Железный лес в Сибири: странная находка экспедиции 1927 года

This folder lay untitled in the archive. On the spine was only a number: "C-18/27." If not for a chance encounter, I would never have opened it. The district museum had many such folders—old reports, statements, letters, maps that no one had looked at for years. I was sorting through materials for an exhibition about the first geological expeditions in Eastern Siberia and was looking for something completely different: information about copper veins, coal exploration, and old winter huts. Inside the folder was a thin notebook, several yellowed sheets of paper, a black-and-white photograph, and a piece of thick fabric in which a small, dark fragment was wrapped. The first sheet was dated: "July 1927." Below, in handwritten ink that had now faded, was written: "On the discovery of ironwood trees in the upper reaches of the Kurungda River. Preliminary survey materials."