For many years, I have read the works of Canadian naturalist and author Farley Mowat, and several months ago my wife and I read several of his books together which had been the first time she had ever been exposed to his wonderful writiing. The only negative comment I can make about Mowat and his work is that after he had become widely and wildly successful for works like "Never Cry Wolf" and "A Whale For The Killing", some of his later works were less interesting, less exciting, and, of course, less popular. But every book I have ever read by Mowat was still filled with occasional shots of his splendid writing and voluminous vocabulary. When I was younger, I would often read his books with a dictionary by my side because I knew I would find some words along the way that I had never heard, some from his life as a world traveling Canadian, and some from his having been descended from Scottish ancestors who must have passed a great deal of their linguistic panache along with their DNA.
This book we are discussing was published in 1970, and came about because Mowat was invited to come to Russia by a Russian writer who also lived in and wrote about the extreme north of the country, Siberia, one of the coldest climates on earth with the possible exception of the peaks of the Alps and Himalayas. Naturally, Mowat took the man up on his offer and eventually made several trips to Russia and Siberia. In spite of the cold war, and because international concerns were different in those days, Mowat said that he was always well received and well treated wherever he went in the Russia, and particularly in Siberia. I have been motivated to remember and write about this particular book, because my wife and I are currently reading a much less scholarly book about that region, "Last Of The Breed" by Louis L'Amour which I picked up on a whim in a Goodwill store because it was uncharacteristic of L'Amour's western writing. I had also picked up two other L'Amour books for the same reason, already read and written about one of them, "Yondering" which is a collection of his short stories. "Last Of The Breed" has led me back to this Mowat book because, to his credit, L'Amour had done some reasonable amount of research about Siberia before he wrote his book about an American pilot who escapes from a Siberian prison and is attempting to cross Siberia to Alaska in order to escape.
Issues such as those in the L'Amour book never arose in Mowat's experience in Siberia although the two men do write about several similar aspects of the region which was far less developed in the times Mowat traveled there than it was in 1986 when L'Amour wrote his novel. The vast majority of the region was what is known as the taiga, a vast forested area which was replete with wildlife and few people. Mowat was being guided on his visits by Yuri Rythkheu, a Russian nature writer and naturalist whose works were motivated by many of the same concerns which motivated Mowat. The two became close friends over the years they knew each other and corresponded regularly, and in those times, Russia was considerably less repressive than it is today. Mowat was allowed to travel extensively in the country, was often given official welcomes by local government officials and greeted much like a celebrity might have been even in America at the time. He came to love Siberia, the Taiga, the people, and the vast wildlife of the region, and writes about it with a great deal of the same emotion and general protective concern he wrote about his native Canadian north. The people he eoncountered in his travels there were much more open than Russians are today and, at times, Mowat found himself invited into homes and even involved in fairly wild parties.
I have also known a few others of my friends and acquaintances who have been privileged to travel to Russia in the past including a nurse practitioner who went there as a young nurse with a Christian based medical entourage and claims to have bribed an airport security officer in order to be allowed to take some medications into the country which she said the officer claimed were not permitted. Nearly forty years ago, I also knew a few people who traveled to Russia as part of a group sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker group. But none of those people were ever received in Russia in the open hearted way that Mowat was. This is a fascinating book despite its age and good reading for anyone who likes to learn the history of other places in the world. If you can find a copy, read it. You won't be disappointed. And, you might even like "Last Of The Breed" by Louis L'Amour.
