Numto, Siberia -- As we prepare to leave the forest cabin to return to our world, we sit down for tea two separate times, honoring the Nenets tradition. Added to the usual early morning chai and bread is meat from a partridge that Oleg had shot a few days before. Once the sleds are loaded up with the gear and hitched to the patient deer, we have another cup of tea.

As we sit, Valya tries one last time to get me to stay.

"Beeill, it's fun here, don't you want to live with us?" she asks, cocking her head sideways and laughing. I promise to try to come back to visit, but add that my family and friends are waiting for me back in Moscow.

Like my own grandmother, Babushka is concerned about our feet getting cold and she sets about stuffing our boots with stenna grass -- another great natural insulation material.

"Here, you must also take this," she insists, bringing in several large chunks of frozen deer meat from where they still hang from the tree branch. When I tell her that I have plenty to carry already, she says, "At least the best part, then," indicating a cut of thigh. Deer meat has virtually no fat, and the thigh is a choice cut and, indeed, delicious.

Over the river

We set off on sleds driven by Oleg and Ded. Valya and Anna follow part of the way on foot; they'll eventually head off in a different direction to get fish from their brother.

The sled jostles to and fro as I try to stay wedged between my bags and Oleg, who sits sideways holding the reins. I take a quick glimpse back at the homey cabin as we pull out across the yard. Several of the hunting dogs are yapping from beside the stakes where they are tied up, as if to bid goodbye, too. Soon we're zipping along through the trees, the only sound the clicking of deer tendons and the swish of sled runners on snow.

After a short time we come to a major obstacle: the Kazym River, which is beginning to freeze over. The men fear that chunks of floating ice will stop the deer from swimming the short distance across the river. They are also nervous about loading the sleds and people onto a log raft and dodging the ice.

But the deer plunge right in, ending any debate, and quickly stagger out onto the far shore, their remarkable fur affording ample protection from the icy water. Reassembled on the other side, I feel Valya give me one last playful push as we speed off, shouting one last good-bye, "PA-KA Beeill, be sure and come back!"

Another section of particularly bad swamp requires chopping down a few small trees to throw down as a kind of makeshift bridge over which the deer can maneuver; once again, the Nenets simply make use of whatever resources are at hand to meet their needs.

And out of the woods

The ride out is faster than the long hike in, and before long I can hear the buzz of a snowmobile as we near Numto. Within minutes we are gliding along past the few village people who are out and about. A week earlier Numto had seemed remote and isolated. Now the place feels downright crowded, with all the box-like houses bunched so close together. I feel out of place after the forest.

We make our way to the only "store" in town -- a room with tins of sardines and soup on a shelf, and large barrels of cooking oil and giant sacks of flour in a corner. Like any frontier town, Numto is the kind of place where homesteaders who live out in the wild stock up on necessities. Ded and Oleg buy some flour, sugar, cooking oil and even a few bottles of vodka, all of which are securely fastened onto the sleds where our packs had been.

Finally we troop inside a small hut where we stayed the week before, doffing boots, reindeer parkas and jackets. The smell of smoke from our clothes permeates the air, a reminder of the forest cabin. In contrast, some Styrofoam "cup-a-soups" and a plastic mineral water bottle on the table are somehow symbolic of our return to the land of prepared and packaged food.

"We certainly enjoyed having you with us," Ded says as he pours out shots of vodka to assist with the goodbyes. We drink and then sit quietly one last time as this older man, so shaped by his life in the wild, softly sings a traditional Nenets goodbye song. Some of the words are Russian, included for our benefit in the same manner he conducted the spiritual ceremony back in the cabin. It goes roughly like this:

"These our new friends,
who came upon us,
now go their own way.
And we must go ours.

Please make their way a safe one.
And let us hope this meeting
won't be our last."

I find myself choked up as he sings, knowing that within minutes these two wonderful people will take their leave, riding their sleds back to that other life they'd so graciously shared with us.