Probably, each of the Ural tourists was on Shunute and Platonides. I know a serious businessman from Yekaterinburg, which is regularly Platonides celebrates the New Year. I have even been there twice myself.

The first time it was shooting some TV channel, and we talked on Shunute night about nature conservation. The second time was 7 years ago. As always organized the trip Aliya Sultanova, and everything was very serious: a specially sharpened machine, an experienced guide with different equipment. The funny thing was that our guide could not get to Shunuta close, as he did not let the tires down for better cross-country ability. But he professionally fed us lunch. We walked the rest of the mile and a half. And when they arrived, they saw right under Shunut 15 pieces of cars, and among them a little blue Goetz. A big surprise, like in a fairy tale about 12 Months. There are no roads, but everyone goes there.

And below you will find beautiful photos and a short story from Vladislav Wooden. Enjoy and travel!

Ural does not let you get bored

Our new journey Ural with a small but proud club of Land Rover enthusiasts.

This time we visited a holy and mysterious place, climbed Old Man Stone and conquered the summit.

Moreover, they conquered in the truest sense of the word, the last 500 meters were overcome for 3 hours. Literally before the finish line, two legends collided: the legend of the domestic auto industry and the legend of the English. 4 UAZ vehicles and our column of Land Rovers met on a non-traversable track in the middle of the forest. I have never played in such tags.

You drive the car into a snowdrift, one passes, the next one gets out of the snowdrift, until it gets it, it drives into the snowdrift itself and gets stuck there, and already the new crew gets it. Everything was decided by UAZ Bukhanka and Land Rover Discovery, which had no equal either in a meter-long snowdrift or in a half-meter track. I prudently did not torture my little Renjik, dug out a pocket between the trees and parked.

What we did for 14 hours non-stop: pushing weight training, tags with UAZs, replacing a punctured wheel in a snowdrift with speed, navigating the terrain in the dark in search of missing autotourists in a Lexus, throwing snow with a shovel for a distance, overcoming meter-long waves along a logging road.

The only thing we couldn't do was eat. 62 km one way, 14 hours of time, a sea of drive, impressions, mutual assistance, laughter and only one inadequate person we met on the way.

Thanks to all the members of our micro club, thanks to Jaguar Land Rover Autoplus, thanks to everyone who met us on the way!

Source of Platonides

— a legendary place in the dense forests of the Revdinsky district Sverdlovsk region, about 10-12 kilometers from the village Krasnoyar. Hydrological and historical monument of nature.

In ancient times, there was an Old Believer skete here. Once this place was very revered by the Old Believers, and now both Old Believers and Orthodox, and various occultists, and just tourists are drawn here. There are many legends about the hermit Platonides whose name the source bears. Well-known local historian Vladimir Trusov according to archival documents, he was able to establish that she lived Platonides in the distant 18th century and was buried at her skete around 1785.

Subsequently the grave Platonides became a cult place. Every year, many pilgrims from all over come to her to worship and in the hope of healing from ailments. Ural and countries. Moreover, at Platonides followers appeared and some wanderers stayed here to live. A clear confirmation of this is the nameless crosses near the grave. Platonides. Who is buried here, we will probably never know. Around Krasnoyarsk in different years, several Old Believer sketes operated.

Now let's talk directly about the healing source itself. Holy Spring of Platonides located in the upper reaches of a small taiga Small Ik river(inflow Revda rivers). It springs up from under the ground and after a few meters it falls into Small Ik. Here, in the river, there is a small depression in which you can swim. True, for this you need to show skill, since the river is shallow. The water here is very cold even in the summer heat. The taste of water is pleasant, no taste smacks are felt.

Mount Shunut or Shunut-Stone

Mount Shunut(or another name - Shunut Stone) is the top of the ridge Konovalovsky Uval. The height of this one is 726 meters above sea level. In general, a lot for the low-mountainous Middle Urals.
Mount Shunut is picturesque rocks.

Their height is from 20 to 60 meters. The rocks are the highest and steepest on the east side. From the top there is an excellent view of the green sea of the taiga.

Not surprisingly, this beautiful attraction is very popular among tourists. There is a spring at the foot of the rocks. True, in dry weather it sometimes dries up.

Where this name came from is unclear, let's try to refer to the book A.K. Matveev "Geographical names of the Sverdlovsk region":

“In some reference books, the word Shunut is considered as a Mansi-Bashkir hybrid (Mansi shun - “creature”, Bashkir ut - “fire”). A fire was lit on this high mountain as a signal of approaching danger. It is really tempting to see the Türkic ut – “fire” in the element ut, but the addition “creature” + “fire” is a very strange construction for toponymy.

In addition, shun in Mansi is by no means a creature, but “sleigh”, “sled”. Therefore, it is better to consider the oronym Shunut as purely Turkic, which is confirmed by the harmony of vowels (u-u) and the stress on the last syllable. However, if the word is divided into components shun and ut, its first part shun does not find a sufficiently convincing explanation in the Turkic languages. In general, there are some doubts that the word should be divided in this way.

The fact is that in a number of geological works of the late XIX - early XX centuries. instead of the name Shunut-stone, the White Stone appears (perhaps because of the light color of the rocks). However, the Shunut stream, the Shunut mine and the small Shunut ridge south of the modern Shunut stone are indicated. At the same time, in other geological and geographical works of the same time, the names Shunut Mountains, Shunut Ridge, Shunut Ridge seem to be used in the modern sense, and the oronym White Stone is applied only to a rocky peak. In this case, there is clearly a lack of facts, but it can be assumed that the name of the river and the insignificant objects adjacent to it are primary, and then there can be no question of dividing into shun and ut.

The rocks are composed of conglomerates of cemented pebbles and quartzite sandstone shales. According to the geographer N.P. Arkhipova, the age of the rocks is more than 600 million years. Surface rocks of Shunut picturesque and in places covered with lichens of white, gray, rusty-red colors.

Rock Old Man-Stone

Shunut is not the only rocky attraction in these places. A little to the south you can look at the curious rock Old Man-Stone, whose profile clearly resembles a human face. Old Man Stone everything applies to the same Konovalovsky ridge.

Old Man Stone also refers to the ridge massif Konovalovsky ridge. The name of the ridge arose, according to the local historian Yu.A. dunaeva, from the village Konovalovo, which is located on its northern extension. Konovalovsky ridge

I accidentally saw a repost in the ecovillage group with an invitation for everyone to go to an intuitive herb collection. It immediately clicked in my head that I needed to go, I contacted the organizers and booked a place. Who these people are, what they do, how many participants in the trip and where they will take us - I learned all this after the fact. Until that moment, only intuition led me, and it did not let me down, but more on that later. I worked all weekend to go on an early morning adventure on a weekday Tuesday (it is not known with whom, it is not known where).

As it turned out, the trip was organized by a wonderful couple - Sergey and Mira. They founded the Siberian Way (https://vk.com/sibirput). They take tourists on absolutely incredible trips, and Mira is engaged in herbalism, making teas of strength from wild plants.

They took us to the absolutely incredible northern forest. Already at the entrance to it felt the incredible energy of this place. I was drawn forward, I wanted to go where, as it seemed to me, they were waiting for us.

The path lay along the bed of the Maly Ik River, we had to go 5 km to our goal.

Sergey immediately explained that it is better to go to the place of power on an empty stomach, so as not to ground yourself. We introduced ourselves to the forest and told about why we had come.

Along the way, Mira shared her knowledge with us, taught us the correct collection of herbs, told and showed what wild plants you can eat and what they are called.
Therefore, we didn’t get hungry stomachs. We chewed all kinds of herbs to satiety.

And wild garlic grows in those places. The same grass with wide leaves and garlic taste. There are so many of them that the eyes are not enough)

The forests there are deaf, deserted and alive. Now the woodpecker will scream, then the squeak of chicks is heard from the hollow in the tree. Caught on our way and poisonous snakes. Sergei found footprints that looked like foxes. The forest land flourishes without a person.

A little about the source of Platonides

In ancient times, there was an Old Believer skete here. Once this place was very revered by the Old Believers, and now both Old Believers and Orthodox, and various occultists, and just tourists are drawn here. To begin with, let's dive into the abyss of history and try to understand who this strange woman was, after whom the miraculous spring is named. There are many legends about the hermit Platonides (at least several dozen variations!).

According to one of the legends, a long time ago an Old Believer family lived in these parts, in which there were two brothers and a sister, Platonida. A misfortune happened: father and mother died, and they did not leave a will. The brothers were seized by greed, and they decided to divide the poor property among themselves, and the younger sister was taken to a distant skete to certain death. 30-40 years passed and their conscience tortured them. The brothers decided to go to the skete, to pray for sin at the remains of their sister. But what was their surprise when they saw their sister alive, unharmed and very young, like many years ago. It turned out that “holy water” flowed in the source near the skete. Washing herself with that water, Platonida preserved her beauty and youth. The rumor about Platonides went far and pilgrims were drawn here ...

Legends are legends, but there are no reliable facts about Platonides once or twice. It is not known for certain what her real name was, her last name, when she was born and what kind she came from, etc. Many researchers, not without reason, assume that before her seclusion she lived in a peasant family in the village of Krasnoyar located here. The well-known local historian Vladimir Trusov, according to archival documents, was able to establish that Platonida lived in the distant 18th century and was buried at her hermitage around 1785. (

Behind him is a large backpack. The navigator contains the coordinates of the main points. I'm going alone. Bus Yekaterinburg-Revda, half empty during the day. An hour and a half and I'm in Revda.

I am sitting at the railway station, waiting for a bus to Krasnoyarsk. The bus runs only three times a day. We talked with the man. He is from Krasnoyarsk, a local resident. My name is Sergey. He tells me how to get to Shunut and Platonida, otherwise "you can get lost in a lot of paths." Talks about himself. He says that he used to live in Yekaterinburg, sold everything and moved to live in Krasnoyar. Just as Shunut is a place of power, and that all sorts of people walk here, there are also sorcerers. Sergey is a healer, a healer, he also leads those who wish to visit Shunut and Platonida and is an interesting person in general.

He has a website for those who are interested. I also think you can leave a car with him in the village if you go on foot to Shunut / Platonida.

Arrived in Krasnoyarsk. Left the village. I'm walking on a dirt road. Then I turn into the forest. As usual, the further, the deeper.

2. The path to Platonida is marked with ribbons

3. Pointers with emotional load

4. There is a logging road going through the forest to Platonida, in fact, you can drive even on a steep off-road vehicle.

5. In the forest I come across such a thing. What's this? Manhole cover or part of a collapsed UFO?)) In any case, it is strange to see this far from civilization.

6. I reach the taiga river with the short name Small Ik.

The territory of Platonides appeared ahead. From Krasnoyar to Platonida 12 km. In essence, the source of Platonides is a spring that spouts from the ground and immediately flows into the Small Ik River. According to legend, a woman was called Platonis, when she died she was buried here, and a key began to beat from this place. More written.

7. Middle of the week and I don't find a single person here. The place looks rather strange without people. Grave. Canopy to protect from rain. Cross.

8. Holy spring of Platonides. The water is delicious.

9. River Small Ik.

10. There is a tradition to bring a stone here to equip a spring and purify the soul…

11.

I slowly climb Shunut. By the way, Shunut has its own spring, and who does not know about it drags water here. I also carried two liters of water. There are not many people at the top. Just one group of organized tourists with a guitar.

12. And here I am at the top. Height 724 m.

13. Fir-trees and larches closely approach the rocks. Around the deaf taiga forest.

14. The nature here is beautiful

15. I climb the highest rock and drink tea. The sounds of a guitar are heard from a nearby rock.

16. It's almost twelve at night on the clock. It's getting dark.

I set up a tent. Cooking dinner on the fire. I spend the night. You can see more about Shunut peak.

17.

Wake up at five in the morning. It's cold and you can't sleep. At seven o'clock in the morning I begin the descent from Shunut towards the Old Man Stone. Walk ten kilometers. It's raining. I reach the rock.

18. Rock Old Man Stone. Outwardly, the mountain looks like the head of a gray-haired old man. From this place begins the Konovalovsky Uval ridge, which stretches to the northwest for 15 km. The old stone is, as it were, the head of the ridge.

19. Rock and road nearby

After inspecting the Rocks, I return back to the village of Krasnoyar. Through Platonida, about 15 km.

The trajectory of all my foot movements. The total mileage for two days is 40 km.

That's all. Thank you for your attention.

Editorial: The places of former sketes and the graves of some monks and nuns, who became famous for their ascetic life, enjoy great reverence among the Ural Old Believers of the chapels. In the "Ural-Siberian Patericon", in particular, there is information about the old woman Platonides. We present the story of a traveler to her grave.

***

Wonderful are our Ural forests! Sometimes you go uphill, but it doesn't get dry. To get to the shihan at the top, sometimes you overcome mountain "hanging" swamps. From a height you admire the sea of pointed firs and firs. For example, from Mount Shunut of the Konovalovsky ridge (726 m high), three dozen miles south of Revda. There, in the dark coniferous taiga, on the way to the grave of the old woman Platonida, there was one meeting.

They walked barefoot on the grass, damp with dew, on the ground, seized by the first cold - the harbingers of autumn. Women and children, small and older, dressed in white shirts, walked in an endless line. There were no men among them. They walked in silence, not paying attention to the drizzling rain, to the sharp stones and branches that fell under their feet. As if they were above the broken logging road with its rubbish and dirt, “above” it. Nothing seemed to stop them. I knew where they were heading and was struck by the sight that spoke of the unwavering faith in people's hearts.

Platonidine Key

For the first time, a teacher at the Revda school told me about the old woman Platonida and her key in March 1993. The conversation at the Arakaev camp site near the Sergi River then dragged on past midnight. After what I heard, I took a backpack and ran to the night train to Druzhinino. In the morning I was in Revda, I went by bus to the village of Krasnoyar.

I managed to walk along the Shunut-Serga trail (Deer Streams Park) without skis. On the ski track, a two-meter thickness of snow was covered with a strong crust. In front of the clearing to the Shunut-stone, the sun illuminated for the last time the amazing panorama of the forest valley from the pass to the Sokolye stone. It got dark quickly. Having turned off the timber truck along the path, I found myself at the gazebo-chapel above the Platonid Key. According to legend, Platonida saved people from diseases with water from a holy spring. I remember that I drank water from it - and could not get drunk! And at home, try to drink so much water - you can’t. Later I found out that the spring is really difficult, rich in radon waters.

Then, in a nearby clearing, there was a hut with a stove, opposite it was a bathhouse. They were full of people. Two tourists decided to spend the night "at the skete", and I asked for it. It was a frosty night, the full moon rose, and it became as bright as day in the forest. From the spring we moved to the grave of the old woman. To the right, three grave crosses rose from the snowdrifts. At the burial site of Platonida were the remains of a broken tombstone and golbets - an Orthodox cross with a gable top. In front of the grave is a place of prayer for the Old Believers.

The poles along the edges serve to fasten protection from the rain, in the center there is a stand for reading church books. Forest Church! Having passed the grave of the old woman, after a kilometer we went down to the dugout near the Maly Ik River. Inside the "skete" on the shelves were icons with the faces of saints. The oven was working properly. Warming up our haven, we cheered up.

Few people knew then about that tract. I was there in the fierce December of 1994, when the skete was already lopsided and the stove was broken. Almost freezing, I saw how at night hunched-up praying-praying grandmothers in headscarves approached the dwelling. In the morning, in their place were Christmas trees, bent under the caps of snow. In general, the forest in these places is as beautiful during the day as it is scary at night. The darkness thickens around, the trees come closer and begin to creak, moan. The howling of wolves is heard, somewhere an owl hoots. For some reason, at the grave of an old woman, her soul is always calm. You can stand in the black silent taiga in front of a candle burning with unquenchable light, listen to the sound of the river, listen to your heart. At such moments, everything vain seems small, insignificant.

I remember the autumn of 1995, when half a bucket of mushrooms could be cut from the door jambs of the hut. From the "forest church" a steep path led to the bank of the Small Ik River.

In one place, a stone dam and a baptismal font were built. Branches of "certified" trees entwined with ribbons were bent over it. On them they hang clothes or shoes from that part of the body that they want to cure by making a bath in the font. By the year 2000, the participants in the procession installed a large wooden cross near the grave of Platonis.

Many years passed, in 2013 I was there again. There was no hut, only ruins remained from the bathhouse. A new dome has been built over the key instead of the old gazebo. On the grave of Platonida lies a new tombstone with a fragment of the old one. Another cross appeared from the beam. All that remained of the skete was the door and the frame of the iron stove. The roof of the dugout has collapsed.

Small Ik still gurgled with icy water, running like a snake into the forest. Above the font, small waterfalls flowed over the stones. Closer to the night, the bustle of people subsided, everyone dispersed. There was silence at the holy place.

We came here on foot, feeling with our feet the road that the Old Believers have been walking for more than a century. They pray "mutually", including for Platonida, because she is not canonized. What was the life of the unglorious ascetic? Why do women go to her grave?

To the history of the Ural Old Believers

The reforms of Patriarch Nikon in the 1650s split Orthodox Russia. The reprisals against the Old Believers were cruel,

bonfires were burning everywhere, hundreds and thousands of people were burned, tongues were cut, heads were cut, quartered; prisons, monasteries, and dungeons were filled with sufferers for the holy faith. The clergy and civil authorities mercilessly exterminated their own brothers - the Russian people. No one was spared - neither women nor children(Archpriest of the Russian Orthodox Church Gennady Chunin).

The Old Believers fled to the North, to the Urals and to Siberia. I will give excerpts from the work of the nun Evstafiya (Morozova) “On the veneration in the Yekaterinburg Metropolis of the unglorified ascetics (the Elder Platonida and the Elder Avvakum)”. She studied rare archival documents about the Ural Old Believers.

“In 1725, the old man Nikifor arrived at the Nizhny Tagil plant from Kerzhents with many monks, after which tens of thousands of followers of the main priestly agreements, the Sofontievites, fled to the Urals. They initially belonged to the fugitives, accepting for their service the priests who fled from the Nikonian Church. In the 18th century, in this agreement, many communities began to switch to bezpopovskaya practice, which was approved as the norm at the Tyumen Old Believer Cathedral in 1840. The performance of rites and divine services passed to the mentors-elders and tutors, elected by the community: they read the services, omitting the prayers that the priest is supposed to say during divine services and sacraments. This current became known as the chapel or "starikism". Before the revolution, up to 90% of the Ural Old Believers belonged to the chapels. They had their own revered shrines, ascetics, martyrs and authoritative elders, for advice with whom the pilgrims traveled hundreds of miles. The most revered shrines of the chapels included the graves of the monks Herman, Maxim, Gregory and Paul on the Merry Mountains near the Verkhne-Tagilsky factory, where Old Believer pilgrims from all over Russia gathered annually in June. The grave of the fugitive priest Nikola in Yekaterinburg, the graves of the fugitive priests Job, Peter and Arkhip, as well as mentor Guriy in the Nizhny Tagil factory, the grave of the monk Tarasius in the Shartash village, the place "Klady" near the village of Meadowsweet with the remains of the former skete and tombstones of the hermits were also revered. .

He wrote about the prayers of the Old Believers V. Sanin (Afanasiev) in the essay " On the Merry Mountains 1910: For some time, in tense silence, you hear the reading of a holy book, but then the voice of Elder Anthony is heard singing the stichera. He is picked up by the singers under the canopy, then nearby, a wave of sounds, growing stronger every moment, grows throughout the clearing, rolls up to the last tents and resounds in the forests and mountains with a distant echo ... And then again silence, reading, and again a sea of voices, harmoniously in the old hooks singing stichera...».

In 1902, the Yekaterinburg Diocesan Gazette noted:

Old Believers gather on April 23 at the grave of Fr. George in the Chernoistochinsky plant; May 27, 28 and 29 at the grave of Fr. Job in Nizhny Tagil; June 6 - at the grave of the monk Avvakum, 6 versts from the village of Sazhina. On August 16, at the grave of mother Platonida in the village of Krasnoyarsk, mostly women gather and pray for their husbands, who suffer from drinking.

The life of the old woman Platonida

The same 1906 edition says:

the first of the hermits, as the old-timers say, in the vicinity of Krasnoyar was the mother of Platonid, and then - the mother of Taisiya. Buried [Platonides] 10 versts from Krasnoyar; By August 16, many people gather at her grave every year. Mother Taisia died in the first quarter of the 19th century and was buried at the skete cemetery, along the Bolshoi Ik River.

The village of Krasnoyarsk itself arose in the second decade of the 18th century and consisted exclusively of Old Believers. Based on these data, we can conclude about the lifetime of the old woman Platonida - she labored in the Ural forests in the second half of the 18th century. The worshipers said:

The mother of Platonides will get up early, early, when there is not a single soul on the mowing. She already knew who needed help. Whether an orphaned widow, or an exhausted man. He mows, applies hay, and cleans up. And he will do it all so that no one sees that she worked. As soon as she notices that people have appeared on the mowing, she is now leaving for the forest ...

Information about the old woman Platonides is in the "Ural-Siberian Patericon" - "Stories about fathers and hermits, who in recent persecutory times labored in the northern regions of the Russian land, within the Ural and Siberian deserts." The patericon was compiled in the first half of the 20th century in one of the sketes of the Old Believers of chapel consent and miraculously preserved by the Old Believers during the defeat of the sketes by the communists on the Lower Yenisei in 1951.

“Staritsa Platonida came from a family of pagan aliens (Tatars or Kalmyks). When she reached the age of adolescence, the lot fell on her to be sacrificed to idols, which is why all the relatives were “in sadness byahuveliza”. It so happened that at that time a Christian stopped in the house for the night, carrying flour from the mill. Upon learning of the grief, he invited the parents to give their daughter "as a sacrifice to the living God, let him serve". Agreeing, they put it in a bag, hiding it on a wagon between other bags of flour. As soon as the guest drove off, the pagans came to the house for Platonis. Not finding the girl, they chased the departed, overtook him, but could not find her on the cart. The unknown benefactor who saved Platonida, after baptism, placed her to live in one of the women's old believer sketes. There she began to labor diligently, and three years later she received tonsure. "into a monastic image". Such a quick tonsure aroused envy on the part of some of the sisters, who had come to the skete before her and had not yet accepted the angelic rank. Platonida was forced to secretly leave her sisterhood and settle in solitude in the forest ( "depart from them tai into the desert for silence"). However, even in the forest, she secretly helped those in need. “Be very merciful and hardworking, and help those in need, ... accepting from God the gift of healing, enlightening the blind and healing the sick, not just in the stomach (that is, not only during life), but also after his repose.”

Talk about Platonides "mother Meletina, mother Akinf and Elizaveta Paramonovna", who were told about her by Father John, who still found Platonida alive and personally remembered. It is clarified that Father John received the monastic rank from the father of Israel, "attested in Genealogy". ("Genealogy" of the chapel agreement, compiled by Father Nifont). This story about the life of Platonida can be considered the most reliable.

P.S. Wonderful are our Ural forests! On the way back, I walked and thought about Platonides. I never noticed how a bear flew out of the forest right at me. I didn't have much time to be afraid. I stood on the road like a tree and looked somewhere past. A brown colossus passed by me - and at least a twig crunched under my paw ... Handsome. On Shunut, bears often climb in raspberries, mind you.

Mikhail Latyshev.

06.12.2016 10:38:22

Text: Mikhail Latyshev

Such a view opens from Mount Shunut of the Konovalovsky ridge, located three dozen miles south of Revda. There, in the dark coniferous taiga, on the way to the grave of the old woman Platonida, there was one meeting ...

... They walked barefoot on the grass, wet with dew, on the ground, seized by the first cold weather - the harbingers of autumn. Women and children, small and older, dressed in white shirts, walked in an endless line. There were no men among them. They walked in silence, not paying attention to the drizzling rain, to the sharp stones and branches that fell under their feet. As if they were above the broken logging road with its rubbish and dirt, "above" it. Nothing seemed to stop them. I knew where they were heading and was struck by the sight that spoke of the unwavering faith in people's hearts.

Shunut-Serga" of the "Deer Streams" park, I managed to pass without skis.
In front of the clearing to the Shunut-stone, the sun illuminated for the last time the amazing panorama of the forest valley from the pass to the Sokolye stone. It got dark quickly.
Having turned off the timber truck along the path, I found myself at the gazebo-chapel above the Platonid Key. According to legend, Platonida saved people from diseases with water from a holy spring.
I remember that I drank water from it - and could not get drunk! And at home try to drink so much water - you can’t. Later I found out that the spring is really difficult, rich in radon waters.

Then, in a nearby clearing, there was a hut with a stove, and opposite it was a bathhouse. They were full of people. Two tourists decided to spend the night "at the skete" and I asked for it with them.
It was a frosty night, the full moon rose and the forest became as bright as day. From the spring we moved to the grave of the old woman. To the right, three grave crosses rose from the snowdrifts.

Forest Church!

Having passed the grave of the old woman, after a kilometer we went down to the dugout near the Maly Ik River. Inside the "skete" on the shelves were icons with the faces of saints. The oven was working properly. Warming up our haven, we cheered up.
Few people knew then about that tract. I was there in the fierce December of 1994, when the skete was already lopsided and the stove was broken. Almost freezing, I saw how at night hunched-up praying-praying grandmothers in headscarves approached the dwelling. In the morning, in their place were Christmas trees, bent under the caps of snow.
In general, the forest in these places is as beautiful during the day as it is scary at night. The darkness thickens around, the trees come closer and begin to creak, moan. The howling of wolves is heard, somewhere an owl hoots.
For some reason, at the grave of an old woman, her soul is always calm. You can stand in the black silent taiga in front of a candle burning with unquenchable light, listen to the sound of the river, listen to your heart. At such moments, everything vain seems small, insignificant.
forest church" a steep path led to the bank of the Small Ik River. In one place on the bank a stone dam and a baptismal font were built.
Branches of "certified" trees entwined with ribbons were bent over it. They also hang clothes or shoes from the part of the body that they want to cure. It is done by people who believe in it.
Procession" set up a large wooden cross near the grave of Platonides.
Many years passed, in 2013 I was there again. There was no hut, only ruins remained from the bathhouse. A new dome has been built over the key instead of the old gazebo. For some reason, a tombstone from the grave of Taisia's mother was brought to the grave of Platonida. Another cross appeared, from a beam.
All that remained of the skete was the door and the frame of the iron stove. The roof of the dugout has collapsed.

Small Ik still gurgled with icy water, running like a snake into the forest. Above the font, small waterfalls flowed over the stones.
Closer to the night, the bustle of people subsided, everyone dispersed. There was silence at the holy place. We came here on foot, feeling with our feet the road that the Old Believers have been walking for more than a century.
They pray "mutually" - including for Platonida, because she is not canonized.
What was the life of the unglorious ascetic? Why do women go to her grave?

To the history of the Ural Old BelieversBonfires burned everywhere, hundreds and thousands of people were burned, tongues were cut, heads were cut, quartered; prisons, monasteries, and dungeons were filled with sufferers for the holy faith. The clergy and civil authorities mercilessly exterminated their own brothers - the Russian people. No one was spared - neither women nor children," says Gennady Chunin.
The Old Believers fled to the North, to the Urals and to Siberia.
The Old Believers were accepted at the Ural factories, for the breeders they were conscientious workers. Interestingly, metal icons and crucifixes appeared in the everyday life of the Old Believers.

I will give excerpts from the work of the nun Evstafiya (Morozova) "On the veneration in the Yekaterinburg Metropolis of the unglorified ascetics (the old woman Platonida and the old man Avvakum)". She studied rare archival documents about the Ural Old Believers.
“In 1725, the elder Nikifor arrived at the Nizhny Tagil plant from Kerzhents with many monks, after which tens of thousands of followers of the main priestly accords, the Sofontievites, fled to the Urals.
They initially belonged to the fugitives, accepting for their service priests who had fled from the "Nikonian" Church. In the 18th century, in this agreement, many communities began to switch to bezpopovskaya practice, which was approved as the norm at the Tyumen Old Believer Cathedral in 1840.
The performance of rites and divine services passed to the mentors-elders and tutors, elected by the community: they read the services, omitting the prayers that the priest is supposed to say during divine services and sacraments.

This current became known as the chapel or "starikism". Before the revolution, up to 90% of the Ural Old Believers belonged to the chapels. They had their own revered shrines, ascetics, martyrs and authoritative elders, for advice with whom the pilgrims traveled hundreds of miles.
The most revered shrines of the chapels included the graves of the monks Herman, Maxim, Gregory and Paul on the Merry Mountains near the Verkhne-Tagilsky factory, where Old Believer pilgrims from all over Russia gathered annually in June.
The grave of the fugitive priest Nikola in Yekaterinburg, the graves of the fugitive priests Job, Peter and Arkhip, as well as the mentor Guriy in the Nizhny Tagil factory, the grave of the monk Tarasius in the Shartash village, the place "Klady" near the village of Meadowsweet with the remains of the former skete and tombstones of the hermitages were also venerated" .

On the Merry Mountains": “For some time, in tense silence, you hear the reading of a holy book, but then the voice of Elder Anthony is heard singing the stichera.
He is picked up by the singers under the canopy, then nearby, a wave of sounds, growing stronger every moment, grows throughout the clearing, rolls up to the last tents and resounds in the forests and mountains with a distant echo ... And then again silence, reading, and again a sea of voices, harmoniously according to the ancient hooks singing stichera ... ".

Yekaterinburg Diocesan Gazette" noted: "Old Believers gather on April 23 at the grave of "Fr. George" in the Chernoistochinsky plant;
May 27, 28 and 29 at the grave of "Fr. Job" in Nizhny Tagil;
June 6 - at the grave of the "monk Avvakum", 6 miles from the village of Sazhina.
On August 16, at the grave of "Mother Platonida" in the village of Krasnoyarsk, mostly women gather and pray for their husbands who suffer from drinking.

the first of the hermits, as the old-timers say, in the vicinity of Krasnoyar was the mother of Platonid, and then - the mother of Taisiya.
Buried [Platonides] 10 versts from Krasnoyar; By August 16, many people gather at her grave every year.
Mother Taisia died in the first quarter of the 19th century and was buried at the skete cemetery, along the Bolshoi Ik river.

The village of Krasnoyarsk itself arose in the second decade of the 18th century and consisted exclusively of Old Believers. Based on these data, we can conclude about the life time of the old woman Platonida - she labored in the Ural forests in the second half of the 18th century.

The pilgrims said: “The mother of Platonides will get up early, early, when there is not a single soul on the mowing. She already knew who needs help. Is it an orphaned widow, or an exhausted peasant. so that no one could see that she was working. As soon as she notices that people have appeared on the mowing, she is now leaving for the forest ... ".

There is information about the old woman Platonides in the "Ural-Siberian Patericon" - "Stories about fathers and hermits who, in recent persecutory times, labored in the northern regions of the Russian land, within the Ural and Siberian deserts."
The patericon was compiled in the first half of the 20th century in one of the sketes of the Old Believers of chapel consent and miraculously preserved by the Old Believers during the defeat of the sketes by the communists on the Lower Yenisei in 1951.

Here is what it says about the unglorified ascetic: "The old woman Platonida came from a family of pagan aliens (Tatars or Kalmyks). When she reached adolescence, the lot fell on her to be sacrificed to idols, which is why all relatives" At home, a Christian stopped for the night, carrying flour from the mill. Learning about the grief, he suggested to the parents that they give their daughter "as a sacrifice to the living God, that she may serve Him."

into a monastic image."
Such a quick tonsure aroused envy on the part of some of the sisters, who had come to the skete before her and had not yet accepted the angelic rank. Platonida was forced to secretly leave her sisterhood and settle in solitude in the forest (“depart from them in silence into the desert”).

However, even in the forest, she secretly helped those in need. “Be very merciful and hardworking, and help those in need, ... accepting from God the gift of healing, enlightening the blind and healing the sick not just in the stomach (that is, not only during life), but also after his repose.” “Mother Meletina, mother Akinfa and Elizaveta Paramonovna” told about Platonida, who were told about her by Father John, who still found Platonida alive and personally remembered.
It is specified that Father John accepted the monastic rank from the father of Israel, "witnessed in the Genealogy." ("Genealogy" of the chapel agreement, compiled by Father Nifont).
This story about the life of Platonis can be considered the most reliable.