Reuters features a photographer’s blog entry by Ilya Namushin highlighting Viktor, a Siberian hermit living near the Yenisai River. Though affable, Viktor revealed few personal details about his motive and past except to indicate that he once was a bargeman.
Viktor is 57 and lives alone in a small hut that he made himself. He doesn’t only live there over the summer, but during the harsh Siberian winter too. He told me that he feels weak in the winter because the forest doesn’t give him energy then; he says the forest is resting. Therefore, Viktor rests too during the winter. He eats fish, mushrooms, and berries that he saves up during the warm season. If he’s ill, he treats himself with wild medicinal grasses, which he collects in the woods.
Despite being a hermit, Viktor is by no means unsociable. He does not mind kind visitors, and local fishermen and tourists come to see him every once in a while. He also crosses the wide Yenisei River from time to time to sell fish and buy essentials, like flour, salt, matches, and gasoline for his boat’s motor.
On the western bank of the Yenisei River there is a road and people come and go. On the eastern bank, where Viktor lives, there is nothing. No signs of civilization: no roads, no electricity lines, no buildings. Only steep, rocky banks and untouched forest.
Includes several photographs.
URL: http://blogs.reuters.com/photographers-blog/2013/10/25/at-home-with-a-hermit/