The paw prints lead over the ridge. Then nowhere. The old man stopped to smoke. I stared out over unending trees. The longer we spent in the Taiga together the more he asked about England. Fedya was particularly amazed by the concept of gyms. He asked to be explained this again and again. Thinking about an exercise bike sent him into absolute hysterics. But mostly we talked about the lynx.

Two sisters lived farther out in the Taiga, maybe 70 km from the last homestead. They were said to recite whole scriptures from memory and to have healed sick babies when only little girls. They had taken a vow of silence and now lived in the monastery. The desperate made their way there, to toll their bell over emptiness. But the hunters would not take me.  

I fell behind again. The Taiga at sunset is the most colourful place in the world. In the space of a few hours the snow goes from a brilliant white to a golden yellow and mauve red. The trees change too, from grey to a deep green, to a russet red, then finally a deep blue black. The snow sparkles with light like diamonds. But I hate it all. I was exhausted, out of breath, almost lost, following the hunters' tracks as they got closer to the lynx.

Trailing in the twilight, I was terrified. Twice I cocked my rifle when the shape of a fox appeared out of a tree. I hallucinated growls out of the trudge of my snow boots. The light vanished. My blood froze at shapes between the trees. 

I repeated: "I am armed. I am armed. I can kill it." But a scene of confusion that might only last a few seconds flashed in my head — of me unable to fire fast enough. The squeaks the rifle made on my back chilled me. The darkness was almost total. I shot wildly at a stump of wood that for a few seconds took on the shape of a wolf.

The old man had night terrors. They would begin with moans and sudden thrashes. Then shouts. "Grandpa please..." He would roll off the sleeping planks and scuffle on the floor with imaginary animals, sobbing. At times he made shooting sounds with his mouth like a little boy. "No...No..." I lay as still as possible, surrounded by guns and axes and knives, holding my breath. 

That morning we found fresh tracks seven kilometres away. They snaked down a snow-clogged stream. It happens quickly when it happens. The hunter freezes, falls silent and fires. The dogs screech wildly. But the lynx has escaped into the farthest Taiga where the snow and the thickets come up to your waist. The old man swears, rips off a branch and beats the dogs for such a cowardly failure.

We followed the lynx into a shaman's grove. The hunters dipped their guns. Tied to the birches were rags in blue, yellow, white, red and green. Offerings to the spirits of the place. We did not go through. Farther along, we stopped for the dogs to regain the scent. The old man told me there had been a shaman there for many years. But he had died in February. "There is a hermit . . . One of ours . . . 40 kilometres away. He eats raw fish and glides away like a deer when hunters get too close."

The farther from the valley we trudged the closer we came to Tuvan hunters. They did things differently. They rode on stags and chased animals with six, seven, dogs each. They hunted for days at a time and slept mounted. There were once reindeer herders near the valley. "But the boys are going to the city. There are only a few who still do it now, living out with the deer." The hunters had tussled with the herders in the past. They were happy the latter were thinning out. More Taiga was now theirs.