About the book: 1976 / “Happiness is being with nature, seeing it, talking with it,” wrote Leo Tolstoy. This is exactly how the talented writer Vasily Podgornov understood happiness. Wherever he was: hunting or fishing, in the apiary or in the garden, no matter what he did: an agronomist, a newspaper employee, a radio and television correspondent, he never tired of studying and loving his native land. Russian nature. Podgornov’s literary biography is short. He wrote his first stories in 1952. His first book found its reader in 1964. But the author did not see her. He died early, in the prime of his creative powers.