A shout: “Friedrich, cross not this threshold lightly!”

– Diary of René Hudderson, expedition member

From the fields of Romania fertile, through old Balticum, and in extremes to the distant northlands: Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve set out to chart the earth.

His sextant, clock and compass were true, perhaps, but what of his soul, what of that internal navigator? Von Struve spent his autumn years in some southern sanitorium. Little is known of his demise. He spoke so rarely of those final days of the expedition. What did you do, von Struve, in those Dictum Borderlands?

A prayer for lost,
a hymn to the wanderer.
A song of encompassing
darkness, unresting.

He who would leave
a virgin forest of faith
to seek forbidden knowledge
will surely find it.

Bless him still,
that traveler
on true paths,
yet deceived.

Bless him.

– Prayer of Jurij the Priest