the Fisht shelter

By evening I reached the Fisht shelter. There were quite a lot of people in the camp for this time of year — about thirty. It was a small tent city, with a two-story EMERCOM building in the middle, one large tent shaped like a single-story house, two gazebos with campfires inside, and toilets twenty meters from those gazebos…

Entering the camp, I immediately checked in at EMERCOM, then chatted with the rangers across from the main building. They told me that over the past few days the bears had been especially active around here. They said that just last night a she-bear with two adolescent cubs had come into the camp. One

of those cubs had torn a guitarist's tent with its claws, swiped their backpack of food, and bolted. The rangers chased after it, took back what was left of the backpack, but the cub had vanished without a trace. And that's when I realized how lucky I was — I wouldn't even have to go running through the mountains specially to find the beast — it would come to me on its own…