66 SIDELINES NOVEMBER 2013
FOR HORSE PEOPLE • ABOUT HORSE PEOPLE
Tsaatan people, I had to think for a minute before answering his
question. The Mongolian translator repeated it for me, in case I
hadn’t understood it the first time around.
What was my job in
America? And why had I traveled across the world, by plane, land
cruiser, horse and foot, to visit with this ancient Mongolian ethnic
group of 18 surviving families, who herd reindeer and navigate the
frigid Siberian forests and mountains on the Russian-Mongolian
border?
This journey started two years ago, when I read a book called
Horse Boy
. The author, Rupert Isaacson, had traveled on this very
same trek from Ulaanbaatar (UB) through Murun and northbound
past Tsagaannuur into Siberia on a quest to find shamanic healing
for his autistic son, Rowan. I fell in love with the dream of the
adventure and became more and more curious about living with
nomadic people and learning about shamanic medicine and
healing.
In my life I have travelled to many foreign places: Zimbabwe, Sri
Lanka, the UAE. But, even so, I could not foresee what it would feel
like to truly live following the rhythm of nature. Nomadic life was
like nothing I could ever have imagined. We bathed on average
every five days, rose with the sun and ate some form of meat
and milk at every sitting. We drank straight vodka at night and
shared philosophies that spanned Buddhism, shamanism and the
new Mongolian modern democratic world. We lost track of time, of
date, of our appearances. We set and packed camp in all weather,
traveling rain or shine, through heat or snow. We participated in
shamanic rituals, visited with locals and drank Airag (fermented
mare’s milk).
We camped on the edge of rivers and forests and watched herds
of semi-wild horses passing through, new born babies taking
their first steps, stallions mating with their mares, young colts
running and playing tag. I often thought to myself that these must
be the happiest horses in the world. Don’t get me wrong – they
worked too, and they had a very tough life (it was very common
for nomads to lose foals each night to wolves), but, then again,
there were no exercise plans, turnout schedules or supplements,
no blacksmiths, no horse dentists. They just survived.
When the road ended at the mountains, we mounted up and
rode our little Mongolian horses through sleet, hail and rain. They
lurched us up the muddy mountain slopes, through rivers and over
rocky paths to bring us to the destination of our 1,400 km trek from
the capital of UB to the Tsaatan and back.
So on that afternoon of White Bear’s questions, I found it very
hard to explain what my normal world was like and what my job
entailed. There were no words that I could find to translate what
corporate marketing and sponsorship might mean to him or what
managing customer expectations or striving for work/life balance
involved. At that moment in time, none of my world at home felt
relevant.
Later that night he performed a four-hour shamanic ritual.
He sang, danced and beat his reindeer hide drum - sometimes
snorting like a pig, other times laughing, crying or shouting. We
huddled in near frigid temperatures long after the fire burnt out,
snow falling down on our faces from the smoke stack hole at the
top of the teepee. But I couldn’t tear my eyes away from him,
from this small and humble man who had morphed into a massive,
powerful and somewhat scary conduit of supposed higher spirits
Continued on page 68
The Tsaatan let us ride their reindeer.
