eaten, she would not let us go anywhere.

I ate ham sandwiches and a cold rice porridge with raisins, but it turned out that I was completely in vain in a hurry - the stubborn copper kettle did not want to boil on the fire. It must be because the water from the river was completely icy.

Then the kettle boiled so unexpectedly and violently that it flooded the fire. We drank strong tea and began to rush father to go to the forest. The driver said that we must be on our guard, because there are many wild boars in the forest. He explained to us that if we see small holes dug in the ground, then these are the places where the boars sleep at night.

Mom was agitated - she could not go with us, she had shortness of breath - but the driver reassured her, noting that the boar had to be teased on purpose so that he would rush at the man.

We went up the river. We made our way through the thicket, stopping every minute and calling each other to show the granite pools carved by the river - trout swept in them with blue sparks - huge green beetles with long whiskers, foamy grumbling waterfalls, horsetails taller than our height, thickets of forest anemones and clearings with peonies.

Borya came across a small dusty pit that looked like a baby bath. We walked carefully around it. Obviously, this was the place where the wild boar spent the night.

The father went ahead. He started calling us. We made our way to it through the buckthorn, bypassing the huge mossy boulders.

Father was standing near a strange building, overgrown with blackberries. Four smoothly hewn gigantic stones were covered, like a roof, by the fifth hewn stone. It turned out to be a stone house. There was a hole punched in one of the side stones, but so small that even I could not fit through it. There were several such stone buildings around.

These are dolmens, - said the father. - Ancient burial grounds of the Scythians. Or maybe they are not burial grounds at all. Until now, scientists cannot find out who, for what and how built these dolmens.

I was sure that dolmens are the dwellings of long-extinct dwarf people. But I did not tell my father about this, since Borya was with us: he would have ridiculed me.

We returned to Gelendzhik completely burned by the sun, drunk from fatigue and forest air. I fell asleep and through my sleep I felt a breath of heat over me, and heard the distant murmur of the sea.

Since then, in my imagination, I have become the owner of another magnificent country - the Caucasus. The passion for Lermontov, abreks, Shamil began. Mom was worried again.

Now, in adulthood, I gratefully recall my childhood hobbies. They taught me a lot.

But I was not at all like the noisy and carried away boys choking with saliva from excitement, who give no rest to anyone. On the contrary, I was very shy and with my hobbies I did not pester anyone.

But, on the other hand, the writer's ability to talk about himself is limited. He is bound by many difficulties, first of all - the awkwardness to evaluate his own books.

Therefore, I will express only some considerations regarding my work and briefly give my biography. There is no point in describing it in detail. All my life with early childhood until the early thirties is described in six books of the autobiographical Tale of Life, which is included in this collection. I continue to work on the "Tale of Life" even now.

I was born in Moscow on May 31, 1892 in Granatny lane, in the family of a railway statistician.

My father comes from Zaporizhzhya Cossacks, who moved after the defeat of the Sich on the banks of the Ros River, near the White Church. My grandfather lived there - a former Nikolaev soldier - and a Turkish grandmother.

Despite the profession of a statistician, which requires a sober view of things, my father was an incorrigible dreamer and a Protestant. Because of these qualities, he did not stay long in one place. After Moscow, he served in Vilna, Pskov, and finally settled, more or less firmly, in Kyiv.

My mother - the daughter of an employee at a sugar factory - was a domineering and stern woman.

Our family was large and diverse, prone to art. The family sang a lot, played the piano, argued, reverently loved the theater.

I studied at the 1st Kyiv classical gymnasium.

When I was in the sixth grade, our family broke up. From then on, I had to earn my living and teaching myself. I was interrupted by rather hard work - the so-called tutoring.

In the last class of the gymnasium, I wrote the first story and published it in the Kiev literary magazine"Lights". It was, as far as I remember, in 1911.

After graduating from the gymnasium, I spent two years at Kiev University, and then transferred to Moscow University and moved to Moscow.

At the beginning of the World War I worked as a counselor and conductor on the Moscow tram, then as an orderly on the rear and field hospital trains.

In the autumn of 1915, I transferred from the train to a field medical detachment and went with him a long retreat from Lublin in Poland to the town of Nesvizh in Belarus.

In the detachment, from a piece of newspaper that came across to me, I learned that both my brothers were killed on different fronts on the same day. I returned to my mother - she lived in Moscow at that time, but I could not sit still for a long time and again began my wandering life: I left for Yekaterinoslav and worked there at the metallurgical plant of the Bryansk Society, then moved to Yuzovka to the Novorossiysk plant, and from there to Taganrog to the boiler plant Nev-Vilde. In the autumn of 1916, he left the boiler plant for a fishing artel on the Sea of ​​Azov.

In my free time, I began writing my first novel in Taganrog - The Romantics.

Then he moved to Moscow, where she found me February Revolution and started working as a journalist.

My development as a person and a writer took place under Soviet power and determined my entire future life path.

In Moscow I experienced October revolution, witnessed many events of 1917-1919, heard Lenin several times and lived a busy life of newspaper editorial offices.

But soon I was "turned". I went to my mother (she again moved to Ukraine), survived several coups in Kyiv, left Kyiv for Odessa. There I first got into the environment of young writers - Ilf, Babel, Bagritsky, Shengeli, Lev Slavin.

But the “muse of distant wanderings” haunted me, and after spending two years in Odessa, I moved to Sukhum, then to Batum and Tiflis. From Tiflis I traveled to Armenia and even ended up in Northern Persia.

In 1923 he returned to Moscow, where he worked for several years as the editor of ROSTA. At that time, I had already begun to print.

My first "real" book was a collection of short stories "Oncoming Ships" (1928).

In the summer of 1932 I started working on the book "Kara-Bugaz". The history of writing "Kara-Bugaz" and some other books is described in some detail in the story "Golden Rose". Therefore, I will not dwell on this here.

After the publication of Kara-Bugaz, I left the service, and since then writing has become my only, all-consuming, sometimes painful, but always favorite job.

I still traveled a lot, even more than before. During the years of my writing life, I was on the Kola Peninsula, lived in Meshchera, traveled the Caucasus and Ukraine, the Volga, Kama, Don, Dnieper, Oka and Desna, Lake Ladoga and Onega, was in Central Asia, in the Crimea, in Altai, in Siberia, in our wonderful north-west - in Pskov, Novgorod, Vitebsk, in Pushkin's Mikhailovsky.

During the Great Patriotic War I worked as a war correspondent on the Southern Front and also traveled to many places. After the end of the war, I again traveled a lot. During the 50s and early 60s I visited Czechoslovakia, lived in Bulgaria in the absolutely fabulous fishing towns of Nessebar (Messemeria) and Sozopol, traveled Poland from Krakow to Gdansk, sailed around Europe, visited Istanbul, Athens, Rotterdam, Stockholm, in Italy (Rome, Turin, Milan, Naples, Italian Alps), saw France, in particular Provence, England, where he was in Oxford and Shakespeare's Stratford. In 1965, because of my persistent asthma, I lived for quite a long time on the island of Capri - a huge rock, completely overgrown with fragrant herbs, resinous Mediterranean pine - pine and waterfalls (or rather, flower falls) of scarlet tropical bougainvillea - on Capri, immersed in a warm and transparent water of the Mediterranean.

The impressions from these numerous trips, from meetings with the most diverse and - in each individual case - interesting people in their own way, formed the basis of many of my stories and travel essays (“Picturesque Bulgaria”, “Amphora”, “Third Meeting”, “Crowd on Embankment”, “Italian Encounters”, “Fleeting Paris”, “Channel Lights”, etc.), which the reader will also find in this Collected Works.

I have written a lot in my life, but the feeling that I still have a lot to do and that a writer learns to deeply comprehend certain aspects and phenomena of life and talk about them only in adulthood does not leave me.

In my youth, I experienced a fascination with the exotic.

The desire for the extraordinary has haunted me since childhood.

In the boring apartment in Kyiv, where I spent this childhood, the wind of the extraordinary constantly roared around me. I evoked it with the power of my own boyish imagination.

This wind brought the smell of yew forests, the foam of the Atlantic surf, the peals of a tropical thunderstorm, the ringing of an aeolian harp.

But the colorful world of the exotic existed only in my imagination. I have never seen dark yew forests (with the exception of a few yew trees in the Nikitsky Botanical Garden), nor the Atlantic Ocean, nor the tropics, and I have never heard an aeolian harp. I didn't even know what she looked like. Much later, from the notes of the traveler Miklouho-Maclay, I learned about this. Maclay built an aeolian harp from bamboo trunks near his hut in New Guinea. The wind howled fiercely in the hollow bamboo trunks, frightening off the superstitious natives, and they did not interfere with Maclay's work.

Geography was my favorite science in the gymnasium. She dispassionately confirmed that there are extraordinary countries on earth. I knew that our then meager and unsettled life would not give me the opportunity to see them. My dream was clearly unrealizable. But she didn't die from it.

WHAT PARADISE LOOKS

One day, my mother solemnly announced that the other day we were leaving for the Black Sea for the whole summer, to the small town of Gelendzhik, near Novorossiysk.

Perhaps it was impossible to choose a better place than Gelendzhik in order to disappoint me in my passion for the sea and the south.

Gelendzhik was then a very dusty and hot town without any vegetation. All the greenery for many kilometers around was destroyed by the cruel Novorossiysk winds - the Nord-Osts. Only thorny bushes of the tree and stunted acacia with yellow dry flowers grew in the front gardens. From the high mountains it was hot. At the end of the bay, a cement plant smoked.

But the Gelendzhik bay was very good. In its clear and warm water, large jellyfish swam like pink and blue flowers. Spotted flounders and goby-eyed gobies lay on the sandy bottom. The surf washed up on the shore red algae, rotten balber floats from fishing nets and pieces of dark green bottles rolled by the waves.

The sea after Gelendzhik has not lost its charm for me. It only became simpler and therefore more beautiful than in my fancy dreams.

In Gelendzhik, I became friends with an elderly boatman, Anastas. He was a Greek, originally from the city of Volo. He had a new sailboat, white with a red keel and grating washed down to gray.

Anastas rode summer residents on a boat. He was famous for his dexterity and composure, and my mother sometimes let me go alone with Anastas.

Once Anastas came out of the bay with me into the open sea. I will never forget the horror and delight that I experienced when the sail, inflated, heeled the boat so low that the water rushed at the level of the side. Noisy huge shafts rolled towards them, translucent with greenery and dousing their faces with salty dust.

I grabbed the shrouds, I wanted to go back to the shore, but Anastas, clamping the pipe between his teeth, purred something, and then asked:

“How much did your mom pay for these dudes?” Hey good dudes!

He nodded at my soft Caucasian shoes - dudes. My legs were trembling. I didn't answer. Anastas yawned and said:

- Nothing! Small shower, warm shower. You will dine with gusto. No need to ask - eat for mom and dad!

He turned the boat casually and confidently. She scooped up water, and we rushed into the bay, diving and jumping out on the crests of the waves. They left from under the stern with a menacing noise. My heart sank and died.

Suddenly Anastas began to sing. I stopped shaking and listened to this song in bewilderment:

From Batum to Sukhum -
Ai-wai-wai!
From Sukhum to Batum -
Ai-wai-wai!
A boy was running, dragging a box -
Ai-wai-wai!
The boy fell, broke the box -
Ai-wai-wai!

To this song, we lowered the sail and with acceleration quickly approached the pier, where the pale mother was waiting. Anastas picked me up, put me on the pier and said:

“Now you have it salty, madam.” Already has a habit to the sea.

Once my father hired a ruler, and we drove from Gelendzhik to the Mikhailovsky Pass.

At first, the gravel road ran along the slope of bare and dusty mountains. We passed bridges over ravines where there was not a drop of water. On the mountains all day, clinging to the peaks, the same clouds of gray dry cotton wool lay.

I was thirsty. The red-haired Cossack driver turned around and told me to wait until the pass - there I would drink tasty and cold water. But I didn't trust the driver. The dryness of the mountains and the lack of water frightened me. I longingly looked at the dark and fresh strip of the sea. You couldn't drink from it, but at least you could swim in its cool water.

The road rose higher and higher. Suddenly, a breath of freshness hit our face.

- The most pass! - said the driver, stopped the horses, got down and put iron brakes under the wheels.

From the crest of the mountain we saw huge and dense forests. They waved over the mountains to the horizon. Here and there, red granite cliffs protruded from the greenery, and in the distance I saw a peak burning with ice and snow.

“Nord-Ost doesn’t reach here,” said the driver. - It's paradise!

The line began to descend. Immediately a thick shadow covered us. In the impenetrable thicket of trees we heard the murmur of water, the whistle of birds and the rustle of leaves stirred by the midday wind.

The lower we descended, the denser the forest became and the shadier the road. A clear stream was already running along its side. He washed multi-colored stones, touched purple flowers with his jet and made them bow and tremble, but he could not tear them off the stony ground and take them down into the gorge with him.

Mom took water from the stream in a mug and gave me a drink. The water was so cold that the mug was immediately covered with sweat.

“It smells like ozone,” said the father.

I took a deep breath. I did not know what smelled around me, but it seemed to me that I was heaped with a heap of branches moistened with fragrant rain.

Creepers clung to our heads. And here and there, on the slopes of the road, some shaggy flower poked out from under the stone and looked with curiosity at our line and at the gray horses, who lifted their heads and performed solemnly, as in a parade, so as not to break loose and roll the line.

- There's a lizard! Mom said.

- Over there. Do you see the hazel? And to the left is a red stone in the grass. See above. See the yellow whisk? This is an azalea. A little to the right of the azaleas, on a fallen beech, near the very root. There, you see such a shaggy red root in dry earth and some tiny blue flowers? So next to him.

I saw a lizard. But while I found her, I made a wonderful journey through hazel, redstone, azalea flower and fallen beech.

“So this is what it is, the Caucasus!” I thought.

- It's paradise! repeated the driver, turning off the highway into a grassy narrow clearing in the woods. - Now let's unharness the horses, we'll swim.

We drove into such a thicket and the branches hit us so hard in the face that we had to stop the horses, get off the line and continue on foot. The line moved slowly behind us.

We came to a clearing in a green gorge. Like white islands, crowds of tall dandelions stood in the lush grass. Under thick beeches we saw an old empty barn. He stood on the bank of a noisy mountain stream. She tightly poured transparent water over the stones, hissed and dragged away many air bubbles along with the water.

While the driver was unharnessing and walking with my father for brushwood for the fire, we washed ourselves in the river. Our faces burned with heat after washing.

We wanted to immediately go up the river, but my mother spread a tablecloth on the grass, took out provisions and said that until we had eaten, she would not let us go anywhere.

I ate ham sandwiches and cold rice porridge with raisins, choking, but it turned out that I was in no hurry at all - the stubborn copper kettle did not want to boil on the fire. It must be because the water from the river was completely icy.

Then the kettle boiled so suddenly and violently that it flooded the fire. We drank strong tea and began to rush father to go to the forest. The driver said that we must be on our guard, because there are many wild boars in the forest. He explained to us that if we see small holes dug in the ground, then these are the places where the boars sleep at night.

Mom was agitated - she could not go with us, she had shortness of breath - but the cab driver reassured her, noting that the boar had to be teased on purpose so that he would rush at the man.

We went up the river. We made our way through the thicket, stopping every minute and calling each other to show the granite pools carved by the river - trout swept in them with blue sparks - huge green beetles with long whiskers, foamy grumbling waterfalls, horsetails taller than our height, thickets of forest anemones and clearings with peonies.

Borya came across a small dusty pit that looked like a baby bath. We walked carefully around her. Obviously, this was the place where the wild boar spent the night.

The father went ahead. He started calling us. We made our way to it through the buckthorn, bypassing the huge mossy boulders.

Father was standing near a strange building, overgrown with blackberries. Four smoothly hewn gigantic stones were covered, like a roof, with a fifth hewn stone. It turned out to be a stone house. There was a hole punched in one of the side stones, but so small that even I could not fit through it. There were several such stone buildings around.

“These are dolmens,” said the father. - Ancient burial grounds of the Scythians. Or maybe they are not burial grounds at all. Until now, scientists cannot find out who, for what and how built these dolmens.

I was sure that dolmens are the dwellings of long-extinct dwarf people. But I did not tell my father about this, since Borya was with us: he would have ridiculed me.

We returned to Gelendzhik completely burnt by the sun, drunk from fatigue and forest air. I fell asleep, and through my sleep I felt a breath of heat over me, and heard the distant murmur of the sea.

Since then, in my imagination, I have become the owner of another magnificent country - the Caucasus. The passion for Lermontov, abreks, Shamil began. Mom was worried again.

Now, in adulthood, I gratefully recall my childhood hobbies. They taught me a lot.

But I was not at all like the noisy and carried away boys choking with saliva from excitement, who give no rest to anyone. On the contrary, I was very shy and with my hobbies I did not pester anyone.