Zhgons, matrays, pimokats, those who made felt boots throughout Russia, called themselves differently. They communicated in their secret languages and kept the craft secret. The authors of the film overheard secret dialects and spied on the secrets of the craftsmanship of the remaining masters.

In a remote, forgotten village on the high bank of the Vetluga, only one person lives, a former physicist. Finding an old well bucket in the ruins of a house, he starts digging a well. He soon realizes that someone else lives in the village.

How to live if the child does not see and does not hear? Refuse him? Send to boarding school? Reconcile? What to do when nothing can be done, and where to go when there is nowhere to go?

The Vetluga River has been closed to navigation for several years. There are no more buoys and transshipments. Every spring, a laying vessel with a barge loaded with buoys goes out to prepare the fairway for navigation, set buoys and restore transshipment poles. The raid continues for several days. In the summer, railway workers are forced to correct buoys overturned by ships, tint shields of coastal navigation signs, and install new signal lamps on buoys to replace those stolen by local fishermen. In autumn, the buoys are removed and shipped to the base until the next navigation.

Northern fabulous taiga. A team of lumberjacks harvests wood in those places where the foot of a person hardly sets foot. Lumberjacks work bravely where any mistake can cost someone their life.