The trip to the artist and the flight from the dangerous elks

I want to tell you about my journey on the last weekends to Sergiev Posad. On the way to the town I turned to Pushkino (this is a little and old settlement near the Moscow) to meet an artist I had accidentally found near St.Sergiey's Lavra 3 years before. He looked unshaved and all stained with oil so it was hard to guess that he was a professional painter. But his drawing he was working on proved the opposite. So,he invited me to see his other works and to visit him. He lives now in poverty and his life was not an easy one: his father was dispossessed of all he owned by Communists and his wife broke up with him because she thought that he was not a painter at all.(At that time it was permitted to draw only about the Communist party, and all writers, poets,painters who wanted to chose another topic were accused as nonconformists and it was shame to talk,listen or live with them)But the art was everytime everything for him,so he didn't give up and even now then he is 80 and is living alone he not only draws but also helps his 90 year old neighbour who would die without his help. During his talk to him and my previous researches using Internet I found out that his teachers were the most talanted Russian painters whose works are placed in best World galleries in Russia, the USA and Europe and cost millions dollars at an auctions. And he was the only one student from an art class whom Backsheev(ingenious impressionist of all the times) said looking on his drawings:This young guy will be a real Painter. Also Evgeny Georgievich has the only one son, who became a monch bishop and now restores an ancient monastery ruined by Communists. So, during the visit he entertained me giving me some monastyr tea and honey with bread.I also looked at his paintings and may say that they seem to me like a very old and delicious French wine:from the first glance you see little but afterwards you begin to feel the beauty which shines from them. I 'm sure as it everytime happens that later his paintings will cost a very high price.(Remember Van Ghogh's painting, which was used by peasants to close the closet as a door but afterwards was sold at the price of more than 100 millions dollars).

Talking about the whole trip I may say that it was the very exciting one and much interesting was seen. And on the back way to Moscow I and Mary,my sister both accidentally saw three huge elks eating young bark from the trees in the little birch grove which grew just opposite the rode. They were scarcely visible in the thickening dusk but I could perfectly see their shapes. We stopped the car and tried to get closer to the wild animals and I may say it was a rather dangerous idea. But those beasts seemed not wanted to face any people and the stop of the car also forced them to hide farther in the forest. As I observed them moving away: legs up to the heeps stuck into snow, young hatchlings of the antlers however not so wide as they would be in the late spring\ early summer time during the mating season the idea that every second minute they would rush at us didn't leave me away. However I still managed to take a pic of them and here it is. The other thing that amazed me was how they managed to live in the place they were pasturing.

Elks were all extirpated in the vicinity and the only one place they are kept in safety is the National Elks park.Maybe they managed to run somehow from the forest reserve?