And on top of that, here was a man with four wives and children. That would be a scandal. They could jail him, take the children into state care, send the women away.
He couldn’t let that happen. Mike decided they had to live quietly, stay off the radar. Go into town rarely, only for what they absolutely needed.
Don’t talk more than necessary. If anyone asked, he was a lone hunter. No wives. No children.
And that’s how they lived. Every three months Mike went into town, sold pelts, bought flour, salt, kerosene, and came back to the skete. The women stayed with the children and went nowhere.
The woods hid them. Thick, nearly impassable. Sixty miles to the nearest settlement.
Nobody came through. One year passed, then another. The children grew.
Panteleimon, Ann, Martha, Samuel. Strong, healthy. By 1961 Panteleimon was two.
The others just behind him. They ran around the cabin, played, shouted. Mike made them wooden toys.
Little horses, dolls. Phoebe taught them prayers and showed them the icons. In 1960 Phoebe became pregnant again.
Then Agatha. Nancy. Dora. By spring 1961 all four wives were pregnant again. Mike was glad and worried at the same time.
Four more children. Eight total. How was he going to feed them?
But they managed. Mike hunted more. Sold more pelts.
Bought flour by the sack, salt by the bag. They expanded the garden. Planted more potatoes.
The cow gave milk. They added goats. The chickens laid well.
There was enough food. The second round of births went easier. Phoebe had a girl.
They named her Eva, after Mike’s mother. Agatha had a boy, Simon.
After her father. Nancy had a girl, Lydia. Dora had a boy, Theodore.
By the fall of 1961 Mike had eight children. The cabin was crowded.
Mike started building an addition. A large extra room. Worked all fall and winter.
By spring 1962 it was finished. Now the cabin had two rooms. Adults in one, children sleeping in the other.
The children were raised in strict Old Believer ways. Phoebe taught them prayers from age three. Agatha taught handwork.
Girls learned embroidery. Boys learned woodcarving. Nancy taught cooking and baking. Dora played with them and sang songs.
Mike taught the boys in the woods. Took them out, showed them animal tracks, taught them to navigate and set snares. Panteleimon, the oldest, could tell moose tracks from deer tracks by age five.
Samuel could start a fire without matches. By the mid-1960s there were thirteen people in the skete. Mike, four wives, eight children.
The community had grown. Mike knew they needed more room—another cabin, a larger bathhouse, a proper barn for livestock. He worked constantly.
Cut logs, hewed them, stacked them. By 1965 he had built a second cabin beside the first. Nancy moved there with her children.
Agatha and Dora moved there too with the younger ones. Phoebe stayed with Mike in the original cabin. She was the eldest wife. That was the arrangement.
In 1964 Phoebe became pregnant again, for the third time. She was 33 by then, and childbirth was harder, but she came through. She had a boy named Gregory.
Agatha had a girl, Priscilla. Nancy had a boy, John. Dora had a girl, Katherine.
Twelve children now. The skete had become a small village. Two cabins, a bathhouse, a barn, a large garden, a bee yard.
Mike took up beekeeping. Nancy learned to draw honey. They sold extra honey in town and bought cloth, thread, needles.
By 1970 there were fifteen children. Phoebe had one last child in 1968, a boy named Timothy.
Agatha had two more, a boy named Cyril and a girl named Daria. Nancy had one more, a girl named Matilda. The oldest, Panteleimon, was eleven.
The youngest, Timothy, was two. All of them strong and healthy. Not one had died. Every child lived.
That was a small miracle in deep country, with no medicine and births handled at home. Mike was getting older. He was 51. Hair going gray. Back aching. But he kept at it.
Worked, hunted, taught the children. The four wives had grown older too. Phoebe was 39, Agatha 37, Nancy 35, Dora 32.
But they were still strong, attractive, hardworking. They lived quietly and went unnoticed. The authorities left them alone.
In the 1960s the old ruler was gone and a new one had come in. The anti-religious pressure eased. Old Believers were no longer pursued as aggressively.
The state had other things to worry about. Space. Arms. The economy. Mike went into town every six months.
He said he was a lone hunter. Nobody pushed. The local inspector, Paul Erickson, would sometimes joke, “Cornell, why’re you living out there alone? Ought to get married.”
Mike would grin and say:
