Childhood's End (Karakol, 2019) · Callaway Sprinkle

In 2019, I moved to Kyrgyzstan.

I’d been there precisely once before, a year prior; my lens was still Soviet. The nation, the city had long since moved on.

Development as a word is contextual. Wherefrom does one develop? Whereto?

I started at the beginning.

Two Kyrgyz children — a girl in red with a switch, and a boy on a bicycle — follow a brown cow past a dilapidated kolkhoz building. — Everything was forever, until it was no more: Kyrgyz children pass a derelict *kolkhoz*.

Ipast (known)

A tarnished statue of Lenin stretches its hand out toward Karakol's Chyngyz Aitmatov square, framed by trees and a teal-painted academic building. — Lenin gestures at a future since passed away, hand outstretched toward Chyngyz Aitmatov Square.

An antique, ochre Moskvich sedan parked on a Toktogulov Street in Karakol. — A lovingly-maintained Moskvich 412 sedan in the city centre.

Karakol's Holy Trinity Cathedral, famous for its nail-less wooden construction, sits between stubby spruces. — Once the frontier of Russian settlement, Karakol remains more Russian-influenced than southern Kyrgyzstan, as its Orthodox church attests.

In 2018, I’d tried to understand identity: cut adrift from the Union in 1991, what would people cling to, and what stories would they tell? In 2019, Karakol suggested that the old had not yet gone, but the new was struggling to be born. Official text, national mythology, and public art had moved on from town-square-as-socialist-iconostasis to (re)evocation of Kyrgyz heritage: the works of Aitmatov, the stanzas of the manaschi.

I came to Karakol at the invitation of my friend Aziz to help start a local development organisation. Arriving with bits and pieces of the past, my first glimpses of the town both invoked the Soviet subtext I expected and confounded it. The mountains in particular changed things: the town looked small, its disused factories and shattered glass rendered insignificant beneath the sweeping peaks and foothills and forests and herds.

So where was Karakol now?

A fresh dusting of snow on the near Terskey Ala-Too draws a white line between misty cloud and deep green spruce forest. — Many toponyms still reflect Soviet heroes and themes. These, too, are being reverted or renegotiated.

IIpresent (contested)

A painted mural of three argali sheep on the brick end-wall of a building, power-line shadows falling across it. — While buildings are still decorated with murals, themes have changed: emblematic wildlife, like these *argaly*, or heroes from Kyrgyz literature and epics.

A rocky, pyramidal peak framed between two spruce trees along the trail up to Ala-Köl. — I was captivated by these sheer walls in the Karakol gorge, and resolved within a few weeks of arriving to come back and climb at some point.

Karakol seemed to be two cities: one of youth, home to Issyk-Kul’s principal university; and one of adults remarkable for their absence. At the time, up to 20% of the working-age population was elsewhere in the country or abroad, a testament to a local economy still echoing with the calamity of the 1990s.

Karakol as seen from the Terskey Ala-Too foothills, a sea of poplars and metal rooftops with the distant Kungey Ala-Too behind. — In 2019, virtually no new large-scale construction had taken place in 25 years. The private homes and guesthouses at right make up the bulk of the city's housing.

Within that context, the two of us struggled to cast a vision of the future those young people would be willing to stay in Karakol to pursue. We considered the history, the economics, and our own calling. Put simply, the city’s potential felt far-off for most people; a purely economic appeal wouldn’t suffice. What was missing was community.

So we decided on education. Serve people, care for them, build trust. The rest, God willing, would follow. We began to draft documents, scoping our foundation and negotiating its purview with mayors and ministries.

Sunlight dapples the snowy ridges running down from Pik Przheval'skogo towards Issyk-Kul, with bright gold grass and forested slopes in the foreground. — Karakol, I learned, has its own National Natural Park but twenty minutes' drive from the city centre. It took somewhat longer to hike an unmarked slope to this overlook.

IIIfuture (uncertain)

A traditional Kyrgyz yurt in Jety-Ögüz, clad in natural white and brown felt and decorated with traditional ornaments. — A traditional Kyrgyz *boz-üy* takes over a year to make; the craft persists amongst families, but is threatened.

A brown-and-white pinto horse plods through tall dry grass, its two-tone mane falling across its neck. — Horses are both livelihood and livestock in Kyrgyzstan. *Beshbarmak* is delicious.

The mountains loom over Karakol, nearer than in other major Central Asian cities. Peaks sharply rocky in July were freshly snow-covered by mid-August. Summers are short in Issyk-Kul; winters long.

Power lines and metal rooves along a Karakol street frame Pik Przheval'skogo behind. — Pik Przheval'skogo, visible from our yard, proved a bellwether for the changing seasons.

We, or at least I, learned to wait. Long evenings of typing documents in Kyrgyz (well before I’d learnt a word) saw us submit our charter and legal forms, then sit uneasy while we awaited a response.

At length, I convinced Aziz to go on a hike with me.

Pik Przheval'skogo glows white behind golden, grassy slopes at the onset of autumn. — The peaks beckon, whitely, over autumn-gold meadows.

We settled on Ala-Köl, a mountain lake that is perhaps the Karakol-area hike. A gentle ascent of the Karakol valley gives way to a more precipitous path up to the lake, rockslide-dammed, and the high pass beyond it.

A small copse of Siberian fir grows beside the gently meandering Karakol River in its eponymous valley. — The Karakol Valley is magnificent, ranging from cascades to placid meadows to glacial moraine all in about 25km. I'd return here many times.

We were, as with the foundation, ill-prepared. With ambitions to stay at a yurt camp, we pressed on to the lake, arriving by mid-afternoon. Moody lighting and occasional rain provided splendid views and damp shirts as we crawled upwards towards the pass.

Lake Ala-Köl glows glacial aquamarine below scree slopes and snow-choked couloirs. — Ala-Köl's glacial waters rest quietly beneath vertiginous walls.

Cresting the ridge, with evening setting the sky aglow, we realised there’d be no shelter between there and Altyn-Arashan, another 12.5km on. Oops. One missed river crossing and hours later, our headlamps clicked off and we fell gratefully into bunks in a guesthouse.

I wouldn’t repeat certain of those decisions. Neither would Aziz. We trusted each other more for having made them together, though, and that presaged many things.

Most of all, I came away from that hike convinced that Kyrgyzstan’s future, as its pre-Soviet past, would be intertwined with those peaks. My love of the mountains predated Karakol, but found a new pathway and purpose there, interlaced with the community I’d adopted and the development work I’d chosen.

I’m still trying to decide where that road will lead. Even so, it has been a beautiful road so far.

Soft evening light on a meadow south of Karakol, the Karakol Valley opening behind. — Sunset in the Terskey foothills; we begin to walk home.