Page 2 of 6

The snipe, a small gray bird with a nose as long as a flattened hairpin, rolls through the air like a wild lamb. It seems like “alive, alive!” cries the curlew sandpiper. The black grouse is somewhere muttering and chuffing. The white partridge, like a witch, is laughing.
We, hunters, have long, since our childhood, distinguished, and rejoiced, and understand well what word they are all working on and cannot say. That is why, when we come to the forest in early spring at dawn and hear it, we will tell them, as people, this word:
- Hello!
And it’s as if they will then also be delighted, as if they will then also pick up the wonderful word that has flown from the human tongue.
And they quack in response, and snort, and squawk, and squawk, trying to answer us with all their voices:
- Hello, hello, hello!
But among all these sounds, one burst out, unlike anything else.
- Do you hear? - asked Mitrasha.
- How can you not hear! - Nastya answered. “I’ve been hearing it for a long time, and it’s somehow scary.”
- There's nothing wrong with it! My father told me and showed me: this is how a hare screams in the spring.
- What for?
- Father said: he shouts “Hello, bunny!”
- What is that noise?
- Father said it was the bittern, the water bull, whooping.
- Why is he hooting?
- My father said that he also has his own girlfriend, and in his own way he also says to her, like everyone else: “Hello, Vypikha.”
And suddenly it became fresh and cheerful, as if the whole earth had washed at once, and the sky lit up, and all the trees smelled of their bark and buds. Then, as if above all the sounds, a special, triumphant cry broke out, flew out and covered everything, similar, as if all people joyfully in harmonious agreement could shout:
- Victory, victory!
- What is this? - asked the delighted Nastya.
- Father said this is how cranes greet the sun. This means that the sun will rise soon.
But the sun had not yet risen when the hunters for sweet cranberries descended into a large swamp. The celebration of meeting the sun had not yet begun here. A night blanket hung over the small gnarled fir-trees and birches like a gray haze and muffled all the wonderful sounds of the Belling Borina. Only a painful, painful and joyless howl was heard here.
Nastenka shrank all over from the cold, and in the dampness of the swamp the sharp, stupefying smell of wild rosemary reached her. The Golden Hen on her high legs felt small and weak in front of this inevitable force of death.
“What is this, Mitrasha,” Nastenka asked, shuddering, “howling so terribly in the distance?”
“Father said,” answered Mitrasha, “it’s the wolves howling on the Sukhaya River, and probably now it’s the Gray Landowner wolf howling.” Father said that all the wolves on the Sukhaya River were killed, but it was impossible to kill Gray.
- So why is he howling terribly now?
- Father said that wolves howl in the spring because they now have nothing to eat. And Gray is still left alone, so he howls.
The marsh dampness seemed to penetrate through the body to the bones and chill them. And I really didn’t want to go even lower into the damp, muddy swamp!
-Where are we going to go? - asked Nastya.
Mitrasha took out a compass, set the north and, pointing to a weaker path going north, said:
- We will go north along this path.
“No,” Nastya answered, “we will go along this big path where all the people go.” Father told us, do you remember what a terrible place this is - Blind Elan, how many people and livestock died in it. No, no, Mitrashenka, we won’t go there. Everyone goes in this direction, which means cranberries grow there.
- You understand a lot! - the hunter interrupted her - We will go to the north, as my father said, there is a Palestinian place where no one has ever been.
Nastya, noticing that her brother was starting to get angry, suddenly smiled and stroked him on the back of his head. Mitrasha immediately calmed down, and the friends walked along the path indicated by the arrow, now no longer side by side, as before, but one after another, in single file.

IV
About two hundred years ago, the sowing wind brought two seeds to the Bludovo swamp: a pine seed and a spruce seed. Both seeds fell into one hole near a large flat stone... Since then, perhaps two hundred years ago, these spruce and pine trees have been growing together. Their roots were intertwined from an early age, their trunks stretched upward side by side towards the light, trying to overtake each other. Trees of different species fought terribly among themselves with their roots for food, and with their branches for air and light. Rising higher and higher, thickening their trunks, they dug dry branches into living trunks and in some places pierced each other through and through. The evil wind, having given the trees such a miserable life, sometimes flew here to shake them. And then the trees moaned and howled throughout the Bludovo swamp, like living beings. It was so similar to the moaning and howling of living creatures that the fox, curled up into a ball on a moss hummock, raised its sharp muzzle upward. This groan and howl of pine and spruce was so close to living beings that the wild dog in the Bludov swamp, hearing it, howled with longing for the man, and the wolf howled with inescapable anger towards him.
The children came here, to the Lying Stone, at the very time when the first rays of the sun, flying over the low, gnarled swamp fir trees and birches, illuminated the Sounding Borina and the mighty trunks of the pine forest became like the lit candles of a great temple of nature. From there, here, to this flat stone, where the children sat down to rest, the singing of birds, dedicated to the rising of the great sun, could faintly reach. And the light rays flying over the children’s heads were not yet warming. The swampy ground was all chilled, small puddles were covered with white ice.
It was completely quiet in nature, and the children, frozen, were so quiet that the black grouse Kosach did not pay any attention to them. He sat down at the very top, where pine and spruce branches formed like a bridge between two trees. Having settled down on this bridge, quite wide for him, closer to the spruce, Kosach seemed to begin to bloom in the rays of the rising sun. The comb on his head lit up with a fiery flower. His chest, blue in the depths of black, began to shimmer from blue to green. And his iridescent, lyre-spread tail became especially beautiful. Seeing the sun above the miserable swamp fir trees, he suddenly jumped up on his high bridge, showed his cleanest white linen of undertail and underwings and shouted:
- Chuf! Shi!
In grouse, “chuf” most likely meant “sun,” and “shi” probably was their “hello.”
In response to this first snort of the Current Kosach, the same snort with the flapping of wings was heard far throughout the swamp, and soon dozens of large birds, like two peas in a pod similar to Kosach, began to fly here from all sides and land near the Lying Stone.
The children sat with bated breath on the cold stone, waiting for the rays of the sun to come to them and warm them up at least a little. And then the first ray, gliding over the tops of the nearest, very small Christmas trees, finally began to play on the children’s cheeks. Then the upper Kosach, greeting the sun, stopped jumping and chuffing. He sat down low on the bridge at the top of the tree, stretched his long neck along the branch and began a long song, similar to the babbling of a brook. In response to him, somewhere nearby, dozens of the same birds sitting on the ground, each also a rooster, stretched out their necks and began to sing the same song. And then, as if a rather large stream was already muttering, it ran over the invisible pebbles.
How many times have we, hunters, waited until the dark morning, listened in awe to this singing at the chilly dawn, trying in our own way to understand what the roosters were crowing about. And when we repeated their mutterings in our own way, what came out was:
Cool feathers
Ur-gur-gu,
Cool feathers
I'll cut it off.
So the black grouse muttered in unison, intending to fight at the same time. And while they were muttering like that, a small event happened in the depths of the dense spruce crown. There a crow was sitting on a nest and was hiding there all the time from Kosach, who was mating almost right next to the nest. The crow would very much like to drive Kosach away, but she was afraid to leave the nest and let her eggs cool in the morning frost. The male raven guarding the nest was making its flight at that time and, probably having encountered something suspicious, paused. The crow, waiting for the male, lay down in the nest, was quieter than water, lower than the grass. And suddenly, seeing the male flying back, she shouted:
- Kra!
This meant to her:
“Help me!”
- Kra! - the male answered in the direction of the current, in the sense that it is still unknown who will tear off whose cool feathers.
The male, immediately understanding what was going on, went down and sat down on the same bridge, near the Christmas tree, right next to the nest where Kosach was mating, only closer to the pine tree, and began to wait.
At this time, Kosach, not paying any attention to the male crow, called out his words, known to all hunters:
- Kar-ker-cake!
And this was the signal for a general fight of all the displaying roosters. Well, cool feathers flew in all directions! And then, as if on the same signal, the male crow, with small steps along the bridge, imperceptibly began to approach Kosach.
The hunters for sweet cranberries sat motionless, like statues, on a stone. The sun, so hot and clear, came out against them over the swamp fir trees. But at that time one cloud happened in the sky. It appeared like a cold blue arrow and crossed the rising sun in half. At the same time, the wind suddenly blew, the tree pressed against the pine tree, and the pine tree groaned. The wind blew again, and then the pine tree pressed, and the spruce growled.
At this time, having rested on a stone and warmed up in the rays of the sun, Nastya and Mitrasha stood up to continue their journey. But right at the stone, a rather wide swamp path diverged like a fork: one, good, dense, path went to the right, the other, weak, went straight.
Having checked the direction of the trails with a compass, Mitrasha, pointing to a weak trail, said:
- We need to follow this one to the north.
- This is not a path! - Nastya answered.
- Here's another! - Mitrasha got angry. - People were walking, so there was a path. We need to go north. Let's go and don't talk anymore.
Nastya was offended to obey the younger Mitrasha.
- Kra! - shouted the crow in the nest at that time.
And her male ran in small steps closer to Kosach, halfway across the bridge.
The second steep blue arrow crossed the sun, and a gray gloom began to approach from above. The Golden Hen gathered her strength and tried to persuade her friend.
“Look,” she said, “how dense my path is, all the people walk here.” Are we really smarter than everyone else?
“Let all people walk,” the stubborn Little Man in the Bag decisively answered. - We must follow the arrow, as our father taught us, to the north, to the Palestinians.
“Father told us fairy tales, he joked with us,” said Nastya, “and, probably, there are no Palestinians in the north at all.” It will be very stupid for us to follow the arrow - we will end up not in Palestine, but in the very Blind Elan.
“Okay,” Mitrash turned sharply, “I won’t argue with you anymore: you go along your path, where all the women go for cranberries, but I’ll go on my own, along my path, to the north.”
And in fact he went there without thinking about the cranberry basket or the food.
Nastya should have reminded him of this, but she was so angry that, all red as red, she spat after him and followed the cranberries along the common path.
- Kra! - the crow screamed.
And the male quickly ran across the bridge the rest of the way to Kosach and fucked him with all his might. As if scalded, Kosach rushed towards the flying black grouse, but the angry male caught up with him, pulled him out, threw a bunch of white and rainbow feathers through the air and chased him far away.
Then the gray darkness moved in tightly and covered the entire sun, with all its life-giving rays. The evil wind blew very sharply. The trees intertwined with roots, piercing each other with branches, growled, howled, and groaned throughout the Bludovo swamp.

Page 1 of 3

I

In one village, near the Bludov swamp, near the city of Pereslavl-Zalessky, two children were orphaned. Their mother died of illness, their father died in the Patriotic War.

We lived in this village just one house away from the children. And, of course, we, along with other neighbors, tried to help them as best we could. They were very nice. Nastya was like a golden hen on high legs. Her hair, neither dark nor light, shimmered with gold, the freckles all over her face were large, like gold coins, and frequent, and they were cramped, and they climbed in all directions. Only one nose was clean and looked up like a parrot.

Mitrasha was two years younger than his sister. He was only about ten years old. He was short, but very dense, with a broad forehead and a wide nape. He was a stubborn and strong boy.

“The little man in the bag,” the teachers at school called him smiling among themselves.

The little man in the bag, like Nastya, was covered in golden freckles, and his clean nose, like his sister’s, looked up like a parrot.

After their parents, their entire peasant farm went to their children: a five-walled hut, a cow Zorka, a heifer Dochka, a goat Dereza, nameless sheep, chickens, a golden rooster Petya and a piglet Horseradish.

Along with this wealth, however, the poor children also received great care for all these living beings. But did our children cope with such a misfortune during the difficult years of the Patriotic War! At first, as we have already said, their distant relatives and all of us neighbors came to help the children. But very soon the smart and friendly guys learned everything themselves and began to live well.

And what smart kids they were! Whenever possible, they joined in social work. Their noses could be seen on collective farm fields, in meadows, in barnyards, at meetings, in anti-tank ditches: their noses were so perky.

In this village, although we were newcomers, we knew well the life of every house. And now we can say: there was not a single house where they lived and worked as friendly as our favorites lived.

Just like her late mother, Nastya got up far before the sun, in the predawn hour, along the shepherd's chimney. With a twig in her hand, she drove out her beloved herd and rolled back to the hut. Without going to bed again, she lit the stove, peeled potatoes, made dinner, and so busied herself with the housework until nightfall.

Mitrasha learned from his father how to make wooden utensils: barrels, gangs, tubs. He has a jointer that is more than twice his height. And with this ladle he adjusts the planks one to another, folds them and supports them with iron or wooden hoops.

With a cow, there was no such need for two children to sell wooden utensils at the market, but good people ask for someone who needs a bowl for the washbasin, someone who needs a barrel for dripping, someone who needs a tub of pickles for cucumbers or mushrooms, or even a simple vessel with scallops - homemade plant a flower.

He will do it, and then he will also be repaid with kindness. But, in addition to cooperage, he is responsible for the entire male household and public affairs. He attends all meetings, tries to understand public concerns and, probably, realizes something.

It’s very good that Nastya is two years older than her brother, otherwise he would certainly become arrogant, and in their friendship they would not have the wonderful equality they have now. It happens that now Mitrasha will remember how his father taught his mother, and, imitating his father, will also decide to teach his sister Nastya. But my sister doesn’t listen much, she stands and smiles... Then the Little Man in the Bag begins to get angry and swagger and always says with his nose in the air:

- Here's another!

- Why are you showing off? - my sister objects.

- Here's another! - the brother is angry. – You, Nastya, swagger yourself.

- No, it's you!

- Here's another!

So, having tormented her obstinate brother, Nastya strokes him on the back of his head, and as soon as her sister’s small hand touches her brother’s wide back of his head, her father’s enthusiasm leaves the owner.

“Let’s weed together,” the sister will say.

And the brother also begins to weed cucumbers, or hoe beets, or plant potatoes.

Yes, it was very, very difficult for everyone during the Patriotic War, so difficult that, probably, it has never happened in the whole world. So the children had to endure a lot of all sorts of worries, failures, and disappointments. But their friendship overcame everything, they lived well. And again we can firmly say: in the entire village no one had such friendship as Mitrash and Nastya Veselkin lived with each other. And we think, perhaps, it was this grief for their parents that united the orphans so closely.

II

The sour and very healthy cranberry berry grows in swamps in the summer and is harvested in late autumn. But not everyone knows that the best cranberries, the sweetest ones, as we say, happen when they have spent the winter under the snow.

These spring dark red cranberries float in our pots along with beets and drink tea with them as with sugar. Those who don’t have sugar beets drink tea with only cranberries. We tried it ourselves - and it’s okay, you can drink it: sour replaces sweet and is very good on hot days. And what a wonderful jelly made from sweet cranberries, what a fruit drink! And among our people, this cranberry is considered a healing medicine for all diseases.

This spring, there was still snow in the dense spruce forests at the end of April, but in the swamps it is always much warmer: there was no snow there at that time at all. Having learned about this from people, Mitrasha and Nastya began to gather for cranberries. Even before daylight, Nastya gave food to all her animals. Mitrash took his father’s double-barreled Tulka shotgun, decoys for hazel grouse, and did not forget the compass. It used to be that his father, going into the forest, would never forget this compass. More than once Mitrash asked his father:

“You’ve been walking through the forest all your life, and you know the whole forest like the palm of your hand.” Why else do you need this arrow?

“You see, Dmitry Pavlovich,” answered the father, “in the forest this arrow is kinder to you than your mother: sometimes the sky will be covered with clouds, and you cannot decide by the sun in the forest; if you go at random, you will make a mistake, you will get lost, you will go hungry.” Then just look at the arrow - and it will show you where your home is. You go straight home along the arrow, and they will feed you there. This arrow is more faithful to you than a friend: sometimes your friend will cheat on you, but the arrow invariably always, no matter how you turn it, always looks north.

Having examined the wonderful thing, Mitrash locked the compass so that the needle would not tremble in vain along the way. He carefully, like a father, wrapped footcloths around his feet, tucked them into his boots, and put on a cap so old that its visor split in two: the upper leather crust rode up above the sun, and the lower one went down almost to the very nose. Mitrash dressed in his father’s old jacket, or rather in a collar connecting stripes of once good homespun fabric. The boy tied these stripes on his tummy with a sash, and his father's jacket sat on him like a coat, right down to the ground. The hunter’s son also tucked an ax into his belt, hung a bag with a compass on his right shoulder, a double-barreled Tulka on his left, and thus became terribly scary for all birds and animals.

Nastya, starting to get ready, hung a large basket over her shoulder on a towel.

- Why do you need a towel? – asked Mitrasha.

“But of course,” Nastya answered. – Don’t you remember how mom went to pick mushrooms?

- For mushrooms! You understand a lot: there are a lot of mushrooms, so it hurts your shoulder.

“And maybe we’ll have even more cranberries.”

And just when Mitrash wanted to say “here’s another!”, he remembered what his father had said about cranberries when they were preparing him for war.

“You remember this,” Mitrasha said to his sister, “how father told us about cranberries, that there is a Palestinian in the forest...

“I remember,” Nastya answered, “he said about cranberries that he knew a place and the cranberries there were crumbling, but I don’t know what he said about some Palestinian woman.” I also remember talking about the terrible place Blind Elan.

“There, near Yelani, there is a Palestinian,” said Mitrasha. “Father said: go to the High Mane and after that keep to the north, and when you cross the Zvonkaya Borina, keep everything straight to the north and you will see - there a Palestinian woman will come to you, all red as blood, from just cranberries. No one has ever been to this Palestinian land!

Mitrasha said this already at the door. During the story, Nastya remembered: she had a whole, untouched pot of boiled potatoes left from yesterday. Forgetting about the Palestinian woman, she quietly snuck over to the rack and dumped the entire cast iron into the basket.

“Maybe we’ll get lost,” she thought. “We’ve got enough bread, a bottle of milk, and potatoes might also come in handy.”

And at this time the brother, thinking that his sister was still standing behind him, told her about the wonderful Palestinian woman and that, however, on the way to her there was a Blind Elan, where many people, cows, and horses died.

- Well, what kind of Palestinian is this? – Nastya asked.

- So you didn’t hear anything?! - he grabbed. And he patiently repeated to her, as he walked, everything that he had heard from his father about a Palestinian land unknown to anyone, where sweet cranberries grow.

III

The Bludovo swamp, where we ourselves wandered more than once, began, as a large swamp almost always begins, with an impenetrable thicket of willow, alder and other shrubs. The first person passed this pribolotitsa with an ax in his hand and cut down a passage for other people. The hummocks settled under human feet, and the path became a groove along which water flowed. The children crossed this marshy area in the pre-dawn darkness without much difficulty. And when the bushes stopped obscuring the view ahead, at the first morning light the swamp opened up to them, like the sea. And yet, it was the same, this Bludovo swamp, the bottom of the ancient sea. And just as there, in the real sea, there are islands, just as there are oases in deserts, so there are hills in swamps. In the Bludov swamp, these sandy hills covered with high forest are called Borins. After walking a little through the swamp, the children climbed the first hill, known as the High Mane. From here, from a high bald patch, Borina Zvonkaya could be barely visible in the gray haze of the first dawn.

Even before reaching Zvonkaya Borina, almost right next to the path, individual blood-red berries began to appear. Cranberry hunters initially put these berries in their mouths. Anyone who has never tasted autumn cranberries in their life and would have immediately had enough of spring ones would have taken their breath away from the acid. But the village orphans knew well what autumn cranberries were, and therefore, when they now ate spring ones, they repeated:

- So sweet!

Borina Zvonkaya willingly opened up her wide clearing to the children, which even now, in April, was covered with dark green lingonberry grass. Among this greenery of last year, here and there new flowers of white snowdrop and purple, small, frequent, and fragrant flowers of wolf's bast could be seen.

“They smell good, try it, pick a flower of wolf bast,” said Mitrasha.

Nastya tried to break the twig of the stem and could not do it.

- Why is this bast called a wolf’s? – she asked.

“Father said,” the brother answered, “the wolves weave baskets out of it.”

And he laughed.

-Are there still wolves here?

- Well, of course! Father said there is a terrible wolf here, the Gray Landowner.

- I remember. The same one who slaughtered our herd before the war.

– Father said: he now lives on the Sukhaya River in the rubble.

– He won’t touch you and me?

“Let him try,” answered the hunter with a double visor.

While the children were talking like this and the morning was moving closer and closer to dawn, Borina Zvonkaya was filled with bird songs, howls, moans and cries of animals. Not all of them were here, on Borina, but from the swamp, damp, deaf, all the sounds gathered here. Borina with the forest, pine and sonorous on dry land, responded to everything.

But the poor birds and little animals, how they all suffered, trying to pronounce some common, one beautiful word! And even children, as simple as Nastya and Mitrasha, understood their effort. They all wanted to say just one beautiful word.

You can see how the bird sings on the branch, and every feather trembles with effort. But still, they cannot say words like we do, and they have to sing, shout, and tap.

“Tek-tek,” a huge bird, the Capercaillie, taps barely audibly in the dark forest.

- Shvark-shwark! – The Wild Drake flew in the air over the river.

- Quack-quack! - wild duck Mallard on the lake.

- Gu-gu-gu, - a red bird, the Bullfinch, on a birch tree.

The snipe, a small gray bird with a long nose like a flattened hairpin, rolls through the air like a wild lamb. It seems like “alive, alive!” cries the curlew sandpiper. A black grouse is muttering and chuffing somewhere. White Partridge laughs like a witch.

We, hunters, have been hearing these sounds for a long time, since our childhood, and we know them, and we distinguish them, and we rejoice, and we understand well what word they are all working on and cannot say. That is why, when we come to the forest at dawn and hear it, we will tell them, as people, this word:

- Hello!

And as if then they, too, would be delighted, as if then they, too, would all pick up the wonderful word that had flown from the human tongue.

And they quack in response, and squawk, and squabble, and squabble, trying to answer us with all these voices:

- Hello, hello, hello!

But among all these sounds, one burst out, unlike anything else.

– Do you hear? – asked Mitrasha.

- How can you not hear! – Nastya answered. “I’ve been hearing it for a long time, and it’s somehow scary.”

- There's nothing wrong. My father told me and showed me: this is how a hare screams in the spring.

- Why is that so?

– Father said: he shouts: “Hello, little hare!”

- What is that noise?

“Father said: it’s the Bittern, the water bull, who is hooting.”

- Why is he hooting?

– My father said: he also has his own girlfriend, and in his own way he also says to her, like everyone else: “Hello, Vypikha.”

And suddenly it became fresh and cheerful, as if the whole earth had washed at once, and the sky lit up, and all the trees smelled of their bark and buds. Then, as if above all the sounds, a triumphant cry burst out, flew out and covered everything, similar, as if all people joyfully in harmonious agreement could shout:

- Victory, victory!

- What is this? – asked the delighted Nastya.

“Father said: this is how cranes greet the sun.” This means that the sun will rise soon.

But the sun had not yet risen when the hunters for sweet cranberries descended into a large swamp. The celebration of meeting the sun had not yet begun here. A night blanket hung over the small gnarled fir-trees and birches like a gray haze and muffled all the wonderful sounds of the Belling Borina. Only a painful, painful and joyless howl was heard here.

Nastenka shrank all over from the cold, and in the dampness of the swamp the sharp, stupefying smell of wild rosemary reached her. The Golden Hen on her high legs felt small and weak in front of this inevitable force of death.

“What is this, Mitrasha,” Nastenka asked, shuddering, “howling so terribly in the distance?”

“Father said,” answered Mitrasha, “it’s the wolves howling on the Sukhaya River, and probably now it’s the Gray Landowner wolf howling.” Father said that all the wolves on the Sukhaya River were killed, but it was impossible to kill Gray.

- So why is he howling so terribly now?

“Father said: wolves howl in the spring because they now have nothing to eat.” And Gray is still left alone, so he howls.

The marsh dampness seemed to penetrate through the body to the bones and chill them. And I really didn’t want to go even lower into the damp, muddy swamp.

-Where are we going to go? – Nastya asked. Mitrasha took out a compass, set the north and, pointing to a weaker path going north, said:

– We will go north along this path.

“No,” Nastya answered, “we will go along this big path where all the people go.” Father told us, do you remember what a terrible place this is - Blind Elan, how many people and livestock died in it. No, no, Mitrashenka, we won’t go there. Everyone goes in this direction, which means cranberries grow there.

– You understand a lot! – the hunter interrupted her. “We will go to the north, as my father said, there is a Palestinian place where no one has been before.”

Nastya, noticing that her brother was starting to get angry, suddenly smiled and stroked him on the back of his head. Mitrasha immediately calmed down, and the friends walked along the path indicated by the arrow, now no longer side by side, as before, but one after another, in single file.

IV

About two hundred years ago, the sowing wind brought two seeds to the Bludovo swamp: a pine seed and a spruce seed. Both seeds fell into one hole near a large flat stone... Since then, perhaps two hundred years ago, these spruce and pine trees have been growing together. Their roots were intertwined from an early age, their trunks stretched upward side by side towards the light, trying to overtake each other. Trees of different species fought terribly among themselves with their roots for food, and with their branches for air and light. Rising higher and higher, thickening their trunks, they dug dry branches into living trunks and in some places pierced each other through and through. The evil wind, having given the trees such a miserable life, sometimes flew here to shake them. And then the trees moaned and howled throughout the Bludovo swamp, like living beings. It was so similar to the moaning and howling of living creatures that the fox, curled up into a ball on a moss hummock, raised its sharp muzzle upward. This groan and howl of pine and spruce was so close to living beings that the wild dog in the Bludov swamp, hearing it, howled with longing for the man, and the wolf howled with inescapable anger towards him.

The children came here, to the Lying Stone, at the very time when the first rays of the sun, flying over the low, gnarled swamp fir trees and birches, illuminated the Sounding Borina, and the mighty trunks of the pine forest became like the lit candles of a great temple of nature. From there, here, to this flat stone, where the children sat down to rest, the singing of birds, dedicated to the rising of the great sun, could faintly reach.

And the light rays flying over the children’s heads were not yet warming. The swampy ground was all chilled, small puddles were covered with white ice.

It was completely quiet in nature, and the children, frozen, were so quiet that the black grouse Kosach did not pay any attention to them. He sat down at the very top, where pine and spruce branches formed like a bridge between two trees. Having settled down on this bridge, quite wide for him, closer to the spruce, Kosach seemed to begin to bloom in the rays of the rising sun. The comb on his head lit up with a fiery flower. His chest, blue in the depths of black, began to shimmer from blue to green. And his iridescent, lyre-spread tail became especially beautiful.

Seeing the sun over the miserable swamp fir trees, he suddenly jumped up on his high bridge, showed his white, clean linen of undertail and underwings and shouted:

- Chuf, shi!

In grouse, “chuf” most likely meant the sun, and “shi” probably was their “hello.”

In response to this first snort of the Current Kosach, the same snort with the flapping of wings was heard far throughout the swamp, and soon dozens of large birds, like two peas in a pod similar to Kosach, began to fly here from all sides and land near the Lying Stone.

With bated breath, the children sat on a cold stone, waiting for the rays of the sun to come to them and warm them up at least a little. And then the first ray, gliding over the tops of the nearest, very small Christmas trees, finally began to play on the children’s cheeks. Then the upper Kosach, greeting the sun, stopped jumping and chuffing. He sat down low on the bridge at the top of the tree, stretched his long neck along the branch and began a long song, similar to the babbling of a brook. In response to him, somewhere nearby, dozens of the same birds sitting on the ground, each also a rooster, stretched out their necks and began to sing the same song. And then, as if a rather large stream was already muttering, it ran over the invisible pebbles.

How many times have we, hunters, waited until the dark morning, listened in awe to this singing at the chilly dawn, trying in our own way to understand what the roosters were crowing about. And when we repeated their mutterings in our own way, what came out was:

Cool feathers

Ur-gur-gu,

Cool feathers

I'll cut it off.

So the black grouse muttered in unison, intending to fight at the same time. And while they were muttering like that, a small event happened in the depths of the dense spruce crown. There a crow was sitting on a nest and was hiding there all the time from Kosach, who was mating almost right next to the nest. The crow would very much like to drive Kosach away, but she was afraid to leave the nest and let her eggs cool in the morning frost. The male raven guarding the nest was making its flight at that time and, probably having encountered something suspicious, paused. The crow, waiting for the male, lay down in the nest, was quieter than water, lower than the grass. And suddenly, seeing the male flying back, she shouted:

This meant to her:

- Help me out!

- Kra! - the male answered in the direction of the current in the sense that it is still unknown who will tear off whose cool feathers.

The male, immediately understanding what was going on, went down and sat down on the same bridge, near the Christmas tree, right next to the nest where Kosach was mating, only closer to the pine tree, and began to wait.

At this time, Kosach, not paying any attention to the male crow, called out his words, known to all hunters:

- Car-cor-cupcake!

And this was the signal for a general fight of all the displaying roosters. Well, cool feathers flew in all directions! And then, as if on the same signal, the male crow, with small steps along the bridge, imperceptibly began to approach Kosach.

The hunters for sweet cranberries sat motionless, like statues, on a stone. The sun, so hot and clear, came out against them over the swamp fir trees. But at that time one cloud happened in the sky. It appeared like a cold blue arrow and crossed the rising sun in half. At the same time, the wind suddenly blew, the tree pressed against the pine tree, and the pine tree groaned. The wind blew again, and then the pine tree pressed, and the spruce growled.

At this time, having rested on a stone and warmed up in the rays of the sun, Nastya and Mitrasha stood up to continue their journey. But right at the stone, a rather wide swamp path diverged like a fork: one, good, dense path went to the right, the other, weak, went straight.

Having checked the direction of the trails with a compass, Mitrasha, pointing out a weak trail, said:

- We need to take this one to the north.

- This is not a path! – Nastya answered.

- Here's another! – Mitrasha got angry. “People were walking, so there was a path.” We need to go north. Let's go and don't talk anymore.

Nastya was offended to obey the younger Mitrasha.

- Kra! - shouted the crow in the nest at this time.

And her male ran in small steps closer to Kosach, halfway across the bridge.

The second steep blue arrow crossed the sun, and a gray gloom began to approach from above.

The Golden Hen gathered her strength and tried to persuade her friend.

“Look,” she said, “how dense my path is, all the people are walking here.” Are we really smarter than everyone else?

“Let all people walk,” the stubborn Little Man in the Bag decisively answered. “We must follow the arrow, as our father taught us, north, towards Palestine.”

“Father told us fairy tales, he joked with us,” said Nastya. “And, probably, there are no Palestinians at all in the north.” It would be very stupid for us to follow the arrow: we will end up not in Palestine, but in the very Blind Elan.

“Okay,” Mitrash turned sharply. “I won’t argue with you anymore: you go along your path, where all the women go to buy cranberries, but I’ll go on my own, along my path, to the north.”

And in fact he went there without thinking about the cranberry basket or the food.

Nastya should have reminded him of this, but she was so angry that, all red as red, she spat after him and followed the cranberries along the common path.

- Kra! - the crow screamed.

And the male quickly ran across the bridge the rest of the way to Kosach and fucked him with all his might. As if scalded, Kosach rushed towards the flying black grouse, but the angry male caught up with him, pulled him out, threw a bunch of white and rainbow feathers through the air and chased him far away.

Then the gray darkness moved in tightly and covered the entire sun with all its life-giving rays. The evil wind blew very sharply. The trees intertwined with roots, piercing each other with branches, growled, howled, and groaned throughout the Bludovo swamp.

Literary reading lesson in 1st grade.

SUBJECT: M.M. Prishvin. A sip of milk.

Goals: 1. Continue work to familiarize students with the works of M.M. Prishvin.

2. Work on improving your reading technique

3. Foster a love for animals.

Equipment: drawings on the theme “Wildlife is a whole world...”; cards characterizing the dog and the author, a portrait of the writer.

During the classes

1.Class organization

The bell rang loudly

Let's start our lesson

2. Updating knowledge. Setting lesson goals.

· In the last lesson, we got acquainted with M.M. Prishvin’s work “Pre-May Morning” and you drew pictures on the topic “Wildlife is a whole world...” (1 slide)

(The teacher reads a poem to music)

There is so much beauty in this world,

Which we sometimes don’t notice

All because

What we meet every day

Her long-familiar features.

We know,

How beautiful are the clouds, the river, the flowers,

The face of a beloved mother

But there is another beauty

Which doesn't seem pretty.

For example, the beauty of a mole

Mole?

Yes, yes, or the hardworking bee,

Or a snake, a frog and a beetle,

Or other "strange people"

No wonder all the endless centuries

It was sculpted by wise nature.

Take a look at her face

And you will see how right she is!

· Well done boys! You correctly drew a big house in your drawings, where birds, animals, trees, flowers live. But many animals live with us in houses, in city apartments. People take care of their little friends.

· Look carefully at the board. Read the words written on the board

“We are responsible for those we have tamed.”

And why we are responsible for those we have tamed, we will answer at the end of the lesson.

3. New theme

1. Speech warm-up

Sa-sa-sa here comes the fox,

So-so-so the fox rolls the wheel,

Sy-sy-sy the fox has a beautiful tail,

Su-su-su I saw a fox in the forest.

2) Working with text before reading

Open the textbook on page 229, look at the illustration.

· What do you think this text will be about?

· Read the title of the story. Try to clarify your assumptions using the title.

· Read the author's first and last name. Do we know the author?

· What can you tell about him by looking at the drawing? (2 slide)

That's right, M.M. Prishvin revealed many secrets and presented them to his readers.

And today we will get acquainted with another work by M.M. Prishvin, “A Sip of Milk”

· Let's read the key words in chorus

Lada

Milk

Got sick

Weasel

Saved a life

· Has your assumption changed? What will the story be about?

· Let's read it. (read by a prepared student)

3. Reading the text.

· Did our assumptions match?

· Let's read the text paragraph by paragraph again and think, “On whose behalf is the story being told?”

4. Repeated reading paragraph by paragraph.

Conversation while reading.

A) – Who is Lada?

· What happened to her?

· How do you understand the word turned away?

B) - Who was invited to Lada?

· How did Lada react to the author’s appearance?

· How do you understand the expression “beat with a rod”, “life began to play”

· How did Lada react to the author’s words?

Conversation after reading.

· In what ways did the first assumptions coincide or not coincide?

There are a lot of important ideas in this story. You won’t see them right away when reading the lines, because these thoughts are hidden somewhere behind the lines. But we can understand them if we read carefully and think about what we read. For adults, this is called

5.Independent reading .

· So, is the narrator right that it was these few sips of milk that saved Lada’s life?

· So what helped Lada?

· Read the sentence that proves to us that it was the author’s affection that helped the dog.

Working with proverbs.

Choose a proverb that reflects the main idea of ​​the story. (3 slide)

· An affectionate word costs nothing to oneself, but gives a lot to others.

· You don't teach a dog with a stick.

· And the dog remembers who feeds it.

· How do you understand the meaning of each proverb?

· What kind of dog do you imagine Lada to be? Let's make a verbal portrait of her.

· Does Lada look like one of these dogs? (4 slide)

· Have you ever had to protect animals?

· In your opinion, how should we treat all living things?

6. Work in pairs.

(defenseless, responsible, devoted, faithful, kind, loves animals, bad, cruel, rude, evil.)

· What words didn't make it in? Why?

7. Summary

· So why are we responsible for those we have tamed?

Reading a poem by a student:

Who loves dogs

Or other animals

Serious cats

And carefree puppies,

Who can love

And the donkey and the goat,

The one to people forever

Will do no harm

Lesson project based on the fairy tale by M.M. Prishvina "Pantry of the Sun"

Kolyabina Marina Alekseevna , teacher of Russian language and literature

The article belongs to the section: Teaching literature

Lesson objectives:

• show the unity of man and nature, the inextricable close connection of everything that exists in the world;
• draw wise conclusions about the high purpose of man - to be responsible for all life on earth;
• reveal the metaphorical nature and symbolism of the language of the work;
• awaken excitement and a sense of experience in sixth-graders;
• to cultivate in children a sense of beauty and kindness;
• reveal the skill of M.M. Prishvin as a writer.

Equipment:

interactive whiteboard, laptop, projector, portrait of M.M. Prishvin, exhibition of the writer’s books, book publications used by sixth-graders in preparation for the lesson, drawings by students “Spruce and Pine on the Bludov Swamp”, “At the Lying Stone”, albums about wild berries and hunting dogs, posters:

“Prishvin’s words bloom, sparkle, rustle like grass”

K.G.Paustovsky

“If nature could feel gratitude to man for penetrating into her secret life and singing its beauty, then first of all this gratitude would fall to the lot of the writer M.M. Prishvin”

K.G.Paustovsky

Epigraph:

Not what you think, nature,
Not a cast, not a soulless face -
She has a soul, she has freedom,
It has love, it has language.

F. Tyutchev

During the classes

I. Teacher's opening speech.

Today we have a final lesson on the fairy tale - there were M.M. Prishvin “Pantry of the Sun”, lesson-project. You know a lot about this work, and I hope you will be happy to share your knowledge, and together we will draw important and serious conclusions.

We have to reveal the metaphorical nature and symbolism of Prishvin’s work, show the unity of man and nature, and, finally, understand what kind of people success comes to: everyday, human; who remains human even in difficult situations.

The guys from the group of literary critics will help us with this. They were tasked with finding words with diminutive suffixes, as well as comparisons and personifications in the text of the work. Let's see what they did.

II. Answers from students from the “Literary Scholars” group

Examples of words with diminutive suffixes

(About love for nature. That he treats it kindly and with respect. Man and nature are inextricably linked with each other. And this also speaks of the author’s love for his characters.)

Examples of comparisons and personifications

– What role do comparisons and personifications play in the text?

(Comparisons help to better imagine what the author is writing about; they decorate the work and our speech. Personifications emphasize the author’s perception of nature as a living being.)

Teacher. Now let's talk to you about the genre of this work. How does the author himself define it?

(Fairy tale - true story)

Let's clarify the meanings of these words. The guys from the “Linguists” group will help us with this.

III. Answers from students from the “Linguists” group

1) Ozhegov’s explanatory dictionary gives the following meaning of these words:

A true story is something that happened in reality, a real incident, as opposed to a fable.

A fairy tale is a narrative, usually folk-poetic work about fictional persons and events, mainly involving magical, fantastic forces.

This means that, having thus defined the genre of his work, Prishvin makes us understand that the fabulous and the real are intertwined in it.

(The true story is the specific story of children orphaned during the war, who had a difficult life, but they worked together and helped each other and people as much as they could.)

– At what point do children approach the border of a fairy tale? Where does a fairy tale come into their lives? How does a writer make us feel that we have approached the borders of another world?

(We understand this when we read about spruce and pine, described as living beings. Prishvin makes us understand that the usual story has ended and a fairy tale begins. From this moment, from the first step from the Lying Stone, as in fairy tales and epics, a person’s choice begins own path, and an ordinary forest, with the help of images of pine and spruce, which grow together, moan and cry throughout the swamp, turns into an enchanted, fairy-tale forest, where birds and animals talk, where the dog lives - man’s friend, and the wolf - man’s enemy. )

Let's listen to the music of the Prishvin language. Let's listen to an artistic retelling of the description of spruce and pine.

IV. An artistic retelling of the description of spruce and pine.

Now let’s imagine a visually viewed image. Let's turn to the drawings of the guys from the “Artists” group.

V. Presentation of drawings by the “Artists” group.

– What is the most important thing you wanted to show in your drawings?

(1) I wanted to show that the trees did not just grow together and intertwine with each other, this is not evidence of their peaceful coexistence, they pierced each other, and this is the result of a brutal struggle for life)

(2) Trees fight among themselves for life, and an evil wind sets them against each other. Spruce and pine try to overtake each other, dig into each other with needles, pierce, moan and howl. It’s a pity for both spruce and pine.)

– What other fairy-tale images can you name?

(Image of a raven, an old Christmas tree, a gray wolf, a Lying stone. In Prishvin’s work there are forest secrets, the forest inhabitants speak.)

VI. Choosing a path. Detailed text analysis.

And Nastya and Mitrash find themselves in this fairy-tale kingdom. Let's follow their path. Let's go with you along the Prishvin trail.

So, a brother and sister came to the Lying Stone, friendly and loving each other. Prove it with text.

(p. 178. Nastya, noticing that her brother was beginning to get angry, suddenly smiled and stroked him on the back of the head. Mitrasha immediately calmed down, and the friends walked along the path indicated by the arrow, now no longer side by side, as before, but one after another, in single file. )

– What happened then?

(The children quarreled and each went their own way.)

– How does nature help to understand the mood of those arguing?

Find and read the description of the sun. How does the sun change?

(Page 180. The sun, so hot and clear, came out against them over the swamp fir trees. But at that time one cloud happened in the sky. It appeared like a cold blue arrow and crossed the rising sun in half. At the same time, suddenly the wind pulled, the tree pressed on the pine, and the pine groaned. The wind blew again, and then the pine pressed, and the spruce growled.)

You see, guys, the author seems to be preparing us for the upcoming complications in the relationships between the characters. He seems to be saying: man is close to nature, he is reflected in it, as in a mirror, with his good and evil intentions.

What happens in nature after children quarrel? Find it in the text.

(p. 181. Then the gray gloom densely approached and covered the entire sun with its life-giving rays. The evil wind blew very sharply. The trees intertwined with roots, piercing each other with branches, growled, howled, groaned throughout the Bludovo swamp.)

But this did not stop our heroes, and each of them went their own path. Let's go after them, and the guys from the “Topographers” group will help us with this. They depicted the route of Nastya and Mitrasha...

Nadya, tell me where the path that Mitrash chose leads?

Message from “Topographers”

(Together with my mother, I tried to depict the path of my brother and sister on this poster. We used not only paints, but also other materials to more vividly represent both the heroes themselves and their path. Mitrasha chooses a little-known path and ends up in a swamp. He barely did not drown, but thanks to endurance, ingenuity and the help of the dog Travka, he got out of the swamp and even killed the Gray landowner. And Nastya, you can see here in my drawing, goes in a completely different direction.)

Mitrasha walked through the swamp. The direction of the north was indicated to him by the compass needle. Do you think the plants could show Mitrasha not only the way to the north, but also a safe path in the swamp?

How did Prishvin describe it? Prove in text that the plants and trees wanted to help the boy? And Katya will indicate this in her drawing.

(Reading excerpts:

“Old Christmas trees” p. 186. The old Christmas trees were very worried, letting a boy with a long gun in a cap with two visors pass between them. Sometimes one will suddenly rise up, as if she wants to hit the daredevil on the head with a stick, and cover herself in front of all the other old women. And then he lowers himself, and another witch stretches her bony hand towards the path. And you wait - just about, like in a fairy tale, a clearing will appear, and in it is a witch’s hut with death’s heads on poles.)

“Whitebeard Grass” p.187-188. Having looked around the area, Mitrasha saw right in front of him a clean, good clearing, where the hummocks, gradually decreasing, turned into a completely flat place. But the most important thing: he saw that very close on the other side of the clearing, tall white grass was snaking - an invariable companion of the human path. Recognizing from the direction of the white bear a path that did not go directly to the north, Mitrasha thought: “Why would I turn left, onto the hummocks, if the path is just a stone’s throw away, beyond the clearing?”)

What does Prishvin teach us in these episodes?

(Prishvin teaches us to see, know and understand nature).

And now it’s time to turn to the epigraph of our lesson today. How do you understand F. Tyutchev’s words?

(I think that F.I. Tyutchev wants to tell us that nature is a living being that has a soul, has a language, and if we realize this, we will learn to talk with nature and understand it, and for this it will be to us give your love.)

I think you're right. And in this attitude towards nature, both authors are united.

Well, now let's go back to Nastya? Has Nastya seen nature?

(Nastya was overcome by greed. She forgot about everything, even about her brother. And she saw nothing but cranberries.)

Guys, do you know what cranberries look like? What about other wild berries? Let's listen to our “Nerds”. They found a scientific description of these berries.

Messages from the “Botany” group

(I found a scientific description of berries in a biological encyclopedic dictionary. We have such a disk at school, and I worked with it in the media center. Here's what I managed to find out...)

And the guys from this group also prepared a story about berries in this form (album).

(Here we tried to talk about forest wealth from the perspective of the berries themselves, and also found information in the life safety textbook about how useful these berries are and when they are used. I now want to talk about cranberries, since this is the main berry in our lesson today.)

But Prishvin also describes all these berries in his work. Let's find this description. ( WITH tr. 191.)

Does Prishvin’s description of the berries differ from the one the guys found in the dictionary? What conclusion do we draw?

(Prishvin’s description is artistic. It is clear that the author describes each berry with love; for him it is a miracle, a jewel.)

Have you come across descriptions of berries in other works?

(Yes, we found poems that talk about these berries. Reading poetry.)

Let's continue the conversation about Nastya. When she came to Palestine, she forgot not only about her brother, but also about herself: she forgot about food, about the fact that she was a person. The girl crawled and picked cranberries. This is how well this is shown in Katya’s drawing. At this time, there was an elk in the grove on the hill. What is said about him?

(The moose, gleaning an aspen tree, calmly looks from its height at the crawling girl, as at any crawling creature.

The moose doesn’t even consider her to be a person: she has all the habits of ordinary animals, which he looks at indifferently, like we look at soulless stones.)

A huge but defenseless elk makes do with little: tree bark. For a man so powerful, everything is not enough, and he forgets himself out of greed. Why is this description given?

- For contrast.

– What does contrast mean?

- Opposition.

– This emphasizes the insignificance of human greed. After all, looking at Nastya crawling, the elk does not recognize her as a person. And Nastya continues to crawl until she gets to the stump. Let's compare Nastya, who has lost her human form, and a tree stump. What are they doing?

- They are collecting. Nastya - cranberries, and stump - the warmth of the sun.

-What are they collecting for?

– Nastya – for herself, stump – for others (to give away the accumulated heat when the sun goes down). That's why the snake crawled onto the stump.

– Are there any similarities between a girl and a snake?

- Yes. As if afraid that someone else will get the cranberries, the girl crawls on the ground, collecting them. The snake on the stump “guards the heat.”

(Nastya pulled the thread that wrapped around the stump. The disturbed snake “rose up” with a threatening hiss. The girl got scared and jumped to her feet (now the elk recognized her as a person and ran away); Nastya looked at the snake, and it seemed to her that she herself had just been this snake; she remembered her brother; she screamed, began to call Mitrasha and began to cry.)

– Who made Nastya stand up?

- A snake, and a tree stump, and an elk.

– That is, to summarize, nature comes to Nastya’s aid. It is she who helps her remain human.

– But still, guys, what do you think, greedy Nastya? Who did she give the berry to?

(The grass saved Mitrasha because he reminded her of Antipych. And she was very bored alone after the death of her owner. When she saw Mitrasha, she thought it was Antipych.)

– What breed was Travka?

- Hound.

– What do you know about these dogs? Let's listen to what the dog handlers tell us?

Message from the Dog Handlers

(Hound dogs got their name because they chase an animal with an even, booming bark. The hunter stands somewhere in the path of the animal, and the dog drives a fox or hare straight at him. These are brave and hardy dogs. That’s why Travka was not afraid to come to help Mitrash.)

So, guys, Mitrasha emerges victorious from a difficult situation.

- Why did the villagers say about Mitrash: “There was a peasant... but he swam, he who was brave ate two: not a peasant, but a hero”?

(Muzhichok is a humorous word, with a diminutive suffix; it indicates that the peasant is not yet a real man. The villagers concluded that Mitrasha proved himself to be a real man when they learned that he managed not to lose his fortitude and found a way to escape from the swamp. Secondly, he was not at a loss and shot the Gray Landowner wolf, which even experienced hunters could not shoot.)

– How do you understand Prishvin’s words: “This truth is the truth of people’s harsh struggle for love”?

(Only a person who retains the best human qualities in himself can truly love. To love, one must fight greed and selfishness in one’s soul. And only such a person who has conquered these qualities in himself is given the opportunity to love.)

– Do you think Nastya and Mitrasha understood what the truth of life is?

(Nastya and Mitrasha realized that they love each other, that they need each other. Thanks to this love, they survived and remained human. And this is the truth of life.)

VII. Summarizing.

VIII. Homework.

Written

Write a miniature essay: “What did I learn about life by reading “The Pantry of the Sun” by M.M. Prishvin?