IT WAS EVENING, the end of our first day at Stolby: we were all drinking beer in front of the cabin where Valeri got us permission to stay. Beyond the porch, a trail wound into the dusk of the trees, leading back to the road and to the Stolbys. Darkness slowly spread from the forest to fill our clearing. The air felt damp and heavy. I'd absorbed as much of Stolby as I could in a day, and none of it really fit together.

Until the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, Krasnoyarsk, positioned close to numerous top-secret military and industrial assets, was off-limits to foreigners. Siberia's geography (Krasnoyarsk is a three-day train ride from Moscow) only added to this seclusion. Even if Stolbists knew that ropes or protection existed, they couldn't have afforded them. But I didn't understand how or why this practice still existed, now that the Iron Curtain had lifted and some Stolbists, like Oleg, had climbed in the outside world.

I asked Oleg whether he climbed Stolby-style on his expeditions.
"Oh, no. I use ropes, of course", Oleg responded in a matter-of-fact tone. "Stolby is only for here".
Even more perplexed, I peppered Valeri and Oleg with questions: Why did Stolbism ever begin? Why do the citizens of Krasnoyarsk, young and old, still embrace it?

"Freedom," Valeri said; his voice resounded with pride. He was referrring to a large ledge 150feet off the ground on Stolby Two's east face, where five-foot-high Cyrillic letters spelled out the word in Russian.

"It was painted in 1899," Oleg told me. "It is very important to Stolby, and we repaint it every two years."

Freedom? Until the last few decades, Russia's history was one of totalitarian rule. To me Siberia was synonymous with desolation and despair.

"Freedom," Valeri said again after a long pause, this time with a broad smile and deep, satisfied exhale.

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