This incident happened when I was 13 years old. An expedition arrived in the small village where I lived then to lay the route of the future railway. It was planned to use it to transport timber. Mostly engineers, highly qualified specialists came, and the auxiliary labor force was recruited from the local population.
However, at the height of the sowing work, there were few volunteers, and besides, the collective farm bosses categorically did not want to let the men go. Then the head of the expedition decided to recruit the most adult and intelligent schoolchildren into the expedition. At first they didn't want to take me - my age was too small. I had to cheat and add myself two years.
The route was laid as follows: with the help of the theodolite, the direction and angles of the turn were set. At the same time, the planning of future settlements was carried out. The adults were engaged in cutting the clearing, harvested turning poles and picket posts. They drilled the ground with a hand drill to a depth of six meters. We made flooring for setting up tents.
The younger ones were trusted, under the guidance of a technician, to write indelible paint on pivots and pickets, as well as to install them. They allowed us to take measurements of the track, keep the leveling rods, and also help to carry out household work. So further and further we went into the depths of the taiga.
Once our camp was near a small lake. A forest river flowed into it. Nearby was a seemingly abandoned old road. That day I was left to help the cook. I was instructed to prepare firewood for the fire and cover the tents with fresh spruce branches. I coped with the task pretty quickly, and the whole day ahead of me remained free.
I decided to take a walk to the lake. Then I found a moored raft made of logs, it even had a rather long pole. I got the idea to swim to the opposite shore and see what is there.
At first, the depth was shallow, and the length of the pole was quite enough to steer the raft. Having reached the middle of the lake, I suddenly noticed that the pole was no longer reaching the bottom. I couldn't steer the raft. It drifted slowly with the current. At first I thought that it was somewhere out of the lake that a river flows out, and the raft pulls to this place.
Soon I noticed that the boat was not moving straight, but in circles. So this is a whirlpool! If the raft gets pulled into its center, I won't get out of there. Terrible thoughts immediately began to enter my head. Why was there a whirlpool in the center of the lake? Could it be the machinations of a water line?
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Common sense dictated that it was necessary at all costs to get out into the calm water. I started to work with the pole as a paddle with all my might. My efforts were not in vain, I began to notice that my raft was moving away from the center of the whirlpool.
Finally, I went out into the calm water. When the pole groped the bottom of the lake, I sighed with relief and safely reached the shore. Coming down to the ground, I looked closer and saw that the lake was located, as it were, in a giant depression.
It feels like it is located in the crater of an extinct volcano - so huge and flat that you can't immediately understand it. Moving further away, I saw that fontanels were beating at the foot of one of the slopes. I then told all this in the detachment. It was decided to explore the lake. We made depth measurements.
It was not possible to measure the depth in the center of the lake - there was no such long rope, two skeins of it were not enough. And the members of the expedition were afraid to stay there for a long time, well, how it gets sucked into the whirlpool! By the way, surprisingly, we did not notice any living creatures in the reservoir.
But we had to build a track, and we went back to the taiga. The mystery of the lake remained unsolved for me.
Alexey Mikhailovich IGUKHTIN, St. Petersburg