Tolstoy hated Nietzsche

"All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking." (Nietzsche)

Our walk will take place at the end of May 2011.

Past Errors to Blame for Russia’s Peat Fires - NYTimes.com

Past Errors to Blame for Russia’s Peat Fires - NYTimes.com: "Among all the troubles that have been visited on Russia in this summer of record heat, wildfires, smoke and crop failure, perhaps none have been so persistent and impervious to remedy as the peat fires. Particularly maddening, many here say, is the knowledge that the problem is caused by humans."

Mission abort?

As I suspected, the temperatures predictions are rising as current data outweigh the historical averages in the models that the meteorologists use to project forecasts. The average, average high (the average of the projected highs from 8/6-8/10, from all the weather sites) is 92.66. In other words, unbearably hot. Importantly, today the static has begun to leave the system: This morning the standard deviation for Monday and Tuesday was about 9; with the midnight update to the European models, it's about 6.

Monday update: And it's official. Tom Newlin and I have spoken and decided to cancel the trip. I've already started planning for another attempt, this May, after classes end. Tolstoy made the trip in spring, and I'll hope for better conditions then!

Прогноз погоды... ЖАРА!

So, I've been contemplating the spate of recent news concerning the ongoing heat wave in European Russia. The average daily high in Moscow has been EIGHTEEN DEGREES ABOVE SEASONAL AVERAGES! Multiple days of 100°, with high humidity (for Europe) and not a cloud in the sky. Moscow has broken every record on the books since tsarist times.

Conditions have been gravely worsened by pervasive peat fires--Moscow is surrounded by bogs, and peat (apparently) spontaneously ignites when its moisture content is below 40%... right now, it's so dry that the bogs' moisture content is 28%. These fires burn underground and are all but inextinguishable. (We've had some in Florida during droughty years, and they are blacken the skies and smell like burning rubber tires. Unpleasant.)

So there are now underground smudge fires around Moscow, worsening its already serious smog problem. Outside Moscow, gusty winds have fanned firestorms: The peat fires burning underground flare up and ignite the parched grasslands and forests on the surface. Villages in the Nizhny Novgorod region (to the south-east of Moscow, bordering the Tula area, where we're hiking) have been burned to cinders in a very short time. Putin has announced, essentially, "There's nothing anyone can do. You must leave the area."

Clearly, no one in his right mind will walk one hundred and twenty miles in 100° weather with unbreathable air.

I've spent the last three weeks preparing for this trip. Ran 10K a day for more than a month. Spent a fair amount of money on gear. My pack is ready to walk out the door. But discretion is the better part of valor... and I'm no fool.

I'll wait until Moscow forecasts are posted this coming Monday at several sites (weather.com, Accuweather, Wunderground and GISMETEO (Russia's Wunderground)) for the following weekend, August 6-8, during which we'll walk through Moscow oblast and into Tula oblast (Podol'sk to Chekhov, Chekhov to Serpukhov, Serpukhov to Dvorianinovo). I'll add the high temperatures, average them out, and if it's hotter than 90°, I'm canceling my hike. Right now the highs are all in the mid-90s to 100°. There's a cooling trend predicted, but it's later in the week, and likely is due to predictive models returning to historical norms, not to any hard meteorological data.

It's a tough decision, but there are enough variables in the equation that really bad weather all but assures a miserable experience.

I'll reschedule the hike for May, after classes are out. Tolstoy did it in the spring, and so can I.

Stories from the road...

Evgeny Popov accompanied Tolstoy on his 1889 walk. About fifty years later, he offered these reminiscences of the walk:

During my stay in Moscow, in May 1889, I found out that Tolstoy was getting ready to go to Yasnaya Polyana, and he wanted to go there on foot, as he had done several years ago with Kolechka Ge and Dunaev. I suggested he go with me. Lev Nikolvaevich agreed, and we had decided on the day of our departure. On the appointed day [May 2, 1889], I arrived at Khamovniki [Tolstoy’s Moscow residence]. Sophia Andreevna had gotten Tolstoy ready for the road. She gave me instructions on how to take care of Lev Nikolaevich while on the road. We got into the carriage and drove off. The driver took us out of town.[i] He let us out and we set off on foot.

Recounting about this trip, I cannot remember all the details and the order of events. In my mind there are only confused fragments of memories. (It was almost 50 years ago, after all). I will describe it as I remember it. We asked permission to sleep in one hut. Since many pilgrims passed along the Kursk highway, it was common for the residents to let people stay the night. The hostess ushered us in willingly and the started up the samovar. Tolstoy went on the porch and sat down. I stayed in the house, since the entire trip I tried to provide him with time alone as often as possible. It was a beautiful May evening. In a nearby garden the nightingales were rustling. When the owner put the samovar on the table, we crumbled baranki [round, crispy biscuits that look like bagels]. moistened them with boiling water, and when they were steaming, added some milk. It turned out to be a dish that Tolstoy really appreciated. We walked beside the railway line, along a path that ran alongside.

Once we came to three passers-by, apparently tramps [босяки, “barefoot wanderers”], who were kindling a fire and and cooking something. Walking past them, Tolstoy said:

“Greetings, brothers!”

“Your brother’s a dog,” one of them said sullenly. We walked a few steps. Tolstoy stopped, as if he wanted to return to the speaker, but then changed his mind, and we went on.

We went along the road (the highway crossed the railway several times) and down a hill. Lev Nikolayevich, pointing to a village, said:

“When we came here with Kolechka and Dunayev [in 1888], a squealing pig ran out of that yard, all covered in blood. They had slit its throat, but hadn’t finished it off, and it had escaped. It was terrible to look at it, probably most of all because its naked pink body was very similar to human’s.”[ii]

At another point, when the dusk had descended upon us, a woodcock flew straight at us, but when it saw us, it got scared and made a sharp turn and disappeared into the woods. Tolstoy said to me:

"You know it ought to have he flown right up to us and sat on a shoulder. It will be that way someday."

One day it was rainy, the road became difficult, and we set off to spend the night at the estate of a Moscow friend, the merchant Zolotarev. It was a long way before we would reach our resting place, so we had to hurry so as not to caught in the dark. Tolstoy walked quickly with his light tread, and it was hard for me to keep up with him. Turning off the highway and going two kilometers, we finally found the estate. The owners were home and received us, tired and soaked. Having sat for a bit, I felt that I was feverish from exhaustion. They put me to bed and started warming tea. Tolstoy said that the best way to get warm it is to play a piece for four hands, and immediately sat down with the hostess at the piano. Before going to bed I still heard him speaking with the hosts, telling them how to grow red currants. The next day I felt fine, and we went on.

When we passed through Serpukhov, we stopped at the post office. Lev Nikolaevch asked for the letters in his name. (Sophia Andreevna had intended to write him there.) Suddenly everyone in the post office got worked up; the employees and the public all whispered and looked at Tolstoy. I do not understand how Tolstoy could bear all the attention. He wrote a postcard, dropped it off, and we went on.

After five days we reached Tula. We went to the house of the vice-governor Sverbeev, whom Tolstoy knew quite well. We were welcomed, fed and put up in a room where the two sons of the host, marine cadets, usually lived. In the morning when we got up, Tolstoy noticed some huge iron barbells under the bed. He took them and wanted to do some exercises. I was afraid that that at his age [Tolstoy was 61], he would hurt himself, and I protested. He put down the weights, but said:

“Well, you know I have lifted five poods [two-hundred pounds] with one hand.”

From the conversations with Tolstoy during my time with him can recall only two fragments. We were standing on the second floor balcony and looking across the garden to the east. There, at the edge of the garden, stood two pine trees. Tolstoy said: “My brother and I planted those two pines, and we asked ourselves whether they would ever grow to the horizon… And now they are so far above it.” Another time, in a conversation about life after death, he said: “I know that I will live with such exalted beings, ones that we cannot even imagine now.”

[i] . Tolstoy is more precise—he mentions in his diary that they took a carriage ride to Moscow’s toll gate, presumably the Serpukhov Gate—located close to the Tul’skaya Metro station.

[ii] Tolstoy began an essay on vegetarianism, “First Step,” with a vivid description of this scene.

Cool old map of Tula province...

I found this map on a Tula historical society website. (Click on it the map to the left for a larger image, or go to the original site, which has a GINORMOUS map)

I can't find a date for it, but judging by the cartographer (Il'in), I know it was made in the last third of the nineteenth century--so, it accurately depicts the Tula Province in the 1880s, when Tolstoy made his trek.

The highway that Tolstoy walked along is the open line that runs down the left side; the railroad runs to the right. I believe at the time the road was called the Rostovskoe highway (after the town Rostov). But it's not marked on the map so far as I can tell.

Interesting that the track for the electric commuter train (the электричка) that today runs through the region follows the path of the railway from the nineteenth century.

There are now two highways that run between Moscow and Tula--the M2 (an interstate, магистраль) and the Varshаvskoe (Warsaw) highway (Варшавское шоссе). The latter is like an old state highway in the US, running through all the little towns. It looks like the Varshavskoe follows very closely the old road that Tolstoy walked along--which is good to know, since we're taking the Varshavskoe. (It's illegal to walk along M2.)

Bolotov & Dvoryaninovo

One of our stops--night three--is Dvoryaninovo (Дворяни́ново), the ancestral estate of Andrey Bolotov, one of the founders of agronomy and pomology (apple and pear growing). Born in 1738, he spent much of his life at Dvoryaninovo, in the Zaoksksii region of the Tula province. He wrote the first botanical guide in Russian of weeds, medicinal and crop plants--introducing Russians to the Linnean taxonomy (the binomial system, "scientific names"). He popularized practices like crop rotation and cross-breeding.

He was, like many of his contemporaries, someone who dabbled and excelled at many things, including some minor philosophical and dramatic works. Nowadays he's known chiefly as a memoirist: His "Notes" (more formally known as The Life and Adventures of Andrei Bolotov, Described by Himself for His Descendants.") are a rich source of facts and thick descriptions of life in 18th century Russia. I've never read them... Add that to my long list of neglected central works of Russian literature that I need to read but likely never will.

He lived to be almost a hundred.

Coincidentally, my walking companion Tom Newlin has written one of the only books on Bolotov. My friends at the Tolstoy museum at Yasnaya Polyana set up our stay at Bolotov's estate without even knowing about Tom's book. Moreover, I don't think Tom's ever formally visited the estate, so it should be interesting... I'm excited to see the orchards and gardens there.