The West Siberian Plain, where 2.6 million square kilometers lie below 200 meters elevation

The West Siberian Plain is one of the quiet giants of the planet. It stretches from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Yenisei River in the east, covering around 2.6 million square kilometres — an expanse so vast that it resists quick comprehension. Across almost this entire territory, the land rarely rises above 200 meters above sea level. There are no dramatic mountains, no sharp breaks in the horizon. Only distance, water, forest, and time.

This extreme flatness is not accidental. The region rests on an ancient sedimentary basin that has remained geologically stable for millions of years. Rivers have slowly deposited layers of sediments, while repeated Ice Age glaciations gently smoothed the surface even further. What emerged is a landscape defined by subtle gradients, weak drainage, and an overwhelming sense of continuity. Here, water does not rush — it spreads, seeps, lingers, and remembers.

Because of this geography, the West Siberian Plain contains some of the largest swamp and peatland systems on Earth. Vast wetlands dominate the land, storing enormous quantities of water and carbon. In the north, permafrost further limits drainage, reinforcing slow seasonal rhythms. Floods are not disasters here; they are part of the natural cycle. Rivers overflow, shift course, and retreat again, reshaping the land gradually rather than violently.

The Ob River flows directly through this world. It is one of the great rivers of Eurasia, but unlike fast mountain rivers, it moves slowly and broadly, often more than a kilometre wide. It meanders across the plain, connecting distant forest clearings, villages, and taiga glades without disturbing them. Its pace mirrors the character of the land itself: patient, expansive, indifferent to human urgency.

This is not a landscape that demands conquest or constant engineering. It does not reward haste. Instead, it teaches attentiveness. Life here organizes itself through balance rather than force. Plants, animals, insects, water, and soil exist in finely tuned relationships that cannot be rushed without being broken. Human presence, if it is to endure, must learn these rhythms rather than attempt to override them.

In the Ringing Cedars books, this geography is not just a backdrop. It is part of the logic of life being described. Anastasia’s way of living is inseparable from such conditions. The vastness, the silence, the slow cycles of water and growth support a form of perception where observation replaces control, and participation replaces domination. Her glade is not shown as wilderness improved by humans, but as a living system already complete, requiring only correct human alignment.

Scientifically, the peatlands of the West Siberian Plain store immense amounts of carbon and influence global climate processes. Symbolically, this echoes a core idea of the books: that the Earth preserves information, memory, and energy over immense timescales. Nothing is lost. Everything accumulates, transforms, and re-emerges when conditions are right.

This does not mean that Anastasia could live only in this land and nowhere else. Rather, the West Siberian Plain helps explain why she lives there. Its patience, its slowness, its refusal to be rushed create conditions in which a certain way of living becomes visible. The land does not impose itself on a person; it reveals them. In a place so ancient, flat, and quiet, false movement stands out immediately, while what is true can unfold without resistance — reminding us that stability comes not from speed or domination, but from learning to move at the same pace as the living world beneath our feet.