Today I’m going to talk about my journey to my kin’s domain, share how it all unfolded, and what I came to realize.
This journey spans nearly 15 years – and even longer if I count the moment I first read those books as the starting point. Back in high school, in my 10th and 11th grades in the late 1990s, I read Megre’s first books. Back then, I was searching for the meaning of life, asking myself questions like: Why? What for? And what is happiness? I tried a raw food diet, practiced cold water therapy, swam in ice holes, got into Eastern philosophy, practiced martial arts, attended a riding school, and took up sailing. And then I came across this book – of course, I loved it.
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After reading Megre’s books, everything took off: club meetings, songs, round dances, amateur theater, festivals, conferences, and performances. After graduating from high school, I tried my hand at various educational institutions: college, university, and a technical school; I worked at two factories and on a construction site. I couldn’t find my place there.
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In 2002, my theater friends and I chose a spot in the remote Mariyskoye village of Podgornoye, on the Vetluga River. We started living there. We bought houses there for very little money. At the peak, there were eight families living there, half of them with children. On some holidays, readers of our books would come to visit, just to look around and relax in nature. When the children grew up, they all moved to the cities, and the adults followed them. All that remains are memories – pleasant, warm, and inspiring, as vivid as life itself.
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I lived in that village for seven years, having endured a terrible tragedy and been left alone with a baby in my arms. In 2009, I moved to the Moscow region with the goal of saving up to build a house on a one-hectare plot. Because with my new family, I had purchased a plot of land in a new place called Mirnoe, near the kin’s settlement Rodnoe in the Vladimir region. For nearly six years in the Moscow region, I tried to save money to develop my plot and build a house, working on it on weekends whenever I managed to get there. At first, I worked for people who became my friends; they were in the landscaping business. I would visit them periodically while still living in the village of Mariyskoye. Then I started getting my own clients, until I was in a serious accident that summer. At that point, we decided enough was enough, and so six years had passed in the city.
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The following spring, we moved to our plot of land; it was 2015, the house was still under construction, and there was an old little house on the lot – a camper on wheels. At first, I’d go back to my friends’ place a couple of times a year to earn money, but then I stopped going there altogether. But we still didn’t move into our unfinished house until three years later, in the fall.
So, in short, I’ve shared my challenging journey to owning a kin’s domain, and I can say with certainty: “The road is conquered by the one who walks it.”
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For example, we currently live 35 km from Vladimir, and for seven years we drove our daughter to music school. That’s not exactly close either, but it’s not 200 km to a major city or 50 km to a regional center, as it used to be for me in my village in Mari El. I also have several plots of land belonging to my clients in the city of Vladimir, which provides me with a steady income.
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Now, living in the kin’s settlement Rodnoe, I am completely satisfied with my situation. It’s a large kin’s settlement with about 300 plots. Vladimir and Moscow are nearby. There are many permanent residents, including many young families. Some families are wealthy enough to fund large community projects: a large cultural center, a trampoline park with a gym, a school under construction, and a church being restored. The area is beautiful and forested, with a fairly large reservoir at the center of the community of kin’s settlements that has formed.
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What’s more, having lived in various places surrounded by nature – in a village in the Mariyskoye forests, in the Moscow region, and later in a kin’s settlement near Vladimir – I’ve come to realize that this is where I like it best. My family and I definitely don’t like living in the city: the noise, the smog, the confined space, the crowds, the city water, the food, and so on – none of that suits us anymore. Yes, we can go into the city from time to time, but we still want to live on our own land. We’ve secured an income for ourselves, and we’ll gradually develop the estate, the house, and the kin’s settlement together.
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I shared this story about myself for a reason. Having moved to live in nature at the age of 19 or 20, I “dropped out” of modern society, didn’t receive a modern, in-demand education, didn’t earn or save any money, but I had only a deep desire to live and work on my own land, for the good of my family, my small homeland, and nature. And I’m managing to do this at my own pace, in my own way, and just as it is. I’ll add that a relationship with nature can be built – and indeed must be built – without money, directly, with one’s own hands, soul, labor, and care. Let the plot not be landscaped like a professional’s, but every plant, bush, blade of grass, and tree can be cherished with care and attention.
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Author: Vasily Shakmanov, the kin’s settlement Rodnoe and the kin’s domain Mirnoe, Vladimir Region.
