Sacred Sea: A Journey to Lake Baikal

by Peter Thomson

Overview

Siberia's Lake Baikal is one of nature's most magnificent creations, the largest and deepest body of fresh water in the world. And yet it is nearly unknown outside of Russia. In Sacred Sea--the first major journalistic examination of Baikal in English--veteran environmental writer Peter Thomson and his younger brother undertake a kind of pilgrimage, journeying 25,000 miles by land and sea to reach this extraordinary lake. At Baikal they find a place of sublime beauty, deep history, and immense natural power. But they also find ominous signs that this perfect eco-system--containing one-fifth of earth's fresh water and said to possess a mythical ability to cleanse itself--could yet succumb to the even more powerful forces of human hubris, carelessness, and ignorance. Ultimately, they help us see that despite its isolation, Baikal is connected to everything else on Earth, and that it will need the love and devotion of people around the world to protect it.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780190291006
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	08/29/2007
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	7 MB

About the Author

Peter Thomson is Founding Producer and Senior Editor of NPR's "Living on Earth" and recipient of 19 awards for excellence in broadcast journalism. He is currently a freelance environmental journalist and member of Executive Committee of Society of Environmental Journalists.

Table of Contents

Author's Note ix

Prologue: Blagopoluchnoe 3

Part 1 The Sacred Sea

1 A Flash of Blue Light 9

2 Songs and Whispers 16

3 The Earth Splits, Water Rushes In 25

4 Into the Lake-Shallow 30

5 Into the Lake-Deep 40

6 Buryatia, in Black & White and Color 54

7 On the Trail with Pod Boy and Monkey Mind 68

8 Bad Roads Are Good For Baikal 76

9 Traveling and Staying Home 85

Part 2 180°ree;

10 The Long Way Home 93

11 The Great Circle 107

12 Zigzag to Russia 118

13 Power in the East 128

14 Across the Sleeping Land 139

15 Angels and Ghosts in Irkutsk 153

Part 3 Baikal, Too, Must Work

16 One of the Best Enterprises in Russia 171

17 Righteousness, Uncertainty, and the Point of No Return 189

18 Connecting the Dots 199

19 Dr. Hope and Dr. Despair 219

20 Blind Love Is a Dangerous Thing 235

21 360°ree; 252

Epilogue: The Great Baikal Chain 263

Afterword 279

Acknowledgments 281

Illustration Credits 285

Source Notes and Further Reading 288

Index 309

Editorial Reviews

Environmental journalist Thomson, founding producer and senior editor of National Public Radio's "Living on Earth," combines introspection with objective reporting in this engaging account of his six-month pilgrimage to Siberia's Lake Baikal, the deepest, oldest and supposedly purest body of fresh water on earth. Thomson includes everything from thoughts about his failed marriage and his relationship with his brother and fellow traveler James to colorful impressions of the people he meets as he documents his quest, shattering the myth of the lake's reputed capacity to cleanse itself. Researchers tell him that the air and water are full of thousands of tons of pollutants and contaminants from Baikal's paper mill and nearby farms, industry and power plants. Tiny filter-feeding shrimp do cleanse the water, but in the process they move the contaminants into the food chain and concentrate them, so the fish eaten by the people living around Lake Baikal now pose a serious health threat. Nevertheless, many Russians continue to believe that the waters of the Sacred Sea are pristine. Thomson's book is a lucid and sobering reminder of the destructive effects human activity has on the planet. Photos not seen by PW. (Sept.)

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Publishers Weekly

When his marriage headed south, environmentalist Thomson, a senior editor of NPR's Living on Earth, headed north to Russia's Lake Baikal-the largest freshwater lake on Earth-a place of extreme beauty, unexplored marine wonders, and a unique "self-cleansing" ecosystem. More travel journal and personal exploration than hard scientific text, Thomson's account nevertheless presents his findings and his journey in a way that keeps both lay reader and scientist interested and entertained. Exploring the big picture of Baikal's impact on the world (it holds one-fifth of the world's liquid fresh water) and on the people who live along its shores, Thomson also permitted himself during the journey to explore the effects of his own life on those immediately around him and on those he met during his travels. Recommended for public libraries and undergraduate institutions with environmental history disciplines.
—Susan Brazer

Library Journal

Dreamy, melancholy but ultimately hopeful account of veteran environmental journalist Thomson's odyssey to an ancient, still relatively untouched lake at the cultural crossroads of Asia. Just north of Mongolia, Siberia's Lake Baikal is truly one of a kind. Formed when the earth's surface cracked more than 25 million years ago, it is the world's oldest body of fresh water and the biggest (roughly 23,000 cubic kilometers). Imagine, the author suggests, a hole so big that it could hold all five Great Lakes and provide earth's six billion residents with three liters of water per person per day for 3,000 years. Thomson, senior editor of NPR's award-winning nature program "Living on Earth," weaves his personal narrative together with the story of the lake, the land and its hardy indigenous people, the Buryats. He depicts a real-life El Dorado, one of the last remaining sites of natural wonder on a planet homogenized by globalization and threatened by global warming. Even as Thomson illustrates what makes Baikal special-the microscopic shrimp that purify its waters; the bizarre scaleless fish called golomyanka, which can withstand depths that would crush a human; the magical nerpa, a freshwater seal-he can't avoid the portents of imminent loss. Pollutants threaten the shrimp, the number of golomyanka are shrinking and the lake is warming, which means the nerpa have less to eat and don't give birth to as many pups. Inviting readers to imagine life beneath the lake's surface, Thomson's companionable prose voices a deep love of nature and great affinity for the region's rich cultural and natural history. Exhaustively researched and lyrically written-a welcome addition to any library.

Kirkus Reviews

"It's a portrait of a place, its people, and its problems. It's also an honest look at how far we have to go to get home again."—The Phoenix

"His account of the journey is a hybrid of environmental reporting and personal travelouge....Readers will enjoy his accounts of meandering across the Pacific on a container ship with his younger brother, camping among Siberian aspens and feasting on reindeer meat under the northern lights."—Natural History

"Traveling through woods, streams, hills, mountains, and pristine lakes, they had quite a voyage, and this in-depth recapitulation is absorbing in its detail."—Booklist

"Sacred Sea tells the story of an unforgettable journey to an extraordinary place. More then a travelouge, the book is a meditation on faith and home and purity in a world makred by contamination and impermance. For anyone who has ever though of ditching it all and heading for the middle of nowhere, Peter Thomson offers a lesson both unsettling and surprisingly hopeful:there is no esacpe from humanity."— David Baron, Public Radio's The World

"The book is beautifully written and his descriptions make the landscape come alive: I couldn't help shivering when he jumps into the lake. As you travel with him you'll be transported far, far away - the perfect antidote to a dull day at the office."— BBC Focus Magazine

"Thomson's book is a lucid and sobering reminder of the destructive effects human activity has on the planet."— Publishers Weekly

"Exhaustively researched and lyrically written- a welcome addition to any library."— Kirkus Review

"Recommended for public libraries and undergraduate institutions with environmental history disciplines."—Library Journal

"Recently divorced and living out of boxes ni his father's house in Boston...he quit his job as an environmental news producer for NPR and talked his younger half-brother into joining him on a round-the-world trip to a place where neither of them understood the language of the culture. The result is this superb paean to a unique and bizarre ecosystem." —ew York Times

"Important as a description of a threatened ecosystem, Sacred Sea also shines as an example of the kind of accessible evironmental journalism that is necessry to engage an otherwise indifferent public. Thomson's journey to Lake Baikal is one that the environmentally conscious reader will want to make with him."—ISLE

From the Publisher