"I'm not in a hurry to walk, and you, probably. Hurry up," I made a timid attempt to defend my travel loneliness.

-Take it easy. I have nowhere to hurry. And so we will spend our time usefully.

"For the benefit of whom?"

"For us, for whom else?" He was genuinely surprised. Kuzmich was from the breed of homegrown self-taught philosophers. He had three or four classes in his luggage, a long working life, at the final stage of which he awoke a desire to know everything, to explain everything using his life experience. As a result, quite interesting results were obtained from all this. For almost an hour he told me his theory of the universe. It was a monstrous mixture of Orthodoxy, Buddhism, paganism, materials from the popular brochures of the "Knowledge" series. He listened to the interlocutor with interest, but what he did not like immediately bounced off him. While talking, we reached the village of Kuzmicha. Saying goodbye, he complained about the lack of time:

- There are a lot of books, you need to have time to read. And one more thing..." Kuzmich looked at me attentively, as if assessing the degree of my reliability. - You see, I want to make a perpetual motion machine.

-What? My eyes crept up to my forehead. My strange companion, pleased with the effect produced, threw off the canvas bag from his shoulders, picked up a twig from the ground and began to frantically draw something on the dusty roadside.

"Don't think about it, I calculated everything correctly," and he began to explain to me, drawing some circles, levers, in which I had not the slightest idea. I tried to tell him something about the history of this question, but the feverish glint in his eyes said that it was impossible to change Kuzmich's mind. However, I cut myself short abruptly: is it worth arguing? Man has solved all the questions of existence for himself, now he has decided to turn one of the most established ideas of our world upside down. God help him.

- Do not doubt, everything will work out. But we don't have the necessary materials," shouted Kuzmich, disappearing forever around the bend.

Around the bend, I did not even notice how I entered the Vladimir region from the Ryazan region. The village of Velikodvorsky in its very south. Glaziers live in the village, which is not surprising for the Gus-Khrustalny district. But I did not want to stay here. At the store where the grandmothers were waiting for a regular bus, I tried to clarify the way to the village of Ulyakhino.

- Да мы, милый, туда и едем. Сейчас автобус придет. Объясняю, что я пешком. Что об асфальтовой дороге знаю, но она делает большой крюк, а у меня на карте отмечена еще одна дорога, через лес. Дружно охают, дружно сомневаются. Затем выносят вердикт.

- Есть одна дорога, как на Гусь ехать. Другой нет. И тут одна из бабушек, по виду самая древняя, молчавшая до сих пор, вдруг неожиданно заговорила.

- Ты прав, сынок. Есть еще одна дорога. Через лес. Ветка.

- Какая ветка?

- Раньше тамодноколейка проходила, на завод дрова возили. Уж сколько лет, как ее разобрали, теперь по ней никто не ходит.