by Grace Pearson, of Carleton College
Our week backpacking through the core zone of Tag Nuur was a marathon of knowledge accumulation run at a pace that could win the Boston. From July 13 to the 20th , we were all incredibly busy in the backcountry, with the tasks at hand varying from butterfly documentation to plant collection to talus pika surveys to trapping and inventorying small mammals to trekking over passes from campsite to campsite. Every waking hour (save for the two spent in camp in the morning over breakfast and gear sorting and the two spent in camp in the evening for dinner and Darhad tea) was spent in the field. Despite the frantic pace and aching legs and sunburned noses and broken tents, I think we all came off the trail a little happier than before. And with just under a week remaining in Mongolia, though the skies were not always clear, my mind was. Over our time in Tag Nuur, it became obvious to me that two things had combined to make our backpacking trip, and actually our whole stay in Mongolia, so spectacular: time for reflection and a culture of reciprocity.
Although the days were spent collecting data, with little communication in the field except to relay things like measurements, observations, which patch of talus was our next target, which boulder was loose, what plant the red-listed butterfly was nectaring on, or how close the next storm seemed, when we paused we always found time to reflect. At breakfast before heading out, during lunch in a meadow, while collecting firewood for dinner, our conversation would turn to things like the ethics of outdoor recreation, what works in protected area management, how to align our behaviors with our values in a culture like America’s, the welfare structure of Mongolia since their capitalist revolution, and the different epistemologies we had encountered in our lives, slowly weaving the information we had been absorbing during our time in Mongolia into the broader context of our lives. Considering the implications of facts rather than the facts themselves is a valuable and often forgotten part of science that makes discoveries all the more impactful and common. For me, I think, the chance to engage in this consideration enhanced what I had learned a hundredfold.
I can remember back to when we arrived in the Darhad, how when we got out of the furgon that had delivered us to basecamp the land was crowded with people rushing to help us set up our gers and tents. The display of support was overwhelming to me, and though I understood the thought behind it, I was not sure I could return the gesture of hospitality. Our week spent living closely with the rangers Nyamochir and Ragcha revealed the ways in which partnership creates easy opportunities for a gift-based relationship founded on reciprocity. It was an accumulation of the small things – the rangers would haul in firewood and bring the pot of water to a boil, we would offer them the soup made from it. When they poured us a cup of Darhad tea brewed with dried flowers from the meadows around us, we offered them wild rhubarb jam made of the plants we had collected during our talus surveys the previous day. At night, we would sing songs in English and they would answer with new melodies in Mongolian. We recited poetry, with Rebecca faithfully translating the meanings of the verses (even when they were highly metaphorical). We taught them some English phrases and they taught us some Mongolian. We tapped into their knowledge of the land, asking for help with plant ID’s, rodent bait, and talus patch locations. We could not have collected the data we did without their wealth of knowledge and lessons learned that could only come from a full life of experience here. It was a good reminder that transactional mindsets are not always the most efficient (and seldom the most fulfilling) approaches to accomplishing goals.
So now with our field notebooks full of sketches and scribbles, we are settling in to spend a few intense days of data organization and analysis before we present our conclusions to all of the people who helped us here along the way. Still charging ahead, soon we will have time to catch our breath.