the third act

(narrator)

a thick milk of fog covered the city. frosty steam comes from the ground.

a human has hidden in the snow and is trying to catch a connection

(voice iii)

*&%R*&^%’#^&!

(narrator)

maya, what are you trying to say? you are disappearing

(voice iii)

*^#’@*(% with @^()&^”!

(narrator)

the connection seems to be unstable

(voice iii)

hei, can you hear me well?

(narrator)

now finally yes

(voice iii)

greetings to all! maya kust is in touch with you. since it is difficult to imagine the temporality and modality of what is happening under our feet at this very second, i was also proposed to join this dream. i am a geologist and an artist. over the past few years, i have been working mainly with issues of nature’s wellbing and reaction to climate change in a close link with the life of permafrost. you have probably heard that it was inherited from the last ice age and extends over ¼ of the entire land area of the globe. in a place that i consider my home, these changes are associated with the degradation of permafrost

(voice i и voice ii)

…utter degradation…

(voice iii)

i know it sounds a little harsh. permafrost degradation is a scientific term that indexes the destruction of matter due to external influences. it happens according to the laws of nature and time. of course, this is a natural process of life on earth and we should be more careful with words associated with the human condition. it should also be understood that permafrost is not a homogeneous phenomenon: there are no identical permafrost landscapes, just as there are no identical people or stones by the sea. right now, at the moment of our dream, the degradation of permafrost is happening somewhere, and in another geographical point, on the contrary, it is just beginning to appear

(narrator)

the awakening is near. all ephemeral forms of dreams flow into each other, forming one tonality. changes in air temperature are felt acutely. phenomena invisible on the surface send messages about themselves only as hints and encrypted signals above and below the surface

(voice iii)

under the permafrost there are underground waters that have either always been there, or occured while the earth was freezing and squeezing them out so as a result they ended up under the permafrost although they were once on the surface. there is also still water that flows over the surface of the permafrost. we do not see how it flows, but it moves in the soil completely in its own way

(narrator)

it is impossible to see her movement with the eye

(voice iii)

the average speed of movement of these underground waters should be considered on a millimeter scale per day – this is a very slow movement. their dynamics can be compared with how the universe is expanding, only the scales are different. if, for example, the earth has its own geological time, which is thought of on a gigantic scale, then the processes inside the earth have their own ways. ways that are huge stretches in time

(movement)

close your eyes and try to teleport

to another historical time 20 000 years ago

imagine sensations, smells and colors that you will encounter

(narrator)

humankind has just appeared. in some parts of the planet, permafrost already prevailed under the ground a human set foot on

(voice iii)

these places are characterized by low thermometer indicators.

if we describe the phenomenon of permafrost in a few words.. it means that in summer the soils do not have enough time to thaw after long cold winters. frozen ground has its own life cycle, which is greatly influenced by the weather. sometimes i hear from older generations that in their childhood the temperature often dropped to -65°C: severe frosts came along with november and lasted until the end of february. now there is no such thing when weather is almost monolith for several months – these are consequences of global warming. climate change affects our reality in a direct way: houses *walk*, skin of the earth thickens, cracks appear in buildings and pits that resemble portals to the dungeon. it may seem that outcomes of melting processes are beginning to happen and be visible only now, but they were here even earlier than when the sakha culture came to these lands. people settled and firmly settled in central yakutia because of the nature and peculiar landscape. interestingly, as a result of permafrost degradationthe alaas is formed – it is a landscape beloved by the sakha people through generations

(narrator)

alaas is a typical geological formation for the flatland yakutia. this relief form is an oval-shaped hollow with a diameter of up to several kilometers and a depth of up to 30 meters. the lowlands of alaas are usually covered with a swampy lake, and the slopes are covered with meadow steppe vegetation. it is formed when underground ice melts, shrinkage of soil and rocks, suffusion, karst and other reasons

(voice iii)

for the most part alaas have thermokarst origin. we have ice under the ground, we call it re-winter ice. the ice wedge cracks every winter at low degrees and opens up for 1-2 cm. the hollow water that melts from the snow gets there and this ice wedge expands for thousands of years. when the underground ice begins to melt, the process of alaas formation begins. alaas always has a slope that looks like a bowl — the local people can easily and clearly identify its form. they are very productive for cattle breeding and horse breeding

(narrator)

autonomous biotope

a relatively homogeneous area of geospatial

characterized by peat formation

(movement)

construct a small alaas around yourself

settle down in it and continue dreaming

(voice iii)

earlier it used to be considered that alaas were one big-scale full lake, but it turned out not to be so. several alaases can connect with each other — this is visible when you pass tyungyulu lake with a diameter of 10 kilometers, in some other lakes, for example, in myuryu, the diameter is even larger. a small alaas can form for 150 years. then it expands and then connects with others. if you saw a large alaas, probably earlier there could have been several hundred small alaases

that once connected at that place

(narrator)

the lake is filling

the water is overflowing

(voice iii)

alaases become full-flowing after a while. when the underground ice completely melts, nearby alaases eat up the bridges between themselves. the water overflows and alaas is formed. this process — similar to the creation of a community — is evident when studying the evolution of landscape development. there are wooded protrusions — tumuses, hillocks — tomtors, that can help observers to identify that these alaases were strangers and joined together only later. for example, if there are nine tomtors, then more than ten alaases were connected to each other

(narrator)

to understand the dream we must first get a report on the subject’s memories

(voice iii)

many generations of people who were born here did not know about warming until the 80s of the 20th century. nevertheless, in the last years of soviet power, a massive transformation of nature began. it is ongoing at this moment and it is unknown how long it will continue

(narrator)

transformations of the natural environment never stop

(voice iii)

in slow observations of the shapes and flows of the surrounding reality we can see how the underground ice is melting. places are changing drastically. in the soviet times, my parents often traveled to churapchi and landed at the airport nearby. however, in the 90s the airport stopped accepting planes and became inactive. you can sense the role of melting when seeing such landscape: the ground sunk, the runway acquired irregularities and became unusable

(narrator)

having noticed how the landscape of the place is changing and with what dynamism the permafrost is melting, a long time ago the local people left names that later passed into academic terminology:

byllar, iyo, dyuedya, tympy

(voice iii)

all these words denote different stages of thermokarst development. their shapes are not difficult to distinguish visually: for example, if you look at the byllars from a bird’s-eye view, they look like pancakes. it is interesting that in one district of the republic there is a *youth quarter*, which is completely based on byllars. it is not entirely safe to build houses in such places because after a while these bylars will inevitably become alaas. there is also a case with borogontsy, where residents were given a large field: people built houses there, but they do not live in them – everything is empty. i often travel around our republic and see these byllars, which, in fact, signal us about the first sign of permafrost degradation

(narrator)

warming greatly changes landscapes. changes in nature happen by themselves for a very long time. nevertheless, over the past 70 years, due to the intense release of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, the geochemical cycle of the planet has also changed. it clouds even a short part of upcoming future with a set of accidents

(movement)

turn back time and transform your big alaas into byllars

continue the dream in this form

(voice iii)

when you go to nature, pay attention to polygonal formations – the main indicators of warming. when you look at them, there is a feeling as if the earth has begun to boil in the soil. sometimes i boil too, or rather my imagination boils after learning that in the middle of the last century there was an idea to move yakutsk to a conical hill near the city –chochur-muraan. even if a big warming is coming, nothing will happen there on the plateau with stone rocks – sandstones, mudstones, siltstones. nothing will happen even if you put a heating pad or an electric stove. if this utopian project would have happened, in the valleys of tuimaada, erkeeni and ensieli we would now see settlements of the alaas type and maybe small agro-clusters. perhaps this approach would have contributed to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and extractive industries, the introduction to agriculture, which can be facilitated by both the water located nearby and one thing that creates favorable conditions for the harvest – the warming itself. we would slow down from the rapid pace of the world, where the linear perception of time with the ideas of eternal movement, development, progress, beginning and end prevails. prevails as much as indifference to the cycles of nature, to the connectivity of all living beings and organisms with nature

(narrator)

slowing down is necessary

(voice iii)

all in all, the city has not moved anywhere. still there are no reasons for fearing: houses in yakutsk are built with the protection of permafrost. in winter there is no – and should not be! – snow under the piles, otherwise it would cause a very large warming effect. i remember when i went to school, there were often shields under multi-storey buildings: these panels blocked the entrance of the wind under the house. the mayor removed them so that access to the cold remained open in winter and this is an effective measure – when there is no snow, the cold goes straight into the ground and protects the permafrost where the house stands. it is called a ventilated underground – this is our first protection. piles, which are now being made even with cooling pipes inside are the second protection. almost 90% of permafrost problems in our city come from emergency situations: if hot water is pouring under the house or, for example, a pipe bursts and water flows straight into the ground. it is unacceptable to have freezing and thawing under one building at the same time. such cases should be closely monitored and promptly responded to by the workers of housing and communal services. of course, there is warming in the city, but the temperature around the houses keeps the cooling effect: under the houses the ground temperature is -6°C, -4°C. for comparison, in an open area, for example, in the green field of yakutsk, it is -2 °C. so the ground under the houses is twice as cold as in natural landscapes, there definitely is protection in the houses

(narrator)

protection is any measure taken to protect something or someone from damage caused by external forces

(voice iii)

we do not know the climate conditions of the future and cannot predict whether the warming that is happening at the moment is similar to what was, for example, 125 000 years ago. those were times of the dnieper glaciation when until kiev there was a glacier and later it completely melted. if such warming comes, many cities will need to be rebuilt in completely different places. the permafrost landscape map of the republic reflects the territories exposed to dangerous phenomena during the melting of permafrost. it is not recommended to live in them from a permafrost point of view. only stable soils are suitable for life

(narrator)

permafrost has different characteristics of iciness, temperature, thawing, power, and they all do not depend on each other at all

(voice iii)

in yakutsk there is a district titled *merzlotka* (*the permafrost area*) and the distance to reach the permafrost there is 200-230 meters, in zhatai – 450 meters, in churapcha – 700 meters, and in the village of khatanga in taymyr – 1200 meters. permafrost can be located in layers: for example, in the nizhniy bestyakh, the permafrost layer in the ground begins at about 30 meters, then unfrozen soil comes, and then another layer of permafrost begins at 100 meters. most likely, this can be explained by the fact that the times when the soil layers were formed differed historically. our time will also leave its traces in the ground – perhaps several centimeters by the banks of a nearby river

(movement)

turn off the light in the room and lie down on any surface

the narrator reads the last glimpses of our dream with a flashlight on

(narrator)

voices that tried to wake us up are slowly reaching their goal. we are already seconds away from waking up. the last memorized moments repeat the images of anicent meadows, ringing with drops of thawed ice. we can already feel what is happening around us, what movements are rushing by, we hear a person experiencing the same dream nearby. the energy once received from the sun begins to pulsate in the body. the darkness recedes

*

fin