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WONDERS OF NATURE
Zhiguli. Nature miracle
The longest and most abundant river in Europe - the Volga, which has long been inhabited by the Slavs, Tatars and other peoples, at first glance, purely historically, could not preserve untouched corners of nature. It seems that there could no longer be left on it places not mastered by man - everything here has been cut down, plowed up, dammed over many centuries ... Nevertheless, the great Russian river managed to save for us, despite all the ups and downs of history, as many as three amazingly beautiful and completely different natural pearls, without which it is impossible to imagine the Russian Plain. This is the great Lake Seliger near the Volga source, striking in the endless variety of its reaches, islands and bays; reed jungles and channels of the unique kingdom of birds and lotus in the river delta, near the Caspian Sea, and, finally, the most picturesque section of its river valley - the Zhiguli. They are also called the Zhiguli Mountains, although by the standards of scientists this is, generally speaking, a hill, the highest point of which does not reach even four hundred meters. But, getting into the Zhiguli, you forget about the terms and meters - the contrast of the boundless Volga expanses and the white cliffs soaring up is so striking and mesmerizing.
Yes, the Zhiguli Mountains are not the Caucasus or the Tien Shan, but the limestone slopes rising hundreds of meters above the river break off so steeply to the water that they look like a real mountain range from the deck of the ship, stretching along the right bank of the Volga for almost a hundred kilometers. This ridge is divided by transverse valleys into separate massifs. Between steep-walled ravines cut into them, similar to gorges, high spurs stretch to the river, crowned with bizarre rocks. The height of these spurs ranges from 250 to 370 meters, and each of them has its own name and its own history, authentic or legendary. Once the Zhiguli started from the mouth of the Usa River - the right tributary of the Volga. After the construction of the Samara hydroelectric power station in 1957, a wide and deep bay was formed at the confluence of the Usa, above which a huge high hill rises - Karaulnaya Gora. From it you can see the surroundings for tens of kilometers around, and in ancient times Cossack patrols were on guard duty here. Seeing the approaching cavalry of the Tatars or Nogais, the Cossacks kindled a fire on the top of the mountain, giving a signal of danger. From here, the Volga makes a sharp bend, bending around a powerful limestone massif that stands in its way. This river loop is called Samarskaya Luka. The outlines of the Volga channel here resemble a giant, strongly elongated horseshoe, between the ends of which there are only twenty-five kilometers. Standing on the isthmus of Luka, called Perevoloka, one can simultaneously see the Usinsky Bay of the Samara Sea and the upper part of the Saratov reservoir. The length of the Samarskaya Luka is more than one and a half kilometers, and before the construction of the hydroelectric dam near Zhigulevsk, Samara lovers of water travel often made voyages along the so-called Zhigulev circumnavigation. The peculiarity of this route was that it was possible to go with the flow all the time. From Samara, standing on the left bank of the Volga just at the turn of the Luka to the west, the boats sailed down the river to the southern end of the bend. Here they made a two-kilometer drag into the Usa River, and descended along it to the northern end of the Volga loop. Further, also sailing down the Volga, the tourists returned to Samara. One hundred and seventy kilometers of the "circumnavigation" were usually overcome in five or six days. Below the city of Zhigulevsk and the dam of the hydroelectric station, the most beautiful section of the Zhiguli begins. The Dutch traveler of the XNUMXth century, Jan Streis, who visited the Volga during the Razin rebellion, saw the Zhiguli mountains and wrote in delight: "The shores here are as beautiful as you can imagine!" And indeed, the green hills running over each other, among which here and there mountains rise, overgrown with pines, are very picturesque. Confidently clung to their feet, drowning in the spring in the white boiling of bird cherry trees. In autumn, the banks of the Zhiguli are colored with gold and crimson, and everything around is filled with a reflection of a cold fire raging along the slopes. Deep, like mountain gorges, hollows crawl like snakes into the bowels of the mountains. Behind the ledges of the rocks overgrown with forest, the once daring lowland freemen lurked, waiting for merchants with goods floating along the river. Black entrances to caves darken in steep cliffs, where falcons and red ducks used to nest in a multitude. Some of the caves can only be reached by descending from above a sheer cliff on a rope. High above Zhigulevsky rises the bulk of Mogutova Mountain. Further, beyond the wide and deep Morkvashskaya valley, the treeless Bald Mountain rises above the Volga, and three kilometers to the east of it, a steep rocky ledge of the Sheludyak cliff protrudes forward. It is named after the Razin ataman, who bravely fought against the royal governors in these parts. Behind the cliff, several ravines converge like a fan to the Volga, forming a picturesque extension on the shore, known as Bakhilova Polyana. The most beautiful surroundings of Polyana have long been chosen by painters who come to the local House of Creativity from all over Russia. Farther on, the huge Bakhilova Mountain with three peaks of a narrow ridge, clearly visible against the sky, looks like a petrified prehistoric monster. Behind it, downstream, lies the village of Shiryaevo, where Repin wrote his Barge Haulers on the Volga. Zhiguli are generally spoiled by the attention of artists. The most penetrating singer of the Central Russian landscape, Fyodor Chaliapin, and the master of depicting thunderclouds, the Wanderer Dubovskoy, have been here, and the now undeservedly forgotten brothers Grigory and Nikanor Chernetsov created their best works here. These two talented travel artists accomplished a kind of geographical and historical feat at the beginning of the XNUMXth century, creating a complete panorama of both banks of the Volga from Rybinsk to Astrakhan - a true encyclopedia of the nature and life of the peoples of the Volga region of that distant era. Having equipped the workshop right in the boat, the brothers sailed in 1838 in six months from the headwaters to the mouth of the great Russian river, getting acquainted with the life of peasants and fishermen, excavating ancient fortresses and writing hundreds of sketches of the Volga valley along the way. Then, already at home, they completed their titanic work, creating two giant canvases seven hundred meters long and two and a half meters high! Since 1850, the Chernetsovs have shown their "hand-drawn documentary" on Vasilievsky Island in St. Petersburg. Long canvases were wound on cylinders and slowly moved along the show outside the windows of a room built in the form of a cabin. At the same time, the audience had a complete feeling that they were in a floating ship. Unfortunately, the constant rewinding caused wear and tear on the canvas, and by 1880 the unique work had fallen into disrepair. But there remained an album of sketches published by the brothers under the title "Journey along the Volga" and allowing us to imagine the view of the Volga banks almost two hundred years ago. And in Shiryaevo, a small village on the Volga coast, the memory of the great Repin, who created one of his best works here, is carefully preserved. A museum has been set up in the old school, which contains photographs and documents telling about the artist's stay in Zhiguli, sketches and sketches for his painting. Behind Shiryaev, downstream, flaunts the highest cliff on the entire Volga - Strelnaya Mountain, which has risen three hundred and fifty meters above the river. Its ridge departs to the northwest from the main massif of the Zhiguli, slightly lowering at the beginning, and before the end it unexpectedly rises up, forming a small cozy platform with a beautiful view of the Trans-Volga distances. Then it narrows into a narrow ridge - the "devil's bridge" leading to the cone-shaped top of the mountain. Here, boulders form a small grotto, in which, according to legend, there was a sentinel post of "free people". From here they looked over the course of the Volga for forty versts and with fires they gave the robber boats hiding behind the islands the news of the approach of merchant caravans. And then the plows hiding in an ambush flew out "from behind the island to the core", and the formidable cry "Saryn to the kitchka!" made the rowers throw their oars, and the hearts of the merchants tremble with fear ... The Zhiguli freemen existed for more than a century and a half, from the beginning of the 1670th century until the defeat of the Pugachev uprising. During the Razin rebellion in 1671-XNUMX, the lower freemen joined him, and since then, in the people's memory, the Zhiguli have been firmly associated with the name of Stepan Razin. Yes, and in the songs composed about the dashing ataman, Zhiguli signs are easily recognized. Remember, for example, the famous song "There is a cliff on the Volga ...". Indeed, the camp of the rebels marching up the Volga was located at one time at the mouth of the Usa, near the Devya Gora, and then, after the defeat of the uprising, the Razintsy retreated through these places, and one detachment was defeated here, in the Morkvashinsky valley. Since then, the cliff next to the valley bears the name of the Razin ataman Fyodor Sheludyak. The small green Popova Mountain completes the Zhiguli in the east. On the low left bank once stood a huge Tsarev barrow. According to legend, Tsar Ivan the Terrible, on his way to the Astrakhan Khanate, climbed it. Alas, today someone needed to mine limestone here, and now the historical hill is almost half destroyed. Behind the Tsar's mound stretch the Sokoly Mountains, and on the right bank rises the Sulfur Mountain, where, under Peter the Great, they say, they mined sulfur for gunpowder. Cramped on both sides by mountains, the Volga valley narrows - in front of the famous Zhiguli Gates in the past. Prior to the construction of the Saratov hydroelectric power station, the flow rate here reached three meters per second, and in former times the Gate brought a lot of torment to barge haulers. From this place, the Zhiguli remain behind the stern of the ship. The proud silhouettes of the cliffs are gradually melting into a dove-gray haze. And along the coast stretch quite low and ugly Shelekhmetovsky mountains. These, in fact, are not even mountains, but a coastal cliff, badly destroyed by scree. Their traces are visible everywhere on the steep yards, through which the parent rock emerges either in rounded columns or in angular pylons. From a distance it seems that an ancient fortress wall is hiding behind the scree. The Shelekhmetovskiye mountains especially clearly demonstrate the landslide phenomena typical for the Zhiguli, as well as for the entire Lower Volga. They say that a hundred years ago, not far from Syzran, the whole village of Malaya Fedorovka slid into the Volga. And the medieval Polish traveler Adam Olearius, in his notes, cites a case when a ship anchored under the high bank of the Volga was crushed by a huge block of clay that collapsed into the water. Because of the landslides, even the whole city of Cherny Yar had to be moved to another place, the buildings of which regularly collapsed into the water along with the washed-out part of the coast. Nowadays, when the Volga below Tver and all the way to Volgograd is a chain of reservoirs, the banks are no longer washed away by the stormy current. But on the artificial seas formed, river captains sometimes have to solve the "sea" problems that have now appeared, such as fighting ice or autumn storms. The thickness of the ice on the Samara Sea, for example, reaches a meter, and sometimes hummocks are three meters! In the spring, such an "iceberg" can suddenly enter the ship's course. You won’t notice it in time - you can’t avoid major troubles. Yes, and the ice is melting now longer than before. It happens that even at the end of April, icebreakers pave the way for ships near the Zhiguli. And in terrible autumn storms on the Samara Sea - the most stormy of all the Volga "seas" - the wind strength is sometimes eleven points, and the wave height exceeds three meters! Having received a storm warning, ships rush to take refuge in ports of refuge equipped at the mouths of rivers. No one wants to be in the expanse of the reservoir, when dark clouds driven by the wind and water dust and spray flying over the foamy shafts merge into a continuous furiously spinning and howling chaos. However, this happens only in the fall. In summer, the greenish expanse of the river basks under the sun for a long day, the distant shore melts in a haze. In the evening, a hot red ball of the star slowly descends into the heated water, the sunset fades, and the first stars appear in the darkening sky. Coastal lights are reflected in the water, and it is difficult to understand where the river ends and the sky begins... And with the first rays of dawn it is good to climb the steep coastal cliff of the Zhiguli. From the top in the morning light you can see the boundless distance of the river and the open spaces of the Volga, linden and oak forests at the foot of the mountains and mountain pine forests approaching the very top of the cliff. Among them here and there are white rocky outcrops in the form of cliffs, narrow ridges - "devil's bridges" or "cones" sticking up. From here a unique panorama of these amazing mountains opens up, rising in the very center of the Russian Plain above a wide river running to the distant warm sea. Not so many travelers can boast that they saw the Zhiguli Mountains not from the ship, but up close, walking along the steep mountain serpentines of the local paths or climbing the rocky slopes to the blackening vents of the mysterious robber caves, where they say, the hidden "free people" are still stored "looted treasure... By the way, a hiker will encounter a problem in Zhiguli that is completely unexpected for the middle lane. The fact is that there are absolutely no streams here, not to mention rivers. The water of springs and rains is immediately absorbed into the soil and goes into the cracks of the rocks. Only in the very heart of the mountain range, in a cozy tract with the poetic name Stone Bowl, three springs with clear and cool water beat at once. Travelers always stop here, and leaving in the morning on a further journey, they take a supply of water with them. But what you see in the mountains more than rewards the traveler for hardships. And it's not just about stunning views from the cliffs and risky exploration of rocks and caves. Despite the fact that the Zhiguli are located in the middle of a habitable, densely populated area (nearby, in addition to Samara, there are also Togliatti, Zhigulevsk, Syzran and Novokuibyshevsk), they have preserved a peculiar flora and fauna unusual for the Lower Volga region. The Zhigulevsky Reserve located here, however, occupies only a small part of the mountain range. But the recently established National Park "Samarskaya Luka" should protect almost the entire territory of the Volga bend. After all, thanks to the mountainous relief, unique forests have been preserved in Zhiguli, which have long been cut down on the surrounding plains. In these forests you can see elk, roe deer and wild boars, here you can meet wolves and lynxes, martens and ermines. And the white-tailed eagle and the osprey fisherman, the black kite and the golden eagle nest on the rocks. By the beauty of landscapes, this corner of the Volga region has no equal on the Russian Plain. And every summer, new groups of tourists make their routes along the paths of the Zhiguli Mountains, climb to the top of the Strelnaya Mountain and camp at the Stone Bowl to drink the icy water from its spring... Author: B.Wagner
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