Today I found a couple of free hours in the middle of the day, or it was night, and therefore they turned out to be free, who knows on a polar day. Anyway, knowing that most of the roads towards the sea have already thawed and I will not have to fight for survival on the road, I decided to go to the nearest coast. Not the most northerly and authentic, but rather an observation deck for the locals.
The spring tundra is... I'm not sure it's beautiful, though, there's something cute about these browns and the remaining handful of snow on the shady areas of the hills. It's like you're riding on the back of a huge brown-and-white cow.
Sometimes you get lucky, and in the distance you can spot a white hare or a partridge. These are the most retarded guys of their kind, who have not yet had time to change their winter color to summer and become excellent prey for predators. I don't usually hope for such luck. But today is Wednesday- a happy day, and it looks like Mrs. Fortune decided to go for a walk with me.
Immersed in my own carefree thoughts about the eternal, boundless and something majestic, I did not notice how a gang of road robbers blocked my way. Oh, you know these guys, I've already told you about them here and here.
Reindeer! Wild Reindeer! I can't believe it. I have seen them often and far away in the tundra, but in small groups. And there was a whole herd here. I did not notice the shepherds anywhere nearby, and by how quickly they began to move away from me, I was convinced that these were free animals.
My hands were shaking and my palms were sweating. Believe me, this is a miracle for me. I have met foxes, bears, seals and many different local wildlife up close, but never wild reindeer. A huge herd of 100 individuals, stretching in a chain of several groups over the hills. I didn't even manage to capture them in their entirety.
This species is slightly different from its fellows. They have no clear hierarchy, no leader, they seem chaotic. Any individual can raise alarms, and everyone will hear it. Females also have horns in winter, which they shed by summer. And males, on the contrary, lose their formidable weapons for the whole winter.
I have heard that Sami shepherds do not graze their flocks as is customary, in the sense that they tell the deer where to go. No, it's quite the opposite, it's the deer that show the way to the shepherds, the Sami understand that animals know better where to go to survive, so they just follow the herd, protecting it from predators.
I can't put into words how amazed I was. This meeting flew by like a flash, they are very fast. I do not know how to explain it ... but imagine that you are watching some kind of documentary program where they say that polar bears live near cities. And you think, "Oh, probably every resident of this city has seen a polar bear." No it's not. Few people have seen a polar bear, even living next to it. I was only 70 kilometers from the city and I was extremely lucky to see these guys, I'm not sure that this will ever happen again.
It was as if I was in that very documentary and really realized that I live in the far north, in a wild land, surrounded by wild landscapes and animals. It's magical!
By the way, I finally got to the coast and told this story not only to you, but also to my favorite listener - the North Sea, which is already meeting summer.