The magical world of nature is nearby, but is it so easy to penetrate it? This is possible if there is a conductor. Evenk Malchakitov, the great-grandson of the great shaman, becomes such a guide for a city dweller and yesterday’s schoolboy, and now a forester on the Baikal protected shore. He is unfairly accused of arson, he escapes from prison and makes his way two hundred kilometers through the taiga - this is approximately how the taiga dramas of the calling of future shamans happened before. Malchakitov's imaginary ancestral river Engdekit flows between life and death. It also carries its waters between houses inhabited by hermit-scientists who dream of a reserve of a new type, in which not only animals and birds would be preserved, but also its workers - hard workers and contemplators, who inscribed on their banner the motto of non-covetousness. Flowed by the Engdekit River, the Mountain of Poor Light stands on the shore, where Adam and Eve weave their eternal dialogue. A pair of eagles, a musk deer and a bear are also heroes of this book, who received the right to vote in it. And these voices, together with the voices of people, sound in a colorful and dramatic song, the “Song of the Tungus.”