A hand-to-mouth existence is, for most people who have the time and inclination to read books like this, nothing more than a quaint and vivid turn of phrase. But for many in the Bikin valley, it is a factual description of their reality. Denis Burukhin summed it up bitterly: “In Sobolonye, you go into the taiga for a week, come back, eat what you’ve got, and then it’s back into the taiga. What kind of life is that? It’s no life at all.”
