by Sophie Heny, of University of Vermont
Round River Mongolia study abroad program – Fall 2019
“I am not atrocious.
I am well above atrocity.
There is no group I’d rather be beaten up by.
Bob’s puns are funny.
I can pish a tit!
I am not bear bait.”
And thus, with our evening affirmations read and our stomachs grumbling, Qingqing (not our fellow student at this moment but our cult leader) dismisses us to our long-awaited dinner. Pickled beets, Amkaa’s Darhad famous spiced mutton, and brown kasha are shoveled back at record speeds as we revel in the events of the day: 8,700 lines of Daurian pika data entered, a successful retrieval of three game cameras, or a comparison of oddly-shaped bruises acquired in the super-competitive games of Capture the Flag we’ve been playing with kids from the neighboring hashaa. With most of our pika, vansemberuu, and waterfowl data collected and only game cams left to retrieve from the mountains ringing basecamp, we’ve had the past ten days to get to know the Dotormush meadow and Mungash river basin we’ve called home for the past two months in exquisite detail. Sleeping outside every night offers the best view of the Milky Way any of us can say we’ve ever gotten, and the moon has never seemed so full as when we watched it swell from nothing to the gaudy orb it is now that lights our way to the squat-toilet each night.
Each camp-based day begins with a morning birdwalk led by Chris, our most senior tit-pisher and very best mom. A few of us throw our dels on haphazardly (out of the view of Mongolians who would scold us for our untidiness as we tend to forgo a few buttons on the del…), shove our feet into frozen Crocs, and blearily stumble into a fast-lightening morning with our binoculars clutched tightly in hand. Not a morning passes without a new discovery. Our resident capercaillie is always a hit if we catch him at his favorite roadside bush before a berry-picking motorcyclist scares him off, and we’re now masters at distinguishing between the laser-gun “pew pew” of a redpole and the softer “kee-ee” whistle of the crossbill. One morning, we swear we heard a bear grunting off in the distance, and another, as we were scouring a patch of shrubby cinquefoil for a long-tailed rosefinch, we heard a pack of yipping wolves run parallel to the river not 500 meters from basecamp. Needless to say, all of camp (most of us still half-asleep) were soon raking the forest for wolf sign in the thick blanket of larch, wordlessly sending up prayers to Tenger (the Mongolian sky, worshipped for its power) for snow to improve our tracking capability. Despite our efforts we have yet to see a wolf paw-print or catch one of them on a game cam we set up on a path near camp, and we consider it probable that the wolves are enjoying taunting the group of silly wolf-enthusiasts in their Dotormush meadow.
Next is breakfast, most often urum (a semi-clotted yak cream) slathered bread, milk tea, and fresh yogurt with cranberry jam made by Arvin – our neighbor, top Ulaan Uul high school student, and fellow Capture-the-Flag team member. The students and instructors cluster around the central stove in the ger to rethaw our toes after cold nights and talk turns to what the day ahead holds. Since our return from our backpacking trip to Khar Us, most of our work is centered around basecamp and boy do we have plenty of it: retrieving camera sim cards has us schlepping up the Mungash river basin time and time again, exploring new drainage basins, plucking caragana prickles out of our posteriors.
Our relationship with the people of Darhad has strengthened unbelievably over the past weeks. We all seem convinced that we have semi-adopted Tuvshin, the 12 year-old son of our driver Chinbold who lives in a ger not a kilometer from our basecamp, as our younger brother for our remaining time in the Darhad. Tuvshin shows up at odd hours at our basecamp, often trailed by a menagerie consisting of his horse, his dog Gölög (puppy), and a few younger Mongolian girls, and we all run out to throw snowballs with him, shower him in gifts, or show him tricks on our newly installed pull-up bar (credit to Lonnie and Micah). Tuvshin shows us Darhad through the eyes of a 12 year-old, teaching us the words for mushroom (möög), spider (aalz), and tree (mod). He’s very patient with our progress, and despite neither of us speaking more than a few words of the other’s language, I would consider him a close friend. When we heard that Tuvshin was turning 12 that weekend, we insisted on throwing him a big birthday bash, complete with a cake frosted in our precious and fast depleting Nutella, a precarious stack of gifts, and a few impassioned games of Capture the Flag at his request.
In addition, we were invited to the wedding of a ranger for the park system, which meant another shower and a lesson in Mongolian manners. Again, we buttoned our dels properly and applied our very best chap-stick and headed off to our first Mongolian wedding. We were ushered in to a beautiful new ger by a beautiful new couple, and fed bowls upon bowls of milk tea, cranberry tea, mutton soup, smoked mutton, dried yogurt, and sweets. We sang songs (notably Isaac’s beautiful rendition of “Roll On, Columbia,” “Ayanii Shuwuud”, a Mongolian song about migratory birds that we had been feverishly practicing to get right, and “Frère Jacques”), and learned about the couple. This is how Mongolian weddings are traditionally conducted—the pair opens their ger for about two weeks to all their friends and extended family, who show up for food, gifts, and congratulations. We consider ourselves very lucky to be thought of as the friends of these people and welcomed into their home.
After these long and varied days of schoolwork, hiking, or otherwise, it’s a miracle that we still have energy after dinner and our steadily increasing list of affirmations, but evenings at basecamp are certainly not to be slept through. Sometimes there are long and intense games of cribbage, bridge, or hearts, and fishbowl charades was a big hit. On our sleepier nights we huddle together around the fire reading or writing. Our attempts to bring snow are growing more and more desperate as the time left in the semester decreases: we’ve offered Nutella, milk, and even Lonnie’s precious peanut M&M’s to Tenger, to no avail, and one night we spent hours singing, dancing, and chanting snow-related abstractions around a bonfire. The resulting centimeter of snow the next day gave us renewed hope in the power of ceremony and the possibility of a snowy end to the semester, but it quickly melted so we’re back to square one on the effectiveness of cult rituals to bring snow. It seems best to leave it up to Tenger for now.
These days at camp have brought me closer to the landscape and the people I am experiencing it with than I imagined possible. Never have I known so many of the birds around me by name or laughed myself to tears so many times per day. I am beginning to appreciate how important the combination of the two is—it would be impossible for me to love this place this much without seeing what forms that love takes for the people who actually call the Darhad their home. The way Tuvshin approaches his environment with an acute sense of curiosity, Arvin’s sense of where all the juiciest cranberries grow, and each rangers’ desire to share their knowledge of the world with us have been irreplaceable learning opportunities. I consider myself endlessly lucky to experience the Darhad by learning how to love it, and I can’t wait to see how this continues to unfold in our remaining weeks.