In 1870s-80s Leo Tolstoy had a kind of summer «study» here, in the hut on pillars built on the edge of this wood. In the quiet of this «study» he could think, or talk to his close friends, or focus on his work, or just rest. Oaks over 300 years old still grow in Chepyzh. It was under one of the oaks in Chepyzh that Tolstoy’s wife Sophia once hid during a thunderstorm with her little baby, Seryozha, while Tolstoy, terribly frightened, was looking for them all over the forest. In Anna Karenina the same thing happens to Levin, Kitty and their son Mitya; but in the novel Levin finally finds his wife and child not under an oak, but «under an old lime-tree»: «Holding his head bent down before him, and struggling with the wind that strove to tear the wraps away from him, Levin was moving up to the copse and had just caught sight of something white behind the oak tree, when there was a sudden flash, the whole earth seemed on fire, and the vault of heaven seemed crashing overhead. Opening his blinded eyes, Levin gazed through the thick veil of rain that separated him now from the copse, and to his horror the first thing he saw was the green crest of the familiar oak-tree in the middle of the copse uncannily changing its position. «Can it have been struck?» Levin hardly had time to think when, moving more and more rapidly, the oak tree vanished behind the other trees, and he heard the crash of the great tree falling upon the others. The flash of lightning, the crash of thunder, and the instantaneous chill that ran through him were all merged for Levin in one sense of terror. «My God! my God! not on them!» he said». Along the edge of the Chepyzh the Poddonny Ravine is located.