The Hancock-Henderson Quill, Inc.
by Sherryanne De La Boise
Well, my extended trip to the Russian Federation just got cancelled. I was really looking forward to seeing the oil fields with someone who had been working on Soviet Russian oil wells (for a Canadian firm) in the 1970's. And, I was excited about going to one of the last wildernesses on Planet Earth, the center of the Kamchatka peninsula, having spent three weeks along its coastline in 2019, on an elegant French yacht. But, Mr. Putin is not cooperating with my desires.
Have you seen the video on his waterfront estate? The guy who was on a hunger strike, the one that was given a radioactive water bottle, his political election rival released an hour long film of Putin's beachfront property that cost taxpayers $1.3 billion US dollars. Since 30% of the Russians have watched the film and started protesting in the streets, Putin has had one of his buddies say, ‘Oh nyet, That is mine house.'
The house has an underground hockey rink, a helicopter pad, a marina, private beach, mountain top palace building with over 100 rooms, and mold. Yes, mold. It seems they used the same Chinese source for their drywall as did FEMA after Hurricane Katrina. Just as all of the FEMA drywall had to be removed because of the mold, so did the drywall in this estate. Putin sent in his film crews after the removal to show that the place was just a shell, not furnished as purported in the rival's movie. But, I digress…
The French Yacht had little bass boats to lower for motoring up the rivers. Our favorite driver would head away from the others, far upstream. Just turn off the engines and drift, so we could observe. I usually am so good about befriending everyone, but this was one time that I wanted silence. There are so many folks who need to always hear the sound of their own voices. The trick was to keep our little boat far, far away from theirs, so the wildlife would forget that we were there. No shriekers allowed. You know those types, "OMG! Look at that _____. Have you ever? Look, lOOk, LOOOOOOK!"
Now, I admit to being a photo bug, but there are times to put the camera down and just let nature occur all around you. High on the hillside, in the long grass a giant mother brown bear romped with multiple cubs. Three kinds of eagles fished in the rivers filled with melted ice from the volcanic mountains. The flash of fish swimming all around our tiny craft. I dipped in my fingers: absolutely not the taste of motor oil. My suspicion is that the central portion of Kamchatka will look like what Yellowstone would have looked like, had people not invaded nearly every aspect of it.
Starting in 1639, Russian explorers traveled there. Peter the Great sent shipbuilders there in 1713 to repair the vessels of the explorers. He also sent the Danish explorer, Vitrus Bering (the Bering Sea) to look for a land bridge between Asia and America. Bering founded the main city in 1740. The Russian government proceeded to fill the city with political exiles from the nobility class. They had tried putting them at the foot of Lake Baikal, in Siberia. But, the exiles built the fashionable city of Irkutsk and had the audacity to recreate the society that the Marxist were trying so hard to eliminate! That was not possible on Kamchatka. It must have been terrifying to have volcanoes so near and snow and ice from October through May. No chance for a second harvest and a winter too severe to hunt or fish, if the food ran out.
Kamchatka is the size of California, but with a population today of only 400,000. Most live in the capital city. The Russian Cossacks wiped out most of the native population (who retaliated by spearing the Russians and burning them to death in traps), but it was small pox that reduced the natives to a barely existent population.
The Sea of Okhotsk is west of the peninsula sort-of like the Caribbean Sea is west of Florida. There are hundreds of whales there. I am going to get to see my first blue whale, along with some rare orca behaviors, humpbacks, minke, fin, grey, bowhead, and sperm whales. The captain announces whales and regardless of the time, day or night, I am on deck, binoculars on. My photographic journal is filled with fins, spouts and splashes, more boring for anyone else to look at then the plastic sleeve of grandchildren.
The Sea of Okhjotsk was where American whaling boats went. During our Civil War, the Confederate Army sent a ship there to hunt the ships that were hunting the whales. The plan was to disrupt business enough that the Union Navy would have to send its ships to protect the trade routes. It sank 24 ships.
Before you think this was crazy, remember that in "Gone With the Wind" Rhett Butler had shipped extra cotton to warehouses in the Caribbean, in anticipation of war. He then sold the cotton at a much higher rate because the Union blockade of the Confederate ports meant that no one else had cotton to sell.
Stalin had offered to lease the entire peninsula to the USA for 99 years. But, after the Alaskan purchase, another acquisition was considered political suicide. I wonder if American capitalists would have filled it with ski and hunting resorts? For the sake of the wildlife, I'm glad the deal fell through.
During the Cold War, the peninsula was filled with military gear to spy on the Americans and the Japanese. It was closed to Russian citizens (other than the residents) until 1989, which has meant that the flora and fauna have flourished. I cannot wait until Mr. Putin will let me go there.
Today, Russians who have worked here and then retire, get to retire five years early with a larger pension payment. They also get the one train ticket to anywhere in Russia every other year.
After our excursion on the French Yacht, we did not spend much time in the capital before boarding our flights home. Just enough time to have the tourist special dance recital (which I have moaned about before). This time, we were asked to participate. Why not? They dressed me in boots, furs and a headdress; gave me a musical instrument and were ready to have a good chuckle at my expense. Well, all those years of piano, flute and string bass lessons finally paid off! The blonde American, traveling with the elegant French, managed to eek out "Au Clair de la Lune" and then the perineal Russian favorite, "Kalinka."
The capital city of Petropavlovsk is very grimy and Soviet looking, with the apartment buildings that have free heat from pipes that run under the city sidewalks (no need to plow) from the central heating plant with its huge red and white striped smokestack. The sidewalks are neither flat, nor level. They look like someone dumped out the end-of-day asphalt between the road and the buildings. We had to go through three x-ray machines (with our luggage) before we were permitted to board our flight to Vladivostok. Since the airport only has three flights per day, we go through one machine and have to wait for the staff to turn on the second machine before going through that. The whole process is repeated for the third machine, then we wait in lines for the staff to man the ticket counter. And when the lunch hour came, everything stopped. The x-ray machines were turned off mid bag!