Whose photo reports we have posted on our portal more than once, this time visited the Kenozero National Park, the most beautiful place included in the UNESCO World Network of Biosphere Reserves.
June. Forbs covered the land of the Russian North with a carpet. Somewhere in the Sacred Grove, near a wooden chapel, a nightingale is filled with divine music. The wooden domes of the chapel shimmer with soft white light under the cover of sleepless bright nights. Here you are standing on a hill above Kenozero, inhaling the smell of these wonderful summer herbs and feeling that you are in such a native and close place to your soul. For those who get tired of reading my impressions and reflections, there is a small practical guide at the end of the text.
Bump after bump, bridge after bridge, and two days later the pontoon bridge cuts us off from civilization. On the potholes of the primer, a 50-liter canister of gasoline gurgles, backpacks with photographic equipment bounce. Already Nekrasov's "identity villages" with rickety shacks, northern houses made of broad timber with high black roofs, are already flashing by. Somewhere life, and somewhere - withering. It's sad to see what people left behind. Nature is slowly taking over man here: nettle carpets the floors of the huts, the roofs have almost turned into turf. Soon these huts on chicken legs will be swallowed up by tall summer grass. In the meantime, we arrive at our house in Ust-Pocha. In principle, you can rent a hotel room here - there is a large choice, the site of the park Kenozero.ru will help you, but we are staying with "familiar acquaintances", with Aunt Natasha, in a small village house of light green color. It stands near the lake, as if a small green shoot of a large dry tree was attached next to an ancient hut. Tilted, she hangs over a baby with low ceilings. Aunt Natasha warns: “Bend down, otherwise you will knock; bow to the house." Yes, how many cones we still fill on these jambs - we are not hobbits, and this is not Middle-earth, although it is no worse.
The village has a master plan: each house stands on a hill on the shore; down, to the bath almost at the very water, a ladder descends, and under the shore there is a small pier with a boat. The lake is black, northern; every time you look at it, it changes hue from the lead of clouds to a gray mirror with deep blue tints. In summer the village comes alive. Relatives, vacationers, tourists come. Parents hand over their beloved children for safekeeping to grandmothers, who now take the rap in their old age, looking after mischievous children. It's a long way from the Canadian border...
bam! One bump more. They laid out backpacks in our mansions. In the middle - a large stove, two beds, everything you need for life. And immediately on the road!
We arrive at the village of Vershinino along the dirt road. Above it, on a hillock, rises a wooden chapel, the first on our way, strict, elegant, laconic. A little bit up the path through a field of dandelions - and we are already meeting the moonrise over Kenozero. A hundred meters up, on a small hillock - and you seem to soar above the water, over the shores, the plain and the islands with tall pines. And crimson rays touch the peaks of invisible "mountains". Surprisingly: a stream of feelings, some kind of lightness and freshness of thoughts in this place. The soul seems to be cleansed, and somehow it becomes light and warm inside. That's just one minus - mosquitoes and midges eat. I change the lens - here I already need a telephoto, I have moved far from the chapel - and a flock dive under the bayonet! And you have to drive out the rogue! I don’t remember about myself, almost anesthesia. Beauty only saves, revives to life, and you completely forget about everything. After all, you are in Russia, in your homeland - in its very, very heart. These places are so close that the soul sings.
The day wakes up in pink light. Or maybe he just did not fall asleep, and this is from fatigue.
A flash of fire over the Pochozero temple, over meadows, villages, fields and bridges over channels. Three in the morning - and the last day turns into a wonderful new one with such beauty around. But all good things come to an end quickly, and this dawn also faded away, like an extinct match, and real northern clouds hung low over the northern land. And the temple is beautiful. Light, with curves and a fence, with high spiers, it somehow reminded me of Kizhi from postcards and photographs. Only some of this place is hidden, secret, opens to a few. And it seems that you are the only traveler with whom the temple whispers when you stand in the wet grass up to your shoulders at its fence and cold dew touches your neck and ears. And the soft breeze whispers and tells its tales in this distant kingdom, on the island of Kenozerye.
Wet feet and the chime of mosquitoes in the hair take away from fairy tales. Time to go home. Pleasant fatigue rolls in, it's time to sleep.
Today Kenozero is brown, like peat lakes - soft, with a chocolate tint, with a thin warm crust of water and an icy heart inside. You float on it, you press your legs up, you keep your posture, if only you don’t fall on the ice below. And near the shore, near the sand, the water, like fresh milk, has warmed up during warm days, and the children are splashing in the water with enthusiastic squeals.
We rested, swam, took a steam bath in Russian - and let's go feed the sunset mosquitoes in the village of Glazovo. In the afternoon, walking along Ust-Poche, we met Misha. Such a good man, born and raised here. We look: the boat is being repaired, the engine has become very bad. He says that his son will come, start the engine - and they will go fishing, and at the same time they will give us a ride to Glazovo. Only gasoline, he says, fill in your own, and that's it - no money is needed.
So, we boarded as a friendly company, we set off! The motor is naughty: it just starts up - and immediately stalls. Here is the Whirlwind for you ... But nothing: the sleight of hand of Misha's son - and we fly through clear waters Kenozera, cutting through the sun's rays in the glare of small lights of dark water, and inside each drop there is a midnight sun with islands, islands to the horizon. Birches, slender pines are looking at us from the hillock, winking with the rays of a lazy sleepy luminary that rolls from side to side in these long days.
Jump! We descend to the "Great Land". We are in Glazov. And again you feel some kind of puppy delight in front of the beauty of the Russian land. The Chapel of the Descent of the Holy Spirit rises above the surface of the lake, there is silence around, the leaves do not even rustle. And you say to yourself: you are in Russia. You feel the breath of summer grasses, the tickle of sedge and the warm light on your face from the hot pancake of the sun. You bathe in the grass, you drown in clearings in abundance of flowers, from wonderful to modest, like cornflowers and dandelions. And how wonderful it is to climb up to the chapel, to the very top, under the dome, and survey the area from above! Here you can sit on a creaky wooden floor, lean against an ancient white tree. In the midst of incredible summer silence, among the lakes covered with a veil of fog, you sit, as if in a midnight slumber, intoxicated by the music of Kenozero.
But this eternity won’t get hungry, won’t want to sleep, and the midge won’t bite it, and your belly itches from bites, so you return to reality again, open the hatch to the Little Land, three flights of wooden steps - and again I’m on fresh grass at I'm waiting for Uncle Misha for water. He has a glorious catch, a whole bucket of crucian carp! So satisfied and happy we fly to our house in Ust-Poche.
It seems like an eternity has passed and we are alive we have been on Kenozero all summer, so these places are deeply rooted in the heart.
In the morning we again go to Vershinino, to the wonderful St. Nicholas Chapel. The sky shimmers with a kind of northern lights. If the North gives light, it does it with special generosity: red flashes stretch along the horizon for an hour, time stops, and you yourself find yourself locked up somewhere in the tenth second of the beginning of the third morning. It seems that the heavy blue veil of the night will never cover the June Kenozero even up to the shoulders.
And again a whole day of rest, swimming in the lake, exploring the surroundings. By evening, the weather turned bad, and there was little to photograph. The sky is gray, the wind is strong. We hope for the morning.
At three in the morning you get up - you jump up and scratch your turnips: where are you this time? The low ceiling immediately reminds us that we are still at Kenozero! Hands to feet, you don’t have to go far - after all, the beautiful village of Myza is nearby, on a small island, where a rickety floating bridge leads, which you still need to manage to catch from the channel with a long stick. The main thing is to hook him well over the shore, otherwise you can remain Robinson. And then you walk along the coast along a narrow path, next to the smooth surface of the morning water and light fog. Probably, this place has become for me the most beloved, intimate. There are such tall grasses and complete isolation from the whole world that the unity with the place is absolute. It seems that this is a small fragile piece of our Motherland - its heart that lives, beats, breathes. From the hill, from the very high point you can see the lake, neat islands in the distance, a chapel against the backdrop of the Holy Grove and fields of summer flowers. I squint like a cat and just smile at the dawn. Quiet light on the face, gentle spikelets of grass and even annoying mosquitoes, constantly bringing us back from the clouds to the ground. And I am not alone in this matter: on the fence in front of the chapel, a shiny, contented cat sits and also squints in the sun. Kind, affectionate. It purrs when you scratch behind your ear. Wet almost to the waist, we go out onto a country road, and a slight happy fatigue carries us home along the sandy shore of Ust-Pocha, next to the silver water.
Adventures awaited us in the evening. I wrote to the park management: they wanted to order a boat to the southern part of Kenozero. It turned out that it is not easy to do it in a day! Local residents refused to take us, so such a "fate" went to the senior inspector of the park, Ivan Aleksandrovich. It turned out to be a good man, very correct - it is clear that he works at the right job. Even photography permission forced us to get everything right. And the park management and guides are very cool. For tourists, everything here is organized competently and well - and excursions, and parking, and houses, and hotels. Only, they say, if you are coming to us, write in advance, book places and excursions. The guys there are kind and helpful.
So we loaded into the boat, set sail. Waves on Kenozero today. The weather changes, it gets colder, splashes of northern water sometimes douse with a cold shower. We stopped at the Sacred Grove. A giant juniper grows here and there is a small neat chapel. It smells very delicious, and the juniper trees themselves go high into the sky, like cypresses!
But it's time to go to the south of the lake with a stop in the village of Tyryshkino. There are two chapels hidden in the ship forest. One of them, "Cross", is surprisingly tiny. To pray in it, you need to squat down. They say that this is one of the smallest chapels in Russia.
But the end point of our route is the village of Zekhnovo. Little has changed here since the 18th-19th centuries: there are rickety black houses on the shores of the picturesque bay of the lake. Ivan Alexandrovich drops us off on the sandy shore, on the equipped parking lot. Waving hand, we say goodbye. And the weather completely deteriorated: the sky was leaden, the wind, and most importantly, such a thump that mosquitoes instantly died out. For the first time, we do not hear the usual ringing and do not drive them out of the camera mount, and this is the only joyful thought that comes to mind so far, because we were left here to spend the night with only one tent, and the temperature dropped from 20 to 4 ° C by night.
It's raining, the dogs came running to bark and sniff us. Like their own - they are already wagging their tails. And we set sail from the parking lot to the most beautiful place of Zekhnov, for the sake of which we came - to the chapel. It is somehow very special, light, reminiscent of a boat that stands above the lake and is ready to go down to the water. The ark of Kenozero, which will save everyone.
By morning we were completely cold in the tent. We looked out - and the lake soars, as in winter. A strong wind breaks the steam and fog into shreds, carries away the heat, and grinds the water. At seven in the morning we waited for our inspector, but there was an idea that no one would come for us on such waves ... A cold shower for an hour - and we were on the ground. We dry, we dry feathers.
And this is the village of Karpovo near Vershinin, on the last day.
Remained the last evening at Kenozero. Of course, we spent it in our beloved Manor, enjoying the warm summer sunset, because when we were brought back home, the weather, as if by magic, became warm, summer again.
Yes, we stayed at Kenozero for only five days, but this place is so deeply sunk into the soul that I want to return here more than once. I highly recommend it for clearing the head of extraneous thoughts, mental relaxation and obtaining wonderful memories.
On the way from Kenozero we stopped at two villages: Arkhangelo and Morshchikhinskaya. In both ancient churches in the forests, in poor condition ... A sad sight, of course, especially under the northern lead clouds.
In fact, the park has one main road from the "civilization" in the form of Plesetsk or Kargopol, and there are no gas stations here, the nearest ones are just in these cities. From each of them to go to Vershinin about 100-150 km. We took with us a 50-liter canister filled to the brim with 92, but in fact, they say, private traders in Vershinin sell gasoline for 5 rubles more than in the city.
You won’t run into a lot of beauties on the roads, only in Vershinino and Ust-Pocha you can get there. To the most interesting distant places you need to sail on a boat.
The roads in the park are good everywhere, by Russian standards, but the section from Kargopol to Onega is very bad, you need to drive slowly along it.
Where can a photographer and a traveler go, go or swim in the beautiful Kenozero? Here is a list of places.
You can get by car to:
- Vershinin - here is the most beautiful Nikolskaya chapel, a harbor with boats;
- Karpova (not far from Vershinin, better on foot from the turn to Karpovo) - a beautiful chapel on a hillock above the lake;
- Myzy is a small village with a chapel near the Sacred Grove on an island beyond Ust-Pocha (to the north); you need to drive all over Ust-Pocha and stop in front of a flimsy footbridge to the island;
- Filippovskaya - beautiful village with the Pochozero temple complex, to which there is a good primer. The complex has been almost restored, it is surprisingly beautiful around it: on both sides there are a river and lakes, houses and summer grasses.
- There is also the southern, Kargopol part of the park, there is Lekshmozero with an interesting village of Morshchikhinskaya.
You can get by boat to:
- Glazov - in this article, probably, most of the photos are from there, this amazing place hooked me so much. Getting from Ust-Pocha is easy: talk to the locals, they will tell you and find a boat. You can stop by Ryzhkovo - also a beautiful chapel opposite Glazov. The locals are especially happy when you pour your own gasoline into their engine;
- Zechnova is the south of the lake; the chapel and the place itself are amazing. If you stopped at Kenozero for a short time and want to swim somewhere, this is the one. It is better to spend the night in a tent in the parking lot before dawn.
- Ask to be taken to Medvezhy, to the juniper grove. Further - a detour to Tyryshkino, where there is an amazing chapel "Cross", one of the smallest in Russia, and a large chapel in a dense forest in the Holy Grove.
- If you have time, you can go by boat to the village of Vedyagina and Gorbachykha, but we didn’t have time to go there.
- For those who are planning to travel in 2015: you can walk (8–12 km) from Gorbachykha to Porzhensky Pogost. Everyone highly recommends, but this year temple complex is under restoration, stands in the woods. The work will be completed in 2015.
The text has undergone minimal editing.
VERSHININO (Pogost, Vershinino, Shishkina, Mountains)
It is located in the northwestern corner of Kenoretsky reach on the peninsula.
It unites four villages: Pogost, Vershinino, Shishkina, Gory (on the diagram, Vershinino is located between the villages of Pogost and Shishkina, the village of Gory is located north of Shishkina on the banks of Kenozero).
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Office of the Plesetsk part of the Kenozersky Park (hotel on the 2nd floor).
Wooden chapel of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker with "heaven", late 18 - early. 19th centuries From the chapel there is a beautiful view of Kenozero.
Stone Assumption Church of the late 19th century. Is in the process of restoration.
In Vershinino, in addition to the St. Nicholas Chapel, there is another chapel of St. John the Evangelist - a very small one. It can be seen to the east of St. Nicholas Chapel (to the left of the road if you drive from Vershinino).
On the outskirts of Vershinino, behind the village of Shishkin, there is a "Sacred" grove associated with the pagan times of Ancient Russia. In the grove, too, there used to be the Tikhvin Chapel (not preserved), in its place there is a commemorative wooden cross. Nearby, local residents built a new Tikhvin chapel.
Memorial to the people who died in the Great Patriotic War.
Worship cross for those who died in the war, installed in 2003.
Visitor Center of the Park.
Museum "Junk barn", opened in 2006.
Museum of folk epos "In the Beginning was the Word", opened in August 2016.
Woodworker's workshop, opened in 2007.
Hephaestus Compound, opened in 2009
Kitovrasovo courtyard.
Memorial sign "Crossroads".
Cafe-bar (also known as the "Post Chase" tavern) - works for groups of guests by agreement.
Hotel "Inns".
O The main houses of the National Park and cultural heritage sites in Vershinino are shown on
layout
(from the guidebook of the Kenozero National Park)
Vershinino, of course, is not a village, but a settlement (or village), consisting of several villages located nearby and already merged into one village. At one time, small villages, of which there were many on Kenozero, were abolished, and residents were offered to move to Vershinino, Morshchikhinskaya, Ust-Pocha, or somewhere else. So the population of Vershinino increased markedly. Vershinino stretched along the shore of Kenozero from the Sacred Grove near Shishkino to a narrow strait connecting Kenozero with Long Lake. Below is a diagram of Vershinino (from the book by Yu.S. Ushakov), on which only three villages are visible, and the fourth - the Mountains - is located further behind Shishkino on the banks of Kenozero.
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The houses in the village are located so that they are protected by hills and nearby forests from strong northerly winds.
At the entrance to the village to the left of the road on the top of the hill there is a memorial to those who died in the Great Patriotic War "Hill of Glory". There are many familiar names, and how many of them are on this mournful list... In 2015, on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the Victory, the memorial was renovated and its territory landscaped.
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Village POGOST
Let's start from the farthest part of Vershinino - the village of Pogost.
Pogost village at the end of the 19th century was the center of the Vershininskaya volost of the Pudozh district. Ministers of stone churches lived in Pogost.
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Photo by N.Z.Antonov, 1967 |
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Assumption Church. |
Assumption Church. |
For more information about the church project and its authors, see
About Assumption Church -
more
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About the customs associated with the village of Pogost and the Assumption Church -
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In 30-50 years. 20th century the church was converted into a club, and later - a warehouse. The slender bell tower, five domes, iconostasis and interior decoration were lost.
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On the 20th of January 2017, the crosses for the cupolas of the cathedral were consecrated before they were installed on the roof of the church. In the summer of 2018, work was completed to cover the roofs of the temple part, the refectory and the altar. Restored chapters with drums and crosses. Next in line is the repair of walls and foundations, the restoration of interior decoration. There is a huge amount of work to recreate the bell tower.
Recently, the Assumption Church from the side of the Junk Barn looked like this (thanks to O. Chepurov for the photo): Below are two photographs of the Assumption Church, taken in August 2018. As you can see, the cupolas are already in place, the walls are being repaired, the foundations are being repaired and strengthened, and the bell tower is being prepared for reconstruction. According to a message on the KNP website dated July 25, 2019, in the interests of the parishioners, the church was connected to the local power supply network.
In 2005, during the renovation of the church, a sub-altar cross with inscriptions about the initial consecration of the church was found under the floor. More about the cross -
Several times a year (the Annunciation on March 25, Epiphany on January 6, Petrov Day on June 29 and Pokrov Day on October 1) several times a year, auctions and fairs were held, and since 1857, the Annunciation Fair was officially established on March 25-28.
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According to N.V. Izhikova , in Vershinino on the Kenozersky churchyard, the feast of the Holy Trinity (Trinity Torzhok) and the Day of Sts. Apostles Peter and Paul, i.e. Peter's Day (Peter and Paul Torzhok - June 29).
But the patronal feast for the village of Pogost was the day of August 28 - the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Therefore, in last years On the Kenozero coast between Pogost and Vershinino, the Assumption Fair is held on the 20th of August (on Sunday).
Now the village of Pogost is a fairly populated part of Vershinino. Here are the library. A.N. Nechaeva, shop.
Village VERSHININO
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The name "Vershinino" for the village was first encountered no earlier than the 18th century.
At the bottom in the center of the frame on a high hill is a visible from afar Chapel of Nicholas the Wonderworker late XVIII-early XIX century, which has become a symbol of the Kenozero National Park.
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Near the hill is the Visitor Center of the Plesetsk sector of the Park, located in the modern house of the merchant Kozhevnikov. In the XVIII century, as it became known recently, there was a post office here.
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In the village of Vershinino - the administrative center of the Plesetsk sector of the Park, an exposition was created "Kenozerye. Chronicles of the Memorable and Ordinary». The exposition dedicated to the history of Kenozero at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 21st centuries is built on the basis of memoirs local residents and photographs from family archives. The 20th century is one of the most difficult and controversial periods in the country's history. Kenozers themselves tell about this in the exposition.
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In the Woodworker's Workshop, you can see tools for woodworking, samples of finished products, such as architraves, options for assembling logs into a log house, and much more.
In the Hephaestus Compound, examples of blacksmithing, which local blacksmiths were famous for, are exhibited.
The third barn housed the exhibition "Kitovrasovo Compound", dedicated to pottery. The name of the museum comes from information about the potters of the village who created figurines depicting ancient mythical whale races, half-humans, half-horses. The museum presents reconstructed vessels modeled on pit-comb ceramics of the 3rd-4th centuries BC, Kitovras figures made by the famous Kargopol master Valentin Shevelev and the potter of the Kenozero National Park Elena Kalitina. Valuable exhibits of the "Kitovrasov Compound" are a hand-made potter's wheel and a model that recreates the process of manufacturing and firing archaic ceramics, dishes made by Karpov masters.
Since 2013, a new hotel of the Park "Postoyaly Dvor" has been operating in the village (photo from the newspaper "Kenozerye", No. 3-4, 2012).
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The author of the worship cross is V.A.Titov with the participation of art critic T.M.Koltsova. The frame for the worship cross was made by S.P. Anikiev. The carving on the bow cross was made by P. Bakharev" (N.A. Makarov). museum fund Kenozersky park. In addition to household items and products of local art crafts, you can see painted boards of "heavens" from various chapels that are in storage. There is also a pottery workshop here. See photos of exhibits.
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A brand new tourist facility in Vershinino -
commemorative sign "Crossroads", opened on August 21, 2016 at the initiative of the Postal Service Branch in the Arkhangelsk Region. to the 25th anniversary of the Kenozero National Park. We don't have a decent photo of the object yet.There was one more object for viewing in Vershinino - the photo exhibition "Forbidden Kenozerye". It was placed on the artillery fence surrounding the fire and forest station. On the open stands there are excellent park photographs taken by Igor Shpilenok, Konstantin Kokoshkin, Vadim Shtrik and other masters.
In the Holy Grove there was a wooden Tikhvin chapel of the 19th century. It looked like a forest hut and was brought here from the already non-existent village of Scheinik (according to other sources, from the village of Glushchevo). On the day of the Tikhvin Icon of the Mother of God (July 9), the inhabitants walked around all the surrounding fields and lands in a procession, and performed prayers for the blessing of water on the shore of the lake. |
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Tikhvin chapel. Photo from G. Gunn's book |
Memorial cross in place |
In 2006-2007, a new Tikhvin chapel was built next to the cross by local residents.
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New Tikhvin chapel. Photo 2010 |
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And below - the new building Vershinino. In the house that until recently stood on this site, as it recently turned out, at the beginning of the twentieth century. A.F. Gilferding stopped when he collected and recorded songs and epics. Here is a photograph of this house in 1927 (from the Park archive).
The Folk Epic Museum opened on August 21, 2016, as the completion of the events for the 25th anniversary of the creation of the Kenozero National Park. In the halls of the museum there are more than 600 items from the collection of the museum fund of the Federal State Budgetary Institution “National Park “Kenozersky” icons, peasant household items, books, manuscripts, photographs. The exposition includes manuscripts of peasant incantations, field recordings of epics by folklorists, photographs of Kenozero performers from the family archives of Kenozero residents and personal collections of researchers.
During the 2019 season, about 2,000 people visited it.
Ninth-grader Sabina Podosenov from the village of Vershinino, Plesetsk district, became the winner of the competition "The Best Guide of Russia" in the nomination "The Best Guide under 18"
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Information about the opening of the museum - in Park's press release .
Notes:
1. For more information about Vershinino, see the thematic selection
Vershinino.
2. All photos taken in Vershinino and placed in different places on the site (not borrowed) can be viewed .
3. Map at the top of the page - with LiveJournal vita_colotrata.
3. The page uses information from short guide in the Kenozero park, from the books by Yu.M.
4. About fishing in Kenozero, see .
Most recently, at the end of June 2012, I was lucky enough to visit the Kenozero National Park. A few days spent in the northern part of the park were not enough to see all the beauty of these places, but this time was enough to fall in love with this region once and for all, to feel the special nature of the life of its inhabitants and the secret kept by the "holy" groves.
I will begin my story from the village of Vershinino, the center of the northern sector of Kenozersky Park.
Vershinino is the center of the Plesetsk sector, it is here that the park office, guest houses and shops are located. "Kenozero. This is how the locals speak,” the administration immediately explained, and we are trying to get used to the correct and unusual pronunciation. We immediately notice the special dialect of the locals: their very fast speech with a slight pressure on the letter “o”.
- The symbol of Kenozero is the Nikolskaya chapel located here, on top of a high hill. Its exact age is unknown, but it is known that it existed long before 1846.
- At the beginning of the 20th century, the chapel stood without a bell tower; it was added a little later, completing the slender image
- In the 80s of the last century, the St. Nicholas Chapel fell into a sad state.
- After the formation of the Kenozero National Park in 1991, the chapel was restored by the joint efforts of Russian and Norwegian restorers. The restoration took 2 years.
- In 1998 the chapel was consecrated by Bishop Tikhon of Arkhangelsk and Kholmogory. Since then, on certain Sundays and patronal holidays, a priest comes to Vershinino to serve in the chapel. The rest of the time, all visiting tourists, sightseers and just relatives can get into the chapel through the Park Office, where the keys to the chapel are kept.
- Not less than beautiful view on the chapel of St. Nicholas opens from the lake. It crowns the top of the hill, under which the houses of the village of Vershinino stand.
- An unforgettable view of Kenozero opens from the chapel. In the distance, you can see numerous islands and rugged shores of the lake.
- In Vershinino, almost every resident has a motorboat. The boat is the main mode of transport, since there are only roads between large villages. They fish on boats, carry tourists, and go to visit each other in neighboring villages. All boats have powerful motors, so the distances on the lake are rather long (20 km one way is a common route), and waves and headwinds diligently interfere with movement.
- On the top of the hill (see where the name Vershinino came from) horses graze at night. They lie, half asleep, in the tall grass, and all around is the sound of the wind and the vast expanses of the lake.
- Seeing me, the horses woke up
- Many residents have vegetable gardens where they plant potatoes.
- Locals love to decorate their windows with geraniums.
- Inside the Nikolskaya chapel.
- In 1997, the restored heavens were returned to the chapel. Heaven is a special type of ceiling covering in the wooden churches of the Russian North. There are various subjects in the paintings of the Kenozero "heavens". There are heavens depicting the Archangels (Pakhomievsky chapel in the village of Karpovo, John the Theologian in Zikhnovo, etc.), the Apostles (Vvedenskaya chapel in the village of Ryzhkovo, the Three Hierarchs in the village of Nemyata, etc.), there are mixed subjects.
These unique examples of monumental painting in wooden temples have been preserved here in the form of a collection that has no analogues in the world.
16 "heavens" - such is the collection of "heavens" of the Kenozero National Park - the largest in Russia.
"There's a Russian spirit ... there it smells of Russia!" I can’t even remember the best words to describe one of the most interesting and original national parks in Russia - Kenozero. A piece of Russia... mmm... real? I don’t know what Russia really was, but it seems to me that it was exactly the same as in Vershinino and other surrounding villages in this lake-forest region. An island of conserved life, untouched by the transformations of the post-Soviet nation. A living history, illuminated by Orthodox crosses on rickety wooden domes and night flashes of ballistic missiles.
Leave your cell phone, everyone who enters here ...
It is not difficult to get to the Kenozero National Park, lost in the Arkhangelsk forests. You just need to take a train in Moscow or St. Petersburg to Arkhangelsk and get off at Nyandoma station. Then by regular buses Nyandoma - Kargopol, Kargopol - Morshchikhinskaya, or by taxi. Travel time is about 3 hours. If you have a car, then just put a dot in the navigator in the village of Vershinino and enjoy the road like we did. You definitely won't be bored. Picturesque wooden bridges, ancient churches, pontoon crossings across the Onega, like the one that awaits you in Voznesenskaya.
Only one bridge across the Kena River in the village of Izmailovskaya is worth something.
Pyatnitskaya church of the Kenoretsky churchyard. In every word - Russia. Do you know what the word "pogost" means? No, it's not at all what you always thought. This is an administrative-territorial unit in Russia, which was introduced by Princess Olga. The graveyard was a stopping place for the prince and his squad during the collection of tribute from the Novgorodians, a kind of inn, from the word visit. Later, the churchyard began to designate a village with a parish church and a cemetery attached to it. And only after that the significance of the churchyard as a rural cemetery appeared.
A long dirt road winding through the taiga forest finally leads to civilization. The village of Vershinino is the main transit point for everyone who comes to Kenozerye.
Here you can stay in one of these guest houses. Sauna in the yard, water in the lake, firewood in the hallway.
The water, by the way, is brown from peat. She's all in the lake. The locals drink it like this. We boiled it, but the color remained the same - ready tea. By the way, very tasty.
In Vershinino, on a hill near the lake, there is a wooden Nikolskaya chapel.
The painting of the "heavens" of the chapel was made by the icon painter Fyodor Zakharovich Iok in the period of the 19th-20th centuries.
In Vershinino, the most colorful performance "Kenozerskaya Evening" is periodically arranged for guests. Songs and ditties performed by an original folklore group, consisting of local residents and accordionist Alexei Tryapitsyn, the protagonist of Andrei Konchalovsky's film "White Nights of the Postman Tryapitsyn", completely immerse in the atmosphere of that "terry" Russia.
And yes, this is exactly the same Alexey Tryapitsyn, if you watched the movie. A film about real life in the Russian outback, without embellishment.
"White Nights..." received the main director's award "Silver Lion" at the 71st Venice Film Festival in 2014. Aleksey Tryapitsyn still works as a postman, connecting all the villages of Kenozero.
Many of them can only be reached by water. In some of them there are practically no inhabitants left. When reading about these villages on WiKi, you will often see lines like: "According to the All-Russian population census of 2010, 0 people lived in the village of Sysova."
The main transport of the inhabitants of Kenozero is a motor boat. There is nowhere without her. The theft of a boat motor from Tryapitsyn became the main storyline of the film.
It doesn't matter what kind of boat you have, what matters is the engine.
This is how a team of journalists from St. Petersburg and Moscow, united with the team of our expedition "To the North!", moved from one village to another.
An unforgettable trip around the lake was organized for us by Anastasia Skrebtsova, Deputy Director of the Park for environmental education and tourism development. True, at present Nastya is already working in another national park - the Curonian Spit :)
First stop in the village of Zechnova.
The history of the village begins in the 16th century, when, according to one of the legends, the first inhabitant, Zeh, settled here.
One of the filming locations.
In the center of the village is the chapel of the Apostle John the Theologian, built at the end of the 18th century on the slope of a high hill - "Buy-gora". This is the only chapel in the Arkhangelsk region with a gallery on consoles.
Artists are frequent guests of these places.
A “holy” grove once grew near the chapel, from which several old “cherished” firs and a pine tree have survived to this day, where God accepted covenants, i.e. requests (usually for healing).
For many centuries, the inhabitants of the village of Zechnova lived by subsistence farming, providing themselves with everything they needed. Now there is almost no one left here - only summer residents come for the season, and a couple of grandmothers.
The main occupations are agriculture, animal husbandry, logging, and fishing.
At the end of the 19th century, at the intersection of the Bezymyanny stream and the road leading from the village of Zekhnova to the village of Spitsyno, a water mill was built - the “upper mill”.
For the operation of the mill, a stream of water was needed, so a water-conducting channel was dug manually - a digger 390 meters long. The villagers constantly monitored the health of the mill and the dam.
In the late 1970s, the mill fell into disrepair. In the late 1990s, its restoration began, which ended in 2008.
And yet she turns around.
The next village - Tyryshkino - is one of the most picturesque places on Kenozero. The name of the village is apparently associated with the first Russian settlers in the region. In the Novgorod region and in the Zaonezhsky churchyards, they were called "taryshki" in the 16th - 17th centuries. service people of middle rank - prosperity, among them there were archers and serfs, peasants and deacons, beans, artisans and scribes. They apparently founded the village.
The local population of Tyryshkino worked in the fields in the Pudozh district, in Olonets, St. Petersburg and other cities. From there, artistic techniques for decorating houses were brought by Kenozero masters. One of these houses is located on the highest point of the hill, which offers the best view in the area. The peasant Maximov tried to decorate his house with carvings in a special way - this is how the House with a carved balcony was born.
The roadside chapel, called the Cross, is so small that only one person can fit inside, and then on their knees. The chapel is considered the smallest in Russia.
The chapel of Paraskeva Pyatnitsa is located in the same place, not far from the Cross, hidden by thick fir paws.
There are not so many places left in Russia where cultural and natural heritage would have been preserved in the most complete and multifaceted way. One of these places is undoubtedly Kenozero. national park, one of the last islands of the primordially Russian way of life, culture, traditions, which has preserved the richness and purity of its inner world, turned to the origins.
Once a publicist for the BBC Russian Service, Vladimir Pastukhov, spoke about Konchalovsky's film:
“The conventional wisdom is that Konchalovsky made a film about the Russian village. In fact, he made a film about Russia in general. Because the whole of Russia, in his opinion, was and remains a village in ethical and humanitarian terms, despite all its cosmodromes and rockets. Moreover, in recent decades, the rural mentality has only strengthened its position in it. According to Konchalovsky, the Russian world is a peasant world with all its pluses and minuses. So it was four hundred years ago, and so it continues to be today.
Wooden Russia has not disappeared anywhere - it has remained inside us.