The Real Robinson Crusoe - Alexander Selkirk

Lived on a desert island: 4 years and 4 months

The story of the Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk inspired Defoe to write the novel; it was he who became the prototype for Robinson Crusoe.

True, the literary hero stayed on the island for 28 years and during this long time, alone with nature and with himself, he grew spiritually.

Selkirk stayed on the island for 4 years, and he got there not as a result of a shipwreck, but after a quarrel with the captain. And no friend Friday for you, and, of course, cannibals.

However, Alexander managed to survive in harsh conditions, he ate shellfish, tamed feral goats and built two huts.

In 1709, the sailor was discovered by English ships. When Selkirk returned to London, he told his amazing story to the writer Richard Steele, who published it in the newspaper.

Traveler Daniel Foss

Lived on a desert island: 5 years

At the end of the 18th century, Foss traveled on the ship Negociant with his crew in the northern seas, where they hunted seals. The ship collided with an iceberg, and 21 people managed to escape by boat.

For a month and a half they swam on the waves until two people remained alive. Soon the boat was thrown ashore, where Foss lost his last comrade.

But this island turned out to be far from paradise: a small rocky piece of land where there was nothing but a seal rookery. Actually, seal meat helped Daniel survive, and he drank rainwater.

Only five years later, in 1809, a passing ship picked up Foss. At the same time, the poor fellow had to swim to him, since the captain was afraid that he would run the ship aground.

Tom Neal - voluntary hermit

Lived on a desert island: approximately 16 years

But there are stories about voluntary hermitage. Thus, for almost 16 years, the coral island of Suvorov became the home of New Zealander Tom Neil.

He first visited the island in 1952. The man domesticated chickens, started a vegetable garden, and caught crabs, shellfish and fish. Thus, the New Zealander lived on the island for almost three years, and after a serious injury he was taken out.

But that didn't stop him from returning: Tom returned to his paradise in 1960 for three and a half years, and then in 1966 for ten years.

After his second stay, Neil wrote a book, An Island to Yourself, which became a bestseller.

Jeremy Beebs - Robinson who managed to grow old on the island

Lived on a desert island: 74 years

In 1911, the ship "Beautiful Bliss" was shipwrecked. Only Jeremy Biebs managed to survive.

He was only 14 years old then. Because of his age, he was very fond of adventure novels, and what book do you think was one of his favorites? Of course, Robinson Crusoe.

Here he learned basic survival skills, learning how to keep a calendar, hunt and build huts.

The young man managed to grow old on the island: he was taken away only in 1985 as an 88-year-old man.

Alexey Khimkov and his comrades - polar robinsons

Lived on a desert island: 6 years

This story is even more severe: without tropical forests and warm seas. The team lived in the Arctic ice for six whole years.

In 1743, led by helmsman Alexei Khimkov, a merchant ship went fishing and got stuck in the ice. A team of four went to the shores of the Spitsbergen archipelago, where they found a hut.

Here they planned to spend the night, but fate decreed otherwise: a strong arctic wind carried the ice floes along with the ship into the open sea, where the ship sank.

The hunters had only one option - to insulate the hut and wait for rescue. As a result, they lived on the island for 6 years, during which time the team made homemade spears and bows.

They hunted bears and deer and also fished. So the harsh Arctic winter was too much for the men. However, there was an outbreak of scurvy in their small camp, and one of the travelers died.

Six years later, a ship sailed past the island and saved the polar robinsons. But they did not board empty-handed: during this long time they managed to obtain about 200 skins of a large animal and about the same amount of arctic fox.

After the publication of Daniel Defoe's novel Robinson Crusoe, the name from the book's title quickly became a household name. Robinson began to be called anyone who, on his own initiative or by the will of fate, found himself away from people.

Sometimes the adventures of the most famous non-fictional Robinsons turn out to be even more interesting than the stories about hermits described in books.

Alexander Selkirk - prototype of Robinson Crusoe

When writing the novel Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe used the memoirs of the Scot Alexander Selkirk. The story of the unlucky traveler is indeed similar to the events described in the novel, but there are still a number of significant differences.

As a boatswain of a pirate ship, Selkirk fell out of favor with the captain in May 1704. The consequences of the quarrel were the landing of the sailor on the deserted island of Mas a Tierra, which is located in the Pacific Ocean, and where they had not even heard of friend Friday. Despite the difficult living conditions, Alexander was able to achieve some success during his stay on the island.

For example, taming wild goats. It was in the company of these horned animals that English ships found him in 1709, and already in 1712 Selkirk managed to return home. The editors of the site recall that Defoe's stay on the island was 28 years.

Traveler Daniel Foss

The skin and meat of the seal were able to save another hero of the “Robinsonade” - the American traveler Daniel Foss, whose cruise on the ship “Negotiant” ended in a collision with a huge iceberg. He was the only passenger on the ship who managed to escape, swimming to the rocky island in 1809.

This piece of land was deserted, and there was nothing here except a seal rookery. What helped the hero survive was an ordinary wooden oar, which was washed ashore on the island by the waves. The hero waved it like a flag when, 5 years later, he was seen from a passing ship. Moreover, Daniel got to it by swimming, since the captain was afraid to land the ship on the rocky bottom.

Volunteer Robinson - Tom Neal

History also knows about voluntary Robinsons. The coral island of Suvorov sheltered Tom Neil in 1957. Unlike his predecessors, the hermit hero had everything he needed with him: food, hygiene products, pets and even fuel.

In addition, the island was rich in its tropical gifts. When, after 3 years, Tom’s stay in paradise was disrupted by the Americans, he didn’t even want to hear anything about the human world. Nevertheless, in 1966, Tom made a short foray into civilization to publish his memoirs and earn money.

He returned to the island with the book “An Island for Yourself.” His inspiration lasted for another 10 years, after which Tom Neil left an uninhabited piece of land and went to live out his life in his native New Zealand.

The magic of Defoe's book

It is unknown to what extent Daniel Defoe's book was involved in the shipwreck of the schooner "Beautiful Bliss" in 1911, but it is certain that it helped Jeremy Beebs survive. A 14-year-old teenager was able to escape on a piece of land in the Pacific Ocean.

He gained his knowledge of calendaring, hunting and primitive architecture from a book about Robinson Crusoe, and fresh fruits and coconut milk helped him maintain his health until old age. It was only in 1985, at the age of 88, that he found himself on a randomly passing German ship.

The story about the famous hermit from the book by Daniel Defoe was reflected in cinema. In 2000, the film Cast Away, starring Robert Zemeckis and starring Tom Hanks, was released.

Alexey Khimkov - Russian "Robinson"

Under the leadership of helmsman Alexei Khimkov, the merchant ship set off to fish in 1743. While searching for walruses near the island of Spitsbergen, the ship got stuck in the Arctic ice. A team of several hunters, led by the captain himself, went to land, where they discovered a hut. They took few supplies, as they planned to return to the ship the next day. However, fate decreed otherwise: overnight, the ice and the wind carried the ship into the open sea, where it soon sank.

Khimkov had no choice but to insulate the discovered building for the winter. The rifle cartridges did not last long, but with the help of handy items the brave team made homemade bows and spears. This was enough to hunt deer and bears. The island was also rich in small game and fish, and salt was extracted directly from sea water.

Unfortunately, it was not hunger or cold that awaited them, but ordinary scurvy. Due to a lack of vital vitamins, one of the four died five years later. Another year and a half passed before, in the summer of 1749, a passing ship led by Commander Kornilov noticed wild Robinsons.

News of the surviving hunters eventually reached Count Shuvalov himself, who was listed at the royal court. It was he who commissioned the French citizen Le Roy to write a book about the misadventures of Khimkov entitled “The Adventures of Four Russian Sailors Brought to the Island of Spitsbergen by a Storm,” which was subsequently published in several languages ​​in different countries of the world. We invite you to learn the stories of the most famous travelers.
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Robinson Crusoe on his island, alone, deprived of the help of his own kind and any tools, obtaining, however, everything necessary for existence and even creating a certain well-being - this is a topic interesting for all ages, and there are a thousand ways to make it fascinating for children.

(Jean-Jacques Rousseau)

“The life and amazing adventures of Robinson Crusoe, a sailor from York, who lived twenty-eight years all alone on an uninhabited island off the coast of America, near the mouth of the Orinoco River, where he was thrown by a shipwreck, during which the entire crew of the ship, except him, died, with an account of his unexpected liberation by pirates, written by himself."

A book with such a long title, written by Daniel Defoe, appeared in England on April 25, 1719. More than two hundred and fifty years have passed since then, but to this day children and adults in all countries of the globe read this novel with enthusiasm.

It is based on the true incident of the Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk, who, after a quarrel with the ship's captain, was marooned on the uninhabited island of Mas-a-tiera, one of a group of islands in the Pacific Ocean called Juan Fernandez, 560 kilometers off the coast of Chile. Selkirk lived alone on this island for four years and four months.

Currently, the island of Mas-a-tiera is called Robinson Crusoe Island. In the 18th and 19th centuries, this island served as a place of exile. The population of all the Juan Fernandez Islands is small - only about 450 people engaged in fishing and lobster fishing.

In the past, Robinson Crusoe Island grew a tropical forest with very valuable sandalwood trees. Sandalwood trees began to be cut down. The rapidly multiplying goats and rabbits brought to the island destroyed all the grass and shrubs. Now heavy tropical downpours are eroding the bare ground and forming deep gullies. Winds raise dust and sand. High banks fall into the sea. The once flourishing island of Robinson Crusoe has turned into a wasteland.

Life on a desert island was not invented by Daniel Defoe, which is why it is described so believably, and the book about Robinson Crusoe is read with particular interest. There is, perhaps, not a single literate boy or girl who has not read Robinson Crusoe.

A former student of the Yasnaya Polyana school, V. S. Morozov, in his memoirs about L. N. Tolstoy, writes about his love for this book: “The second and third grades were already dismissed to go home, and we stayed until evening, since Lev Nikolaevich loved to read to us in the evenings books. Our favorite evening book was Robinson Crusoe.

Robinson is any person who finds himself in a place where there are no people, no ordinary food, no conditions for the normal life of a civilized person. Let's look at Robinson Crusoe from this point of view.

Did Robinson Crusoe really have nothing and use only what was in the nature around him?

The ship on which Crusoe was sailing ran aground near an uninhabited island.

The entire crew of the ship, who tried to escape on the boat, died, and only one Robinson Crusoe was thrown ashore by a wave. The next day, at low tide, Robinson swam to the ship. From there he brought three chests on a raft, which contained: “rice, crackers, three circles of Dutch cheese, five large pieces of dried goat meat and the remains of grain. In addition, a carpenter’s box with all the working tools, boxes of wine, three barrels of gunpowder, two fine hunting rifles and two pistols, various clothes.” Not satisfied with these things, Robinson went a second time and brought back “three scrap iron, two barrels of gun bullets, seven muskets, another hunting rifle and some gunpowder.” In addition to these things, Robinson “took from the ship all the clothing that he found, and also grabbed a spare sail, a hammock and several mattresses and pillows.” Robinson visited the ship eleven times, dragging ashore everything that a pair of hands could drag.

As you can see, Robinson was provided with almost everything he needed, even pillows. He had large supplies of food. Moreover, when all the crackers were eaten, it turned out that the grains he shook out of the bag onto the ground had already sprouted barley and rice. He had guns, and there was an abundance of game around, so he was provided with meat.

Only ten months later did Robinson decide to explore the island and see if there were any animals and plants on it that were not yet known to him. In one “charming valley” he found “many coconut palms, orange and lemon trees” and grapes. As you probably know, he drank water with lemon juice, and by drying the grapes, he got raisins. He did not use other wild trees: there was no need for it, and most importantly, he did not know them.

Robinson himself admits his botanical ignorance: “I was looking for cassava, from the root of which the Indians of those latitudes make flour, but I did not find it... There were other plants that I had never seen before: it is quite possible that, if I knew their properties, I I could benefit from them..."

“During my stay in Brazil, I paid so little attention to the local flora that I did not know even the most ordinary field plants...”

Robinson acutely felt the incompleteness of his knowledge of the plant world: “I went home, thinking along the way about how I could learn to recognize the properties and goodness of the fruits and plants that I would find.”

But Robinson did not go further than reflect on this topic: he did not discover and use the treasures of the plant world. He would have had a very bad time if the ship had crashed on some island in the North, where there were no coconuts, no oranges, no grapes.

Robinson's followers

What is more beautiful than such adventures,

More fun than discoveries, victories,

Wise wanderings, happy crashes...

(Sunday Christmas)

Robinson Crusoe turned out to have many followers, fictional - in books and real - in life. Daniel Defoe's fascinating book caused many imitations: “The New Robinson” by Kampe, “Swiss Robinson” by Wyss, etc.

You probably know the five brave daredevils - the engineer Cyrus Smith, the correspondent Gideon Spillett, the sailor Pencroft, the Negro Neb and the boy Harbert - whom the balloon brought to the mysterious Lincoln Island (in Jules Verne's novel "The Mysterious Island"). These were almost real Robinsons. They smelted iron from ore and made working tools, made gunpowder, made sugar from the sap of a sugar maple, brought wild spinach, lettuce, horseradish, and turnips from the Yacamara forest and planted them in their garden.

“Nab prepared agouti soup, the ham of a wild pig seasoned with fragrant herbs, and boiled tubers of a herbaceous plant that grows into a dense bush in the tropical zone...”

But still, they did not make enough use of natural resources. So, they could not replace bread with anything. Remember Harbert's remarkable find?

“It was pouring rain that day. The colonists gathered in the great hall of the Granite Palace. Suddenly Herbert exclaimed:

Look, Mr. Cyrus, a grain of bread!

And he showed his comrades the grain, the only grain that had fallen into the lining through a hole in his jacket pocket.

In Richmond, Herbert was in the habit of feeding the pigeons that Pencroft gave him. That's why he kept the grain in his pocket.

Bread grain? - the engineer asked with liveliness.

Yes, Mr. Cyrus, but one thing, just one thing.

What importance! - exclaimed Pencroft. - What can we make from one grain of bread?

Bread,” answered Cyrus Smith.

Well, yes, bread, cakes, pastries! - picked up Pencroff.

You won't choke on bread made from this grain.

Herbert did not attach much importance to his discovery and was about to throw away the grain, but Cyrus Smith took it and, making sure that it was in good condition, said, looking intently at Pencroff:

Do you know how many ears of bread one grain of bread can produce?

“One, of course,” Pencroff answered in surprise.

No, Pencroft, ten. How many grains are there in each ear?

Really, I don't know.

Eighty on average. This means that if we sow this grain, we will receive eight hundred grains at the first harvest, sixty-four thousand at the second, five hundred and twelve million at the third...

On November 15, the third harvest was taken. This field has grown greatly in the eighteen months since the first grain was sown!

Soon there was a magnificent loaf on the table in the Granite Palace.”

The glorious settlers of Lincoln Island did not manage without outside help. The good Captain Nemo gave them a zinc chest with tools, weapons, appliances, clothes, books, dishes... and mysteriously delivered quinine when Herbert fell ill.

In Jules Verne’s novel “The Robinson School,” Godfrey and Tartellet were given a chest of tools, clothes, and weapons by their cousin Fina on the island. It also contained tea, coffee, ink, quills and a Manual of Culinary Arts.

The Robinsons were lucky to get their chests!

It is interestingly told by E. Seton-Thompson in the book “Little Savages” about how two American boys, Ian and Sam, decided to imitate natural Robinsons - the Indians.

They built an almost real wigwam (hut), made Indian costumes and weapons, well, in the Indian way, they learned to light fires, but still they were not able to fully use the forest treasures. Samu had to make “raids” home for food supplies.

“There was a pantry next to the kitchen. I made my way there myself and found a small bucket with a lid. He took the bucket and, grabbing a meat pie lying on the shelf along the way, went down the same stairs again to the cellar, filled the bucket with milk, then climbed out through the window into the yard and took off running. The next time he found a note in the cellar, written in his mother’s hand:

“Enemies of the Indians.

Another time during a raid, bring back the bucket and do not forget to cover the jugs with lids.”

As you can see, the Robinsons did not know how to live among nature, using only its riches.

But the Indians, true Robinsons, whose whole life was spent among the forests, took everything they needed for existence only from the nature around them.

See how the Indian chief Longfellow used various trees to build a pirogue in the Song of Hiawatha:

“Give me the bark, O Birch!
Give me yellow bark, Birch!
You who rise in the valley
A slender camp above the river!
I'll knit myself a pirogue
I’ll build myself a light boat,
And he will swim in the water,
Like a yellow autumn leaf,
Like a yellow water lily...
Give, O Cedar, green branches,
Give me flexible, strong branches,
Help make the pie
And more reliable and durable!”
And, having cut down the cedar branches,
He knitted a frame from branches,
Like two bows, he bent them,
Like two bows, he tied them together.
- Give me your roots, O Tamrak!
“Give me fibrous roots:
I'll tie my pirogue
So I will bind her with roots,
So that water does not penetrate,
Didn't leak into the pie!
Give me, El, viscous resin,
Give your resin and juice:
I'll tar the seams in the pie,
So that water does not penetrate,
It didn’t leak into the pie.”
And he collected the tears of the spruce,
I took its viscous resin,
I covered all the seams in the pie,
Protected the pirogue from the waves.
So he built the pirogue
Above the river, in the middle of the valley,
In the depths of the dense forests,
And all the life of the forests was in it,
All their secrets, all their charms:
Flexibility of dark larch,
The strength of powerful cedar branches
And the slender lightness of the birch,
And she swayed in the waves,
Like a yellow autumn leaf,
Like a yellow water lily.

Modern Robinsons

All the eyes of the world

They converge on the ice floe.

On the black dot

A handful of people

What is being broadcast -

Lifeless and blue -

Hope for exhausted nights.

(Sunday Christmas)

Is it worth talking about Robinsons at all? They live in books, exciting the imagination of readers; in life, especially modern life, when the entire globe has been explored, there can hardly be Robinsons.

But still, there are Robinsons, and each of you knows them.

Aren't the four Papanins Robinsons?

Four volunteer Robinsons lived for many months on an icy floating island. Life on an ice floe floating on the Arctic Ocean, in the continuous polar night, in a snowstorm, in freezing temperatures... No writer has ever come up with such a fantastic novel. The polar robinsons did not have the opportunity to use natural resources, since they lived on a bare ice floe. But the Papaninites enjoyed such comfort that none of the Robinsons had. They had a tent lined with eiderdown, a radio, a gramophone, a primus stove, and forty-six different types of food. These were Robinsons who provided themselves with everything they needed in advance.

The life of the Robinson-Papaninites is full of selfless heroism. For the sake of science, they exposed their lives to mortal danger. Their icy floating island was melting, cracking, and the Arctic Ocean threatened to swallow four brave heroes of science. It was not for nothing that every day the entire Soviet country and the whole world followed a radio broadcast reporting on the life of Soviet researchers floating on an ice floe in the middle of a gloomy ocean, near the North Pole.

Now research of the Arctic Ocean is carried out constantly and on several drifting ice floes - the North Pole stations.

Another modern Robinson is the pilot Marina Raskova, who parachuted from the Rodina plane into the uninhabited forests and swamps of the Far East. M. Raskova, P. Osipenko and V. Grizodubova made a non-stop flight from Moscow to the Far East. Before Komsomolsk there was not enough fuel. It was necessary to land in a swamp, among the taiga. There was a danger that the plane would tip over on its nose, and in this case it was dangerous for M. Raskova to remain in the rear navigation cabin. The commander ordered her to immediately parachute out of the plane...

A bold long jump into the taiga...

“I am surrounded by a dense, impenetrable forest. There is no light anywhere... I am alone,” writes M. Raskova in her diary.

The taiga is uninhabited for hundreds and thousands of kilometers. In Raskova’s pocket is a revolver, a box of waterproof matches, two chocolate bars and seven mints. None of the Robinsons described in the novels was in this position. Excerpts from the diary of navigator Raskova show that the life of the brave pilot in the Siberian taiga was full of dangers. “I’m walking from bump to bump. The swamp is covered with thick, tall grass almost waist-deep... I suddenly fall neck-deep into the water. I feel like my legs are heavy and, like weights, pulling me down. Everything on me instantly got wet. The water is cold as ice. For the first time in all my wanderings, I feel alone. No one will pull you out of the water, you have to save yourself... You grab onto a hummock, and it sinks into the water with you... I take a stick in both hands, throw the stick over several hummocks at once and thus pull myself up...

… Hooray! Mushrooms. Real good mushrooms, big strong russulas. They will make a wonderful dinner. She wet the birch bark, prepared a box from it, strong enough and impervious to liquid, and began to make a fire... She struck a match and moved the bark closer. I put the matches on the grass next to me... The flame shot up so quickly that I barely had time to jump away. By the time I realized what was happening, my entire box of matches had perished in the fire. A real taiga fire has begun... Goodbye, delicious dinner, goodbye, sleep in a dry place! The unfortunate fire victim collects his belongings and runs into the swamp...

... Suddenly, a whole rowan bush comes across. I collect as many rowan berries as I can: in a scarf, in my pockets.”

There were four cartridges left in M. Raskova’s revolver; she shot the rest in the hope that her shots would be heard on the plane, which might have survived. And suddenly, M. Raskova recalls, “about fifteen meters from me, a bear, disheveled, black, rises from behind a bush. He stands on his hind legs... I shoot without looking anywhere.” Fortunately, the bear, frightened by the shot, began to run. Only on the eleventh day, towards nightfall, Marina Raskova finds her plane, her friends and the pilots from Komsomolsk who flew in to help.

In 1947, Norwegian scientist Thor Heyerdahl and five companions made an unusually daring journey along the ancient Inca route from Peru to the Polynesian islands. Over the course of a hundred days, they sailed across the Pacific Ocean on the Kon-Tiki, a raft of nine logs tied with ropes, 4,300 miles until they hit the reefs of a small uninhabited island.

Six brave explorers were the real Robinsons of our time!

A feeling of complete helplessness came over me at the Kon-Tiki Museum in Oslo when I saw a raft only fourteen paces long and six wide. On it there is a small hut and a large sail.

It becomes especially creepy in the lower room of the museum, where you see the Kon-Tiki raft from below. The logs were overgrown with algae and shells, there were schools of mackerel in the water and a huge shark the entire length of the raft. Only after seeing the Kon-Tiki raft can you not only appreciate, but also feel all the heroism of those who dared to sail on it across the ocean.

Robinsons of the Shlisselburg Fortress

It was so beautiful... and so lonely: before my eyes there was a garden, flowers, a wire fence, and all around were high fortress walls.

(Vera Figner)

There are Robinsons, and not only among nature: revolutionaries, imprisoned for many years, also felt like Robinsons, cut off from the whole world and deprived of the most necessary things.

M. V. Novorussky, who spent twenty-five years in prison, in his interesting book “Prison Robinsons,” describes how he invented a homemade incubator in the Shlisselburg fortress and hatched chickens in a cell, how he grew lilies of the valley in winter and how he grew strawberries. Here is the story of M.V. Novorussky himself:

SEED IN AN OLD BOOK

Forest, or field, strawberries appeared in our country in an unusual way.

There was not a single bush on our island. Yes, we couldn’t look for her outside our fence. It was not on sale.

It didn’t occur to us to ask the gendarme to bring at least one strawberry bush from the neighboring sandy shore. So we would have lived without her, if not for one happy accident.

One day in March, my friend Luka was reading an old volume of the historical magazine “Russian Archive”. While skimming the lines, he noticed among the letters a small seed that stuck tightly to the page. He peeled it off and, examining the seed, thought:

Whose could it be?

But he didn’t know whose exactly.

“Let me,” he thought, “I’ll sow it, maybe something will come out.”

No sooner said than done.

The pot with the sown seed remained in the chamber for quite a long time under constant surveillance. Luka was already beginning to lose hope, when suddenly, one clear morning, he noticed that a shoot seemed to be appearing in place of the seed. Three weeks later, under the rays of the sun, we received the fourth leaf of our sprout and, looking at it, exclaimed with one voice:

Bah, it's strawberries! And a forest one at that.

I now took the bush into my care and, when it grew up, I planted it free in the ground. By autumn it had already become a large bush, but did not bloom. The next summer I received my first harvest from it - two dozen berries of real fragrant strawberries, which I had not eaten for nine years. But, most importantly, I received half a dozen long vines, on which there were at least fifteen young shoots. I rooted them in the soil.

They overwintered well, and the next year there were more than one hundred and sixty of them, that is, an entire plantation of wild strawberries.

Every other day, sometimes two, I regularly picked berries.

Following the example of M.V. Novorussky, other revolutionary prisoners began to grow strawberries. In winter, they grew lilies of the valley to present to each other on their birthdays.

In a besieged city

We know that we have had bitter days,

unprecedented troubles threaten

but the Motherland is with us, and we are not alone,

and victory will be ours.

(O. Berggolts)

During the Great Patriotic War, the residents of an entire huge city found themselves in a kind of Robinson position.

At the end of 1941, Leningrad was surrounded by fascist troops and cut off, like an island, from the mainland, as the entire Soviet Union was then called. Food warehouses were destroyed by bombs and fires. Food and fuel became scarce. Residents of Leningrad, like Robinsons, made stoves from tin and smokehouse lamps from cans; they made lighters to replace matches.

In the spring, when small grass began to emerge between the stones and asphalt on the streets, people began to look for edible and vitamin-rich plants. On Nevsky Prospekt, forest plants grew from the soil that littered the windows of large stores. On the roofs of houses and on balconies, fireweed inflorescences suddenly turned pink. But not all residents knew which plants were edible and nutritious, and which were harmful.

Employees of the Botanical Garden of the Academy of Sciences, having studied the nutritional properties of plants, gave lectures, wrote articles and brochures about which wild plants can be eaten. On the windows of the school corridors, plants dug up from the streets were displayed in pots and jars, and near them on pieces of paper there were instructions on how to use them. In canteens and grocery stores there were plants in jars with recipes for eating them. Many weeds turned out to be nutritious and even tasty. This supported the forces of Leningraders at the critical moment of the blockade.

Lieutenant's letter

While the battle was going on there, in the clearing, in the ravine, in the juniper thickets, there must have been a medical company located.

(B. Polevoy)

During World War II, the editorial office of a children's literature publishing house received a letter from the front. Lieutenant Gruzdev asked to send books for his soldiers about life in the forest, about tracking, and about the use of wild plants. “These books,” he wrote, “help a warrior learn the nature of the Motherland, the inhabitants of its forests, rivers and meadows. Without basic knowledge of nature, it is difficult to conduct observational reconnaissance. The skills of a tracker and observer, knowledge of the forest help the scout to completely merge with the terrain. Nature itself protects him. He sees everything, while remaining invisible. Knowledge of edible plants and mushrooms will increase the possibilities of camp cooking and increase the consumption of vitamins. We must understand that you cannot escape nature: battles take place among it, our soldier’s life flows among it.”

Lieutenant Gruzdev is right: in order to become a good fighter, you need to study nature. In war conditions, anyone can find themselves in Robinson's position. These “Robinsons” were partisans who lived in the forests and successfully fought the fascist occupiers. They knew nature well and how to use its inexhaustible riches.

Thus, two centuries after the appearance of the book about Robinson, people began to understand the name “Robinson” much more broadly. Robinson is a man who not only lives on a desert island, but also a man who, being among nature, having nothing, can obtain and make himself everything necessary for life.

Robinson Crusoe knew how to do a lot with his own hands, he was a “jack of all trades,” but in his time the science of nature - biology - was poorly developed. Robinson had little interest in nature and did not study it to expand his knowledge.

Now we know nature and its laws better and can use it more fully. Robinson was armed with guns, we are armed with knowledge. Knowledge and the desire to expand it, to explore nature more deeply help us discover many interesting and useful things in the plant world.

In the forest!

The forest has everything a person needs.

(E. Seton-Thompson)

When spring comes, everyone is filled with excitement. Fishermen begin to prepare their fishing rods, hunters clean their guns and prepare ammunition, tourists put the things they need for their trip into their backpacks, and city dwellers gather for their dachas. The pioneers are rushing to the camp, into the “wilds” of the wild. It is not for nothing that they are called pioneers, that is, advanced people settling in new, unexplored places.

The famous explorer Charles Darwin wrote in his diary entitled “A Naturalist’s Voyage Around the World on the HMS Beagle”:

“I always remember our little expeditions in boats and overland excursions into unexplored places with such delight as no spectacles of the civilized world aroused in me.”

Spring. Every day I feel more and more drawn into the distance, into the wide expanses of fields, under the emerald canopy of forests.

It’s good to walk along a path overgrown with ant grass, “bird buckwheat” clinging to the ground, and watch how everything around you changes in colors and sounds during the day! Flowers open and close, birds, butterflies, and beetles fly by.

It’s good to cook dinner over a fire, eat porridge that smells of smoke, sleep in a spruce hut or on a tree, like Robinson Crusoe.

Curiosity, the desire to see new things, to discover the unknown, the unusual call us to travel. Guided by this feeling, this passion, travelers discovered new lands, met unknown peoples and described unprecedented animals and wonderful plants.

Geologists travel in search of minerals - ore, coal, oil, shale; botanists travel, discovering wild-growing riches; geographers and archaeologists travel. Everyone is driven by a burning desire to find new values ​​that our people need.

It’s time for you and me, dear reader, to go into the forest!

When you enter the forest, fragrant and cool
Among the spots of sunshine and strict silence,
Your breast greets you so joyfully and greedily
The breath of wet herbs and the aroma of pine.
Your foot slides on a scattering of needles
Or the grass rustles, dropping drops of dew,
And the gloomy canopy of broad-legged fir trees
Intertwined with the foliage of alder and young birch trees.
Sometimes it smells stuffy, sometimes it smells like last year’s smell,
That mushroom smell from a felled stump,
The oriole will burst into a short, clear trill,
And the wind will rustle in the dry languor of the day.
Hello to you, haven of freedom and peace,
Unpretentious forest of the native north!
You are full of freshness, and everything in you is alive,
And you have so many mysteries and miracles!
From time immemorial you have become friends with a person,
He takes for himself from your “generosity”
Mushrooms and berries in sunny clearings,
And food, and shelter, and ship masts.
Here in the forest thickets, where everything is sweet to the heart,
Where it’s so sweet to breathe clean air,
Herbs and flowers have healing powers
For everyone who knows how to solve their mystery.

This is what a nature lover, passionate fisherman, and poet Vsevolod Aleksandrovich Rozhdestvensky says about the forest.

Let's go into the forest to explore the secrets of nature! Let's put the backpack on our shoulders, take a stick in our hands and follow in Robinson's footsteps!

Exactly 350 years ago, in the fall of 1659, the shipwrecked sailor from York Robinson Crusoe was thrown onto a desert island. And only 28 years later he was rescued by English sailors. This incident went down in history, and a little later the English writer Daniel Defoe described Robinson’s forced recluse in his famous novel.

It would seem that today there are no longer lost lands on Earth where a person could remain completely alone. But no! Robinsons are still found today, not only on deserted islands, but also almost next to the civilized world.

Young Robinsons
For example, in 1983, in the jungles of the famous Indonesian island of Sumatra, on the banks of the South Sarmata River, hunters accidentally met a 12-year-old girl, Imayata, who lived here alone for over six years. In February 1977, she went with her friends to fish on the river and did not return. Everyone believed that Imayata had died when the boat carrying the hapless fishermen capsized. During her forced hermitage, the girl became wild and forgot her native language, but her happy parents immediately recognized her. Interestingly, the girl was found just 20 km from her home village.
But 14-year-old cabin boy Jeremy Biebs was less fortunate. Back in 1911, during a strong storm in the South Pacific Ocean, the ship on which the boy served sank; he was lucky to get to the shore of an uninhabited island alone. Bibs built himself a hut, made a bow and arrows for hunting birds, ate their eggs, fished, ate coconut palm fruits, and drank coconut milk. What helped him survive was his detailed knowledge of Daniel Defoe’s novel; like its main character, Jeremy kept a “wooden calendar.” Being in complete isolation, he knew nothing about what was happening in the world. Only in 1985, the crew of a German ship that happened to be here unexpectedly discovered Biebs, who had already reached 88 years of age, and brought him home.

Decades underground
There are cases when people became hermits to escape persecution. So soldier Ivan Bushilo spent 42 years in the Belarusian forests, hiding from the authorities. It all started with a tragic meeting in 1947, when Bushilo, returning from work at a logging site, met a local district police officer and a senior lieutenant of the NKVD from the regional center.
They began to mock the former soldier, and when Ivan abruptly cut off the insolent people, they promised to send him into exile. That same night, Ivan Bushilo packed his things and went into the forest. They looked for him for a long time, but, deciding that he had died, they stopped searching. All 42 years spent in the forest, Ivan slept in a hut on a bag filled with straw, ate mushrooms, berries, fished, and set traps. He forgot how to write, but regularly shaved so as not to lose his human appearance, and from time to time he read newspapers that his relatives left for him at an appointed place. Ivan emerged from the forest only at the beginning of 1990, having believed in perestroika.
A resident of the small Carpathian town of Tlumach, Yaroslav Halashchuk, spent an even longer period (from 1947 to 1991) underground. A former soldier of the Ukrainian rebel army, at the age of 26, hid with his sister after his unit was destroyed by NKVD units. There were no serious crimes against Yaroslav, and therefore no one was looking for him. In the underground he worked as a tailor. Sister Olga took measurements from clients, and Galashchuk sewed clothes. For forty-four years spent in voluntary confinement, he never appeared on the street. Only in 1991 did he finally decide to go out to people.
Ukrainian Mark Dyatchenko was also “buried” by his sister. During the Great Patriotic War, he was surrounded near Brest. Having buried the rifle, Mark changed into civilian clothes and returned home to the village of Medvedovka, Cherkasy region. After the liberation of the village from the Nazis, the deserter climbed into a hiding place in the attic of his own house, where he sat for 45 years. Sister Praskovya brought him food and newspapers. There was also a radio in the attic. After the death of his sister in 1990, Dyatchenko came into the world. His first trip was to Kyiv, to the Reception Office of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of Ukraine. Since his desertion was not subject to criminal liability over the years, Dyatchenko was restored to his rights and got a job as a security guard on a farm.

Return to nature
If more than half a century ago people became hermits out of fear of arrest, today some people leave civilization to reunite with nature. This is how a whole movement arose - ecological settlers. There are currently 13 national ecovillage associations in Europe, which include 42 colonies. In Russia, such settlements began to appear in the early 90s of the last century, and in Ukraine only about seven years ago.
Today in the Kyiv region there is a settlement called Dzherel Valley. Getting there is not so easy: the road to the settlers’ houses scattered across the field is more like an obstacle course, and the further you get from the capital, the more difficult it is to overcome. True, local volunteer Robinsons are always ready to help guests.
The first thing you encounter in this Ukrainian eco-village is paradoxes. Thus, the settlers installed a power line (apparently they do not shy away from the benefits of civilization), but they refuse to install windmills so as not to scare away the birds or upset the ecological balance. Also, you cannot install standard diesel generators to generate light in houses - exhaust gases will poison the air, and engine vibrations will be transmitted to the soil and destroy its microcosm.
You cannot burn garbage, bury it in the ground, or throw it into ravines. “In the summer there is such an aroma from herbs here, you could even spread it on bread!” - eco-settlers explain. And therefore, they consider it blasphemy to throw anything “into nature,” moreover, even to spit or blow your nose into the grass. “We all ran away from civilization a little here. More precisely, for one reason or another, she pushed us out. And therefore we live according to the laws of nature,” the Ukrainian Robinsons explain their philosophy.
Eco-settlers invite everyone who wants to live alone with nature. They say that there are no generally accepted rules of life in an ecological settlement. Therefore, people who are tired of civilization can relax completely. So it is quite possible that this will soon become a new type of recreation. But not everyone will be satisfied with the conditions of a solitary life.

Daniel Defoe's novel "Robinson Crusoe", or rather its first part, was based on real events.
Robinson's prototype was the Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk, a 27-year-old boatswain of the ship "Sank Port", which was part of the flotilla under the command of William Dampier, which in 1704 went to the shores of South America. Hot-tempered and capricious, he constantly came into conflict with the ship's captain, Stradling. After another quarrel, which occurred near the island of Mas a Tierra, Selkirk demanded to be dropped off; the captain immediately granted his demand. True, later the sailor asked the captain to cancel his order, but he was relentless, and Selkirk was able to leave the island only after more than four years.

Alexander Selkirk had some things necessary for survival: an axe, a gun, a supply of gunpowder, etc. Suffering from loneliness, Selkirk got used to the island and gradually acquired the necessary survival skills. At first, his diet was meager - he ate shellfish, but over time he got used to it and discovered feral domestic goats on the island. Once upon a time, people lived here and brought these animals with them, but after they left the island, the goats went wild. He hunted them, thereby adding much-needed meat to his diet. Soon Selkirk tamed them and received milk from them. Among plant crops, he discovered wild turnips, cabbage and black pepper, as well as some berries.

Rats posed a danger to him, but fortunately for him, wild cats, previously brought by people, also lived on the island. In their company he could sleep peacefully, without fear of rodents. Selkirk built himself two huts from Pimento officinalis wood. His supply of gunpowder ran low and he was forced to hunt goats without a gun. While chasing them, he once became so carried away by his pursuit that he did not notice the cliff from which he fell and lay there for some time, miraculously surviving.

In order not to forget the English speech, he constantly read the Bible aloud. Not to say that he was a pious person - that’s how he heard a human voice. When his clothes began to wear out, he began to use goat skins for them. Being the son of a tanner, Selkirk knew well how to tan hides. After his boots wore out, he did not bother to make new ones for himself, because his feet, hardened by calluses, allowed him to walk without shoes. He also found old hoops from barrels and was able to make something like a knife out of them.

One day, two ships arrived on the island, which turned out to be Spanish, and England and Spain were enemies at that time. Selkirk could have been arrested or even killed, since he was a privateer, and he made the difficult decision for himself to hide from the Spaniards.
Salvation came to him on February 1, 1709. It was the English ship "Duke", with captain Woods Rogers, who named Selkirk governor of the island.