“Siberia takes up one-twelfth of all the land on earth.
The United States from Maine to California stretches
across four time zones; in Siberia there are eight.
The continental United States plus most of Europe
could fit inside it. Across the middle of Siberia,
west to east for forty-six hundred miles,
runs the taiga, the largest forest in the world.”
– Ian Frazier,
in the New Yorker, Aug. 3, 2009