Laudator Temporis Acti

V.K. Arseniev (1872-1930), Dersu the Trapper: A True Account, tr. Malcolm Burr (1941; rpt. Kingston: McPherson & Company, 1996), p. 188:

Dersu strode on in silence, serenely seeing everything. I was revelling in the view, but he looked at a twig broken off at the height of a man's arm, and from the way it was hanging knew the direction in which the man had been going. From the freshness of the fracture he judged the time that had elapsed. Whenever I failed to see a point, to draw a conclusion, or express doubt, he said reproachfully:

"How you go many years in taigá don't understand?"

What to me seemed incomprehensible was to him clear and simple. Sometimes he would pick up a spoor where with the best intention in the world I could see nothing. Yet he could tell that an old wapiti hind had passed that way with her fawn. They had browsed on the Spiræa as they passed and then been suddenly startled at something and bolted.

This was not all done for the sake of impressing me. We knew each other too well for that. It was simply done from lifelong habit, never to overlook details, and to be attentive to everything, and always observant. If he had not learnt from childhood to understand the art of tracking, he would have soon died of hunger. Whenever I passed by a particularly obvious track, Dersu would chuckle, wag his head, and say:

"H'm! Just like small boy. Go walk, wag head; have eyes, no-can look-see, no-can understand. True, that sort man live in towns. No need go hunt wapiti. Want eat ... go buy meat. No-can live all-alone in taigá soon go-lost."

He was quite right. A thousand risks await the solitary wayfarer in the taigá, and only he who can read the signs can count upon reaching the end of his journey in safety.