"В том же 91-м году (после Бэнкса) я попал в очень непростую экспедицию в Северном Юконе, с ребятами из Геологической Службы Канады и USGS и индейцами-гвичинами. Шел снег, не было воды в реке, и мы бурлачили лодки вверх по реке, при этом на 13 человек только у меня и одного американца были болотные сапоги, но он снимал видео. По вечерам, в непривычной для меня обстановке индивидуализма (каждый в своей палатке), я ходил по косе, и пел Ваши песни. Хотя больше всего просилась "так похоже на Россию...", но мой главный друг в этой экспедиции, канадец Джон Мэтьюс, был сыном летчика местных линий в Южной Америке, "a bush pilot", поэтому я попытался донести до него "Кожаные куртки", от которых сам балдел. Вроде бы получилось, все даже почти в рифму могло бы петься, хотя спеть мне было трудно, но хотя бы мотив как-то ночью у костра обозначил. Так или иначе, стихи "Курток" на английском висели как символ на стенке Геологической Службы Канады, пока ее фактически не разогнали, и Джон не ушел на пенсию."
At the end of a trip to the Old Crow area Andrei continually chided us (North Americans) because we wore hiking boots in the field instead of the hip boots which he said "would take him anywhere".
Andrei made that trip memorable for the laughter and talk and songs around the campfire at night. It was on that trip that he introduced me to the Russian song about bush pilots marooned by a storm in a small Siberian cabin, singing and telling stories about "southern girls" while they waited for the weather to clear. That song typifies Andrei’'s outlook on life: when things are bleak, tell stories and sing, but don't miss the opportunity to get out and get going again.
Андрей и Анна, мои дорогие друзья, очень помогли мне, когда у меня была
тяжелая ситуация в жизни. Без их помощи и заботы я скорее всего не
выкарабкалась бы. Когда кризис миновал, Андрей, будучи по работе в США,
продолжал, не жалея собственного драгоценного времени, звонить мне и
долгими разговорами по телефону обеспечивать психологическую поддержку.
Позже он как-то сказал мне: Я человек не религиозный, но если бы был
таковым, то, готовясь отвечать ТАМ на вопрос “Что хорошего ты сделал в
жизни?”, на первое место поставил бы “Помог моей подруге Галине, когда ей
было очень трудно”. Это конечно было сказано под влиянием момента, т.к.
несомненно, что это лишь капля в огромном объеме позитива, который Андрей
принес в жизнь своих родных, коллег и друзей. Мы никогда не забудем.
Andrei and Anna, my dear friends, helped me a lot when I had a really
tough time in my life. I am not sure I would pull through without their
help and care. When the crisis had loosen, Andrei, who was in the U.S.A.
by that time doing his research there, continued to phone me spending his
precious time to provide a moral support. Some time later he admitted: I
am not deeply religious, however, be I and had I to prepare answering
God’s question “What were the best deeds during your lifetime?” I would
put on the first place “Helped my friend Galina when she had a hard time”.
Of course, saying so Andrei was affected by that particular situation, as
what he had done for me was only a drop in the bucket of good deeds he did
for many his friends, collegues and relatives. We will never forget.
Editor-in-Chief, Encyclopedia of Quaternary Science
Quaternary MSc Programme Director
Geography Department
Royal Holloway, University of London
I have been working with Andrei for almost twenty years.
He had been a visitor at University of Alaska, Fairbanks, just previous to my stay there in 1991, and he left me a set of samples of insect fossils from one of his north eastern Siberian sites.
We got better acquainted when I was preparing for the Beringian Workshop held in Colorado in 1997. Andrei was pivotal in organizing the talks and activities of his Russian colleagues, and in simultaneously translating several of their talks at the workshop.
I remember being surprised when he sent me his frequent flyer details for several airlines, when I was booking his flights over from Moscow to Denver. Here was a man of wide international travel experience, and one who knew how to ‘play the game’ of getting the most out his trips!
I’ve never met anyone with as broad scientific knowledge as Andrei. Even the great David Hopkins didn’t know the species of beetles that might typically be found in Beringian fossil assemblages, but Andrei was quite knowledgeable about the insects, vertebrates, vegetation, and Quaternary Geology of Beringia.
It is terribly sad that his life ended so abruptly. Even though he was past retirement age, he was still pursuing his research with full vigour, as recently as just a few weeks ago. In fact we were partners in a new grant application to write the history of Beringian research, due to be submitted to the Leverhulme Trust this autumn.
I will always remember his kindness and good humour, and his unquenchable passion for Beringia.
Дорогие друзья, прошу простить меня за многословие, наверное, не у каждого хватит терпения прочитать мою повесть до конца. Тем не менее, вспомнить хочется слишком многое. Прошло уже несколько дней с того момента, когда Андрей Владимирович покинул нас, а боль никак не стихает, я думаю о нем постоянно, причем иногда приходится себя одергивать и напоминать: «его уже нет». По общему мнению, что нас утешает, когда уходят близкие, человек продолжает жить пока его помнят. Конечно, в таком смысле Андрей Владимирович проживет еще очень долго.
Мы не были родственниками или, скажем, самыми ближайшими коллегами (мы изучаем разные группы фауны); разница лет и социального статуса мешали нам общаться на равных. Однако, любой, кто видел нас рядом, мог заметить: эти люди очень близки. Мы много лет образовывали устойчивую научную связку и были больше, чем просто коллеги. В моей жизни он значил слишком много. Поэтому я беру на себя смелость показать людям, каким был человеком Андрей Владимирович. Пусть простят меня те, кому он дорог, я излагаю события такими, как они происходили, без украшательств. Человек яркий не может не иметь недостатков и все знают, что Шер не был «князем Мышкиным». Безгранично добрый, он мог наносить обиды или наживать врагов - он был перфекционист, что делало его научные работы блестящими, но создавало массу незавершенных работ и неизменно приводило к конфликтам с коллегами. Кроме того, он слишком много курил, и работать рядом человеку некурящему было непросто. И еще много разных осложняющих жизнь особенностей…
Полный текст
The community here at the North Eastern Science Station has a sufficiently small population that the mood is greatly swayed by the small but constant tide of guests that arrive, stay a month, a week, a day, or an hour, and then depart. Because Cherskii is an airport town, a staging area for flights to the north pole and points east, it has that flavor of the prewar mail drops described by Antoine de St Exupery, in "Sun, Wind, and Stars," towns in the Sahara and the Andes, where small aircraft touch down briefly, and deliver people who have not seen each other in years. The director of Moscow Museum of Mammoth, came through Cherskii on Wednesday at 1am, shared a couple drinks with Sergei on the tarmac during refueling, and was off by 3am. Guido Grosse, a committed polar geomorphologist with whom I arrived, has left yesterday afternoon, and I am the only visitor at the station for the moment. Saint Exupery describes the puddle-jumping life as lonely but unavoidable to the people for whom civilization is a bore.
The guest of honor this last week was Andrei Vladimirovich Sher, who has not been here for 15 years, and left on the same helicopter as Guido. Sher is a paleontologist of the old school: he works with bones of giant animals, long-since extinct. Whereas a student of paleontology now would likely be routed to study molecular biology of ancient tissue or investigations of foraminifera or pollen or some other optically tedious biological indicator, Sher was lucky enough to be born in Moscow in 1939 (actually not universally considered a lucky year), before all the delicious paleontological fruit had been picked. At the tender age of 21, he was out here on the Kolyma investigating whether the soil was solid enough that Americans could launch a tank attack from Alaska (using the remnants of the Bering Land Bridge). Naturally, investigating soils in the Kolyma, he found what all visitors to the Kolyma find, and always have found: Bones. He counted over 30 field seasons here, until the Soviet Union collapsed, and the money ran out. And now, with the economy picking up a bit, he can come out, visit some old friends en route to a conference in Irkutsk (try visiting your friends in Anchorage on your way to Mexico City some time). Still, he is active in science, publishing an examination of 2 million years of Mammoth evolution a few years back in Science, and later a comparitive analysis of Pleistocene Bison in the same magazine (along with Zimov and Davydov).
When earthquake engineers are discussing the fate of the San Francisco Mission District after the Big One, they might invoke thixotropy (n. the reversible behaviour of certain gels that liquefy when they are shaken, stirred, or otherwise disturbed and reset after being allowed to stand. Quicksand, a mixture of sand and water, is rendered thixotropic by the presence of certain clays.), the process by which the landfill of that former swamp might swallow buildings whole. When Sergei Davidov had me proofread an abstract he had written about certain fossil species assemblages of the late Pleistocene, I came across this word and doubted that it even existed. After our excursion Wednesday, its existance can no longer be in doubt.
Sergei Davydov is the resident paleontologist here. True, Sergei Zimov waxes longer and more philosophically about the role of giant herbivores in Pleistocene environments, but Davydov has the bone collection. Davidov has been preparing an analysis of the unique role of thixotropy of low-order stream channels in the mortality of large mammals with locomotor adaptations for the firm ground characteristic of arid environments. In other words, the study of how bison get stuck in the mud and die. Having visited Devanni Yar and there getting stuck in mud past my knees, I can appreciate how a Bison, heavy, poised on its front limbs, aimed downward into a small creek it wishes to cross, perhaps to eat some tasty grass on the far side, might think to itself, at that very moment its chest hits the mud, "Damn." With the passage of time the mud consumes this bison, and its flesh is recycled by detritovores, and its spirit joins the spirits of all Bison. Interestingly enough, besides being unfortunate to have evolved some millions of years on solid ground before its environment became wetter and muddier (according to Davydov's thesis), this Bison also lives north of the Arctic circle. This landscape is unique in the world for having a constant input of windblown dust during and since the last glaciation, slowly burying the past. Accompanying this aeolian sedimentation is a subsoil front of permafrost just a foot or two below the surface that freezes the organisms trapped within, often preserving even the hair and organs of these casualties to thixotropy.
The afternoon after Sher arrived, Davydov led us all on a walk, about a kilometer west of the station, along the bluff that overlooks the Kolyma. The walk was nothing special, just some brush, discarded cigarettes, a collapsing outhouse (or maybe it was just a house), terminating at a ravine all but destroyed by earth movers extending the city airport. Davydov is a little sheepish, explaining that when he had come here, it was much more pristine. We poke around for a little bit before walking over to the haphazard berms the earth movers have churned up on the far side of the ravine. Taking the shovel, poking around, nobody is that enthusiastic, until Sher falls backward, literally catching his heel on the tip of a Mammoth femur. We all have a laugh and then Sher picks up a black hunk from where he was standing, and it is actually a Bear jaw, lower left. Sher being Sher, he is able to say with authority that this is over one million years old, mid-Pleistocene, moreover it is one of the only bear fossils found in these parts, ever. Exhilarated, I start digging more, more like jabbing the shovel at bits of dirt and seeing if anything catches my eye. Perhaps a minute later, Davydov reaches out and finds the fang that accompanies this jaw, and it fits neatly into a gap in the very front. Guido and I look at each other, thinking some people got it and some people don't.
Davydov and Sher head down the ravine to catch up with the shoreline and walk home, while Guido and I lag behind, poking around with our feet, hunched over, hoping to find anotther fang. No such luck. Finally Davydov gives a yell from down below and holds up another jaw, perfectly white, the lower left jaw of a bear that died just recently. Meeting up with them, we get a brief lesson in comparative anatomy, a million years of bear evolution, an afternoon stroll.
When we get home, we stop by Davydov's where Sergei tells his wife Anya, "Hey, we just found a bear jaw and fang!" and she gives him this look, like he just told her he got second highest score in Space Invaders. I guess for some people, 24 years in Cherskii enhances the love of bones, but for others the enthusiasm wanes.
The next day, was in fact perfect weather, and although I have Work here, I cannot resist spending time in the outdoors as long as my time here is coming to a close. Davydov, Sher, and I head to a small watershed about 15 km from here to see what we might find. Guido is making a polite but determined effort to get out of his own research to go with us bone hunting, so Zimov asks Davydov to head off soon so as not to disrupt the lake survey Guido has planned. One of the tragedies of the day was that Guido's boat did not even start, leaving him to wonder what he was missing.
What he was missing is as follows:
Taking the Toyota out toward the little creek we plan to excavate, Davydov, being in general a more modest person than Zimov, parks the truck just before getting stuck in the mud, rather than just after. The road is deeply pitted by the heavy trucks that service a nearly-abandoned gold mine that has thoroughly raped this quiet creek, for several kilometers upstream and down. The challenge of the paleogeomorphologist is to locate the bottom of former stream beds and there to focus his sampling. This is also the technique of the gold miner, albeit with a broader stroke. The gold mine here is gone but has left an indelible mark. The valley is scarred for several hundred yards on either side of the stream channel, which now follows whichever route is available to it, among the immense piles of gravel pushed everywhere and nowhere by the bulldozers lying dormant in their midst.
Sher describes the scene as from Roadside Picnic, by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, a story about life on Earth after alien visitors briefly stop here, as though on some quiet roadside, and leave a bunch of incomprehensible trash and wrecked landscape after their departure, as though on a picnic. True enough, the wreckage left behind a gold-mining operation is giant and incomprehensible. Stray bulldozer treads, plates weighing perhaps 100 lbs each, are casually tossed off to the side. Pipes tens of meters long, with complicated joints and apparently some purpose, lie twisted and mangled off to the side of the right of way shaped by the dozer. They pronounce bulldozer here "bulldaZYOR," with the stress on the end, reminding me of the recent movies Nochnoi Dozyor and Dnevnoi Dozyor (Night Watch, Day Watch), depicting the graphic struggle between good and evil in Moscow, which gives the dozers even more of a menacing edge.
The first half of the day is spent meandering upstream, poking here and there, finding a chip, a shard, nothing substantial or identifiable, and I take no pictures, because: of what? Gravel? I found a tunnel carved by the creek as the thawing ground collapsed below it, a fifteen foot sheer drop with a waterfall, exposing a bank of ice-rich permafrost, but Davydov takes one look and says "Holocene." This is the local code word for "Uncool," in the paleontological sense. Too new. Sher could not be bothered to even look.
The second half of the day, the creek starts to yield its past. Heading downstream, we prowl the same rutted and gravel strewn landscape, but the original creek is a bit more evident. We find the tip of a mammoth femur, and put it in the bag. We find some reindeer, horns, legs, none whole. Then Davydov unearths the shoulder of a bison, giant, a club, reminiscent of late Flintstones, with Bam-Bam. I am stunned at the find, but Sher is nonplussed has still not found the big game he is after: "I hate Bison." Then we find the Pleistocene graveyard. Every ten feet or so bones are embedded in the embankment, Bison, Horse, Mammoth, Cave Lion and dozens of Wooly Rhinoceros. The bones pile up faster than we could even carry them, so we leave them on our path thinking maybe we could pick them up on our way back. I have tied a wooly rhino skull to my backpack, but it is digging into my shoulder.
It's starting to get dark, and we head back up stream, back out of this bone yard, back toward the car. More bones. We are showing every bone shard to Sher until he finally has to cut it off, We Are No Longer Accepting Bones. A bison jaw. No, he says, I am serious, no more bones today.
The Pleistocene hunters, returning from the field, are laden heavily. They are about 42-48,000 years old according to radiocarbon dating from a previous excavation.
Встречались в основном на семейных торжествах. Еще девчонкой могла долго с интересом слушать разговоры старших, в которых дядя Андрей
всегда был центральной фигурой. Говорил всегда интересно и смешно.
Пытаюсь иногда рассказать своим детям его "ворону". Да разве ж с ним
сравнишься?
Едем дальше, видим мост, под мостом ворона мокнет,
Взял ворону я за хвост, положил её на мост, пусть ворона сохнет.
Едем дальше видим мост, на мосту ворона сохнет,
Взял ворону я за хвост, положил её под мост, пусть ворона мокнет.
Едем дальше, видим мост...
В 1978 году Андрей взял меня (тринадцатилетнего!) в поле на Колыму. Можно долго вспоминать о том, как мы чуть не попали под обвал подмытого берега (вырубая из мерзлоты челюсть мамонта), как почти без еды ждали 8 часов моторку, как сопровождали гостей Тихоокеанского Конгресса, спаивали английского "шпиона" и многое другое...
Я много ездил в поле после этого, до сих пор вожу пешие, водные и велосипедные походы, но Колыма 78 года была самым лучшим сезоном в моей жизни.
Помимо всего прочего Андрей привил мне тягу к работе (не необходимость, не любовь, а именно тягу - то, без чего нет жизни).
Года два назад мы с ним хотели поехать в поле вместе с моими старшими детьми - но, к сожалению, не сложилось...