Siberian Arctic: “On the top of sopka”

Do you recall those pictures from social networks: “How do I see it, how it really is?” Now close your eyes and try to imagine first thing which comes to your mind, when somebody says "Tundra". What would you imagine? Being a master student, I imagined cold, flat and a dead field. In fact, Tundra turn out to be completely different, at least in September 2010, when I and my colleagues were lucky to visit it.
As it is well known from textbooks no big trees grows in Tundra, however, the local mosses were full of colour and various berries.
Those hills (on the photo), called “sopkas”, build up the amazing landscape of tundra. Those hills are not originated volcanically or as debris. Those are conglomerations of stones pushed up from the ground by permafrost during melting-freezing cycle. So, each sopka should grow a little every winter, representing a magnificent power of permafrost.