Yet the heyday of Old Belief, Levitt knows, is long gone. But my original notion of idyllic isolation was a figment of my own imagination. Or maybe it was like that before 1917. When Levitt and the other Americans left for home, they left with some disillusionment as well as a gratitude for the ease of Western life. A hand-cranked ferry, helmed by a solitary boatman, punting a busload of people and goods across the river.
Horse flies the size of fists.
Sunset at midnight. A one-eyed squirrel running in circles. Nearly 80, Baba Nastya still gets up at the crack of dawn and works to midnight. The music itself is executed in a polyphonic choral style using a special pronunciation unique to the Semeiskie. At first, the singing seemed like a bunch of people shouting at each other.