Strongholds of the Taiga

From a sandy spit of land rising more than 20 feet high in the boreal forest of the Lower Ob River region, the vast expanse of the West Siberian Plain stretches to the horizon. The taiga landscape, thick with stands of Siberian pine, spruce, and larch, is traced with wide, slow rivers, still the principal routes of transport for the area’s Indigenous Khanty people—by boat in summer, and in winter, along the ice. The closest of these waterways, the Amnya River, flows about a third of a mile to the south.

Sophie Pinkham is a writer who teaches at Cornell University. Her next book is The Spirit in the Trees, a cultural history of the Russian forest.