At the Kenozero with Daniil Korzhonov. Vershinino village, kenozersky national park

The houses in the village are located so that they are protected by hills and nearby forests from strong northerly winds.

At the entrance to the village to the left of the road on the top of the hill there is a memorial to those who died in the Great Patriotic War "Hill of Glory". There are many familiar surnames, and how many of them are on this mournful list ... In 2015, for the 70th anniversary of the Victory, the memorial was renovated and its territory was improved.

But the patronal holiday for the village of Pogost was the day of August 28 - the Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos. Therefore in last years on the Kenozero coast between Pogost and Vershinino, the Assumption Fair is held on the 20th of August (on Sunday).

Now the village of Pogost is a fairly populated part of Vershinino. The library is located here. A.N. Nechaev, shop.

The name "Vershinino" for the village was first encountered not earlier than the 18th century.

Below in the center of the frame on a high hill is located visible from afar chapel of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker the end of the 18th-beginning of the 19th century, which became the symbol of the Kenozersky National Park.

Next to the hill is the Visit Center of the Plesetsk sector of the Park, located in the modern house of the merchant Kozhevnikov. In the 18th century, as it became known recently, there was a post office here.

Since 2013, a new hotel in the Park "Inn" has been operating in the village (photo from the newspaper "Kenozerye", No. 3-4, 2012).

A completely new tourist facility in Vershinino -

There was one more object for viewing in Vershinino - the photo exhibition "The Reserved Kenozero". It was placed on an artillery fence surrounding the fire and forest station. On the open stands there are excellent park photos taken by Igor Shpilenok, Konstantin Kokoshkin, Vadim Shtrik and other masters.

And below - the new building Vershinino. In the house, which until recently stood on this place, as it turned out recently, at the beginning of the twentieth century. A.F. Hilferding stopped when he collected and recorded songs and epics. Here is a photograph of this house from 1927 (from the archives of the Park).
The Folk Epic Museum opened on August 21, 2016, as the completion of the events dedicated to the 25th anniversary of the creation of the Kenozersky National Park. In the halls of the museum there are more than 600 items from the collection of the museum fund of the FSBI "Kenozersky National Park" icons, objects of peasant life, books, manuscripts, photographs. For the exposition there are collected manuscripts of peasant conspiracies, field notes of folklorists' epics, photographs of Kenozero performers from the family archives of Kenozero residents and personal collections of researchers.
During the 2019 season, it was visited by about 2,000 people.

A ninth-grader Sabina Podosyonov from the village of Vershinino, Plesetsk District, became the winner of the "Best Guide of Russia" competition in the category "Best Guide Under 18"

Quite recently, at the end of June 2012, I was lucky to visit Kenozersky national park... Several days spent in the northern part of the park were not enough to survey all the beauty of these places, but this time was enough to fall in love with this land once and for all, to feel the special character of the life of its inhabitants and the secret kept by the “holy” groves.

I will begin my story with the village of Vershinino, the center of the northern sector of the Kenozersky Park.

Vershinino is the center of the Plesetsk sector, this is where the park's office, guest houses and shops are located. "Kenozero. This is what the locals say, ”the administration immediately explained, and we are trying to get used to the correct and unusual pronunciation. We immediately notice the special dialect of local residents: their very fast speech with a slight pressure on the letter "o".

1. The symbol of Kenozero is the Nikolskaya chapel located here, on the top of a high hill. Her exact age is unknown, but it is known that she existed long before 1846
2. At the beginning of the 20th century, the chapel stood without a bell tower, it was added a little later, completing the slender image
   
3. In the 80s of the last century, the Nikolskaya chapel fell into a sad state
   
4. After the formation of the Kenozersky National Park in 1991, the chapel was restored with the joint efforts of Russian and Norwegian restorers. The restoration took 2 years.
   
5. In 1998, the chapel was consecrated by Bishop Tikhon of Arkhangelsk and Kholmogorsk. Since then, on certain Sundays and patronal holidays, a priest has come to Vershinino to serve in the chapel. The rest of the time, all tourists, sightseers and just relatives can get to the chapel through the Park Office, where the keys to the chapel are kept.
   
6. An equally beautiful view of the chapel of St. Nicholas opens from the lake. It crowns the top of the hill, under which the houses of the village of Vershinino stand
   
7. An unforgettable view of Kenozero opens from the chapel. In the distance you can see numerous islands and rugged lake shores.
   
8. In Vershinino, almost every resident has a motorboat. The boat is the main mode of transport, since there are only roads between large villages. They fish, take tourists, visit each other in neighboring villages. All boats have powerful motors, so the distances on the lake are rather big (20 km in one direction is a usual route), and waves and headwinds diligently interfere with movement.
   
9. At the top of the hill (see where the name Vershinino came from) horses graze at night. They lie half asleep in the tall grass, and all around is the sound of the wind and the endless expanses of the lake.
   
10. Seeing me the horses woke up
    
11. Many residents have vegetable gardens where they plant potatoes
    
12. Locals love to decorate their windows with geraniums
    
13. Inside the Nikolskaya chapel.
    
14. In 1997, the restored skies were returned to the chapel. Heaven is a special type of ceiling covering in wooden churches of the Russian North. The paintings of the Kenozero "heavens" contain various subjects. There is a heaven with the image of the Archangels (Pakhomievskaya chapel in the village of Karpovo, John the Theologian in Zikhnovo, etc.), the Apostles (the Vvedenskaya chapel in the village of Ryzhkovo, Three Saints in the village of Nemyata, etc.), there are mixed subjects.
    These unique examples of monumental painting in wooden churches have been preserved here in the form of a collection that has no analogues in the world.
    16 "heavens" - this is the collection of "heavens" of the Kenozersky National Park - the largest in Russia.

Whose photo reports we have more than once posted on our portal, this time I visited the Kenozero National Park, the most beautiful place included in the UNESCO World Network of Biosphere Reserves.

June. Forbs covered the land of the Russian North with a carpet. Somewhere in the Sacred Grove near a wooden chapel, a nightingale is filled with divine music. The wooden domes of the chapel shine with soft white light under the veil of sleepless light nights. You are standing over Kenozero on a hill, breathing in the smell of these wonderful summer herbs and feeling that you are in such a dear and close place. For those who get tired of reading my impressions and reflections, there is a small practical guide at the end of the text.

Bump by bump, bridge by bridge - and two days later the pontoon bridge cuts us off from civilization. A 50-liter can of gasoline gurgles on the bumps of the primer, backpacks with photographic equipment are bouncing. Nekrasov's “villages, too,” with lopsided huts, northern houses made of wide beams with high black roofs are already flashing by. Somewhere life, and somewhere - wilting. It's sad to look at what people left behind. Nature is slowly gaining the upper hand over man here: nettles carpeted the floors of the huts, the roofs have almost turned into turf. Soon these huts on chicken legs will be swallowed up by tall summer grass. In the meantime, we arrive at our house in Ust-Pocha. In principle, you can rent a hotel room here - there is a large choice, the Kenozero.ru park website will help you, but we are visiting our "friends", at Aunt Natasha's, in a small village house of light green color. It stands near the lake, like a small green shoot of a large dry tree perched next to an ancient hut. Lurching, she looms over the low-ceilinged baby. Aunt Natasha warns: “Bend over or you will knock; bow to the house. " Yes, how many cones we still have to hammer on these shoals - we are not hobbits, and this is not Middle-earth, although not at all worse.

The village has a master plan: each house stands on a hill on the shore; down to the bathhouse almost at the very water, a ladder descends, and under the shore there is a small pier with a boat. The lake is black, northern; every time you look at it, it changes color from the lead of clouds to a gray mirror with deep blue tints. In the summer, the village comes alive. Relatives, vacationers, tourists come. Parents give their beloved children for safekeeping to grandmothers, who now take the rap in their old age, looking after the mischievous children. And it's far from the Canadian border ...

Bam! One more bump. We laid out our backpacks in our mansion. In the middle there is a large stove, two beds, everything you need for life. And immediately go!

We come to the village Vershinino on a dirt road. Above it, on a hill, rises a wooden chapel, the first on our way, austere, elegant, laconic. A little bit up the path through a field of dandelions - and we already meet the moonrise over Kenozero. A hundred meters up, on a small hillock - and you seem to soar above the water, above the banks, the plain and islets with tall pines. And the crimson rays touch the peaks of the invisible "mountains". It's amazing: the flow of feelings, some kind of lightness and freshness of thoughts in this place. The soul seems to be cleansed, and somehow it becomes light and warm inside. Here is just one drawback - mosquitoes and midges eat. I change the lens - a telephoto camera is needed here, I have moved far from the chapel - and the flock dived under the bayonet! And you have to drive out a rogue! I don't remember myself, almost anesthesia. Beauty only saves, revives to life, and you completely forget about everything. After all, you are in Russia, at home - in its very, very heart. These places are so close that the soul sings.

The day wakes up in a rosy light. Or maybe he just did not fall asleep, and this is from fatigue.
A burst of fire over the Pochozersky temple, over meadows, villages, fields and bridges across the canals. Three in the morning - and the last day turns into a wonderful new one with such beauty around. But all good things come to an end quickly, so this dawn faded away like an extinct match, and real northern clouds hung low over the northern land. And the temple is beautiful. Light, with bends and a fence, with high spiers, he somehow reminded me of Kizhi from postcards and photographs. Only this place is hidden, secret, is revealed to a few. And it seems that you are the only traveler with whom the temple whispers when you stand in the wet grass up to your shoulders at its fence and the cold dew touches your neck and ears. And the soft breeze whispers, tells its tales in this distant kingdom, on the Kenozero island.

Wet feet and chimes of mosquitoes in the hair tear away from fairy tales. Time to go home. A pleasant fatigue rolls over, it's time to sleep.

Today Kenozero is brown, like peat lakes - soft, with a chocolate tint, with a thin warm crust of water and an ice heart inside. You swim on it, you press your legs up, you hold your posture, so that you don't fall on the ice below. And near the shore, near the sand, the water warmed up like fresh milk during warm days, and the kids splash in the water with enthusiastic squeals.
We rested, took a swim, took a steam bath in a Russian bathhouse - and let's feed the sunset mosquitoes to the village of Glazovo. In the afternoon, walking along Ust-Poche, we met Misha. Such a good little man, he was born and raised here. We look: the boat is being repaired, the engine has become very bad. He says that the son will come, the engine will start, and they will go fishing, and at the same time they will take us to Glazovo. Only gasoline, he says, fill your own, and that's it - no money is needed.

So, we embarked on board in a friendly company, let's sail away! The engine is naughty: as soon as it starts, it immediately stalls. So much for Whirlwind ... But nothing: the sleight of hand of Misha's son - and we fly through the clear waters of Kenozero, cutting the sun's rays in the glare of small lights of dark water, and inside each droplet is the midnight sun with islands, islands to the horizon. Birches, slender pines look at us from the hillock, winking with the rays of a lazy sleepy luminary that rolls from side to side on these long days.

Jump! We go down to the "mainland". We are in Glazovo. And again you feel a kind of puppy delight in front of the beauty of the Russian land. The Chapel of the Descent of the Holy Spirit rises above the surface of the lake, there is silence around, the leaves do not even rustle. And you say to yourself: you are in Russia. You can feel the breath of summer herbs, sedge cheeks and warm light on your face from the hot pancake of the sun. You swim in the grass, you drown in the meadows in an abundance of flowers, from wonderful to modest ones, like cornflowers and dandelions. And how wonderful it is to climb the chapel, to the very top, under the dome, and to look down from above! Here you can sit on a creaky wooden floor, lean against an ancient white tree. Among the incredible summer silence, among the lakes covered with a veil of fog, you sit, as if in a midnight doze, intoxicated by the music of Kenozero.

But this eternity will not get hungry, it will not want to sleep, and the midge does not bite it, and your belly itches from bites, so you return to reality again, open the hatch to Malaya Zemlya, three flights of wooden steps - and again I am on fresh grass by I'm waiting for water for Uncle Misha. His catch is glorious, a whole bucket of crucians! Such are the satisfied and happy we arrive at our house in Ust-Poche.

It seems like forever has passed and we are we have been on Kenozero all summer, so these places are deeply rooted in the heart.

In the morning we go to Vershinino again, to the wonderful Nikolskaya chapel. The sky shimmers with a kind of northern lights. If the North gives light, it does it with special generosity: red flashes stretch along the horizon for an hour, time freezes, and you yourself find yourself locked up somewhere in the tenth second of the beginning of the third morning. It seems that the heavy blue veil of night will never cover the June Kenozero even up to the shoulders.

And again a whole day of relaxation, swimming in the lake, exploring the surroundings. And by the evening the weather turned bad, and we managed to shoot very little. The sky is gray, the wind is strong. Hope for morning.

Wake up at three in the morning - jump up and scratch your turnips: where are you this time? The low ceiling immediately reminds us that we are still at Kenozero! Hands on feet, you don't have to go far - after all, the beautiful village of Myza is nearby, on a small island, where a sloping floating bridge leads, which you still need to manage to catch from the channel with a long stick. The main thing is to hook him well to the shore, otherwise you can remain Robinson. And then you walk along the coast along a narrow path, next to the smoothness of morning water and light fog. Probably, this place has become for me the most beloved, intimate. Here there are such tall grasses and complete isolation from the whole world that absolute unity with the place occurs. It seems that this is a small fragile piece of our Motherland - her heart, which lives, beats, breathes. From the hill, from the highest point, you can see the lake, neat islets in the distance, a chapel against the backdrop of the Holy Grove and fields of summer flowers. I squint like a cat and just smile at the dawn. Quiet light on the face, tender spikelets of grass and even annoying mosquitoes that constantly bring us back from the clouds to the ground. And I am not alone in this business: on the fence in front of the chapel sits a glossy satisfied cat and also squints in the sun. Kind, affectionate. Purrs when you scratch behind your ear. Wet almost to the waist, we go out onto a country road, and a slight happy fatigue carries us home along the sandy shore of Ust-Pocha, next to the silver water.

Adventures awaited us in the evening. I wrote to the management of the park: they wanted to order a boat to the southern part of Kenozero. It turned out that it was not easy to do this in a day! Local residents refused to take us, so this "fate" went to the senior inspector of the park, Ivan Alexandrovich. He turned out to be a good peasant, very correct - it is clear that he is working at the right job. Even permission to take pictures made us get it so that everything was as it should be. And the park management and guides are very cool. Everything here is organized competently and well for tourists - excursions, parking lots, houses and hotels. Only, they say, if you are coming to us, write in advance, book places and excursions. The guys there are kind and helpful.

So we loaded into the boat, set sail. Today there are waves on Kenozero. The weather changes, it gets colder, sometimes the spray of northern water is poured over with a cold shower. We stopped near the Sacred Grove. A giant juniper grows here and there is a small neat chapel. It smells delicious, and the juniper trees themselves go high into the sky like cypresses!

But it's time to go to the south of the lake with a stop at the village of Tyryshkino. There are two chapels here, hidden in the ship's forest. One of them, the Cross, is surprisingly tiny. To pray in it, you need to squat down. They say this is one of the smallest chapels in Russia.

But the end point of our route is the village of Zehnovo. Little has changed here since the 18th-19th centuries: rickety black houses stand on the shores of the picturesque bay of the lake. Ivan Alexandrovich drops us off on a sandy shore, to an equipped parking lot. He waves his hand, say goodbye. And the weather has completely deteriorated: the sky is leaden, the wind, and most importantly - such a hammer that the mosquitoes instantly died out. For the first time, we do not hear the usual ringing and do not drive them out of the camera mount, and this is the only joyful thought that still comes to mind, because we were left here to spend the night with only one tent, and the temperature dropped from 20 to 4 o C. by night.

The rain is falling, the dogs came running to bark and sniff at us. Like their own - already wagging their tails. And we set off from the parking lot to the very beautiful place Zekhnova, for the sake of whom we came, to the chapel. She is somehow very special, light, resembles a boat that stands over the lake and is ready to go down into the water. The Ark of Kenozero that will save everyone.
By morning we were completely frozen in the tent. We looked out - and the lake is steaming, like in winter. A strong wind breaks the steam and fog into shreds, carries away the heat, grinds the water. At seven in the morning we waited for our inspector, but there was a thought that no one would come for us on such waves ... Cold shower for an hour - and we were on the ground. We dry, dry the feathers.

And this is the village of Karpovo not far from Vershinin, on the last day.

Remained the last evening at Kenozero. Of course, we spent it in our beloved Manor, enjoying the warm summer sunset, because when we were brought back home, the weather, as if by a wave of a magic wand, became warm, summer again.

Yes, we stayed on Kenozero for only five days, but this place has sunk so deeply into the soul that I want to return here more than once. I highly recommend it for clearing the head of extraneous thoughts, peace of mind and getting wonderful memories.

On the way from Kenozero, we stopped at two villages: Arkhangel and Morshchinskaya. In both ancient churches in the woods, in poor condition ... A sad sight, of course, especially under the northern leaden clouds.

In fact, the park has one main road from "civilization" in the form of Plesetsk or Kargopol, and there are no gas stations, the nearest ones are located in these cities. From each of them to go to Vershinin about 100-150 km. We took with us a 50-liter canister, filled to the top with 92, but in fact, they say, private traders in Vershinin sell gasoline 5 rubles more expensive than in the city.

On the roads there is a lot of beauty you cannot run into, only Vershinino and Ust-Pocha can be reached. You need to sail to the most interesting distant places by boat.
The roads in the park are good everywhere, by Russian standards, but the section from Kargopol to Onega is very bad, you need to drive slowly along it.

Where can you go, go or swim for a photographer and traveler in the beautiful Kenozero? Here is a list of locations.

You can reach by car to:

• Vershinin - here is the most beautiful Nikolskaya chapel, a harbor with boats;
• Karpova (not far from Vershinin, better on foot from the turn to Karpovo) - a beautiful chapel on a hill above the lake;
• Myzy is a small village with a chapel near the Sacred Grove on the island beyond Ust-Pocha (to the north); you need to drive through all of Ust-Pocha and stop in front of the flimsy footbridge to the island;
• Filippovskaya is a beautiful village with a Pochozersky temple complex, to which there is a good dirt road. The complex is almost restored, it is amazingly beautiful around it: on both sides there is a river and lakes, houses and summer herbs.
• There is also the southern, Kargopol part of the park, where Lekshmozero is located with the interesting village of Morshchinskaya.

You can get by boat to:

• Glazov - in this article, probably most of the photographs are from there, this amazing place hooked me so strongly. Getting from Ust-Pochi is easy: talk to the locals, they will prompt and find a boat. You can go to Ryzhkovo - also a beautiful chapel opposite Glazov. The locals are especially happy when you pour your own gasoline into their engine;
• Zekhnova is the south of the lake; the chapel and the place itself are amazing. If you stayed at Kenozero for a short time and want to swim somewhere - this is the very thing. It is better to spend the night in a tent in the parking lot until dawn.
• Ask to take you to Bear, to the juniper grove. Further - a detour to Tyryshkin, where there is an amazing chapel "Cross", one of the smallest in Russia, and a large chapel in a dense forest in the Holy Grove.
• If you have time, you can go boating to the village of Vedyaginoy and Gorbachikha, but we did not have time to get there.
• For those who are going to travel in 2015: you can walk (8-12 km) from Gorbachikha to the Porzhensky churchyard. Everyone highly recommends, but this year the temple complex is under restoration, stands in the woods. They will finish work in 2015.

The text has undergone minimal editorial revision.