"Hunting stories intertwine with everyday life, and those, in turn, with certain mysterious, inexplicable incidents that happened in the taiga… Of course, I dreamed of becoming a hunter, even though my father kept forcing me to study and, at the same time, said: ‘A gun and an oar—what a lousy craft.’ And yet for my whole life I lived with a gun, with an oar, and with the accordion of the Russian tradition that was handed down to me. And there was also hunting passion, stirring the soul every time I hear the honk of geese flying in spring, and when my heart flutters even more at early dawn, far away, in the birch grove hazed with smoke and food…"