Cowboys, Wolves, and Satan

• Lraleigh's Profile
• About this blog
• Entry from The Celestial Mountains, Sarychat-Ertash Zapovednik

Trip Start Mar 21, 2005 Previous
Entry Trip End Ongoing Next
Entry

  The Celestial Mountains, Sarychat-Ertash Zapovednik, Kyrgyzstan
Saturday, December 8, 2007

Winter Survey of Sarychat-Ertash National Preserve: Cowboys, Wolves, and Satan, part I of III

As my breath froze onto my beard, a pack of Central Asian wolves moved together through the crisp snow of Koendu Valley below a herd of Marco Polo Sheep, who escaped to the high rocky ridges. Vasilliy Nemchanko, the skiing champion of Kyrgyzstan and biologist, and I walked slowly behind them, watching the scene unfold. We were in the buffer zone of Sarychat-Ertash, a Zapovednik, a strictly-protected nature preserve, in the Celestial Mountains, the Tian Shan.

To get here, I needed a permit from the KGB, the military, the Kumtor Gold Mine, and Sarychat-Ertash Zapovednik. A week later, the permits were ready and we drove across icy dirt roads over 4,000 meter passes to the edge of the park

Ak-Shirak Massif at Dusk

. Here we were: day one, surrounded by hundreds of rare Marco Polo Sheep and a pack of wolves in an arctic desert environment. The scene provided hope that wildlife could thrive, even in extremely remote, seemingly inhospitable terrain, if people gave them a chance. Still, as we would see, threats were looming all around.

Before sunset, we followed the sweet smoke of burning dung and returned to Koendu, a ranger station at 3470 meters to enter the warm home of the ranger Onan, his wife Suna, and twin baby girls. They greeted us with warm smiles and hot tea, eager to hear our story of the wolves. Vasilliy told them next to the hot stove, baby pants drying overhead, tea brewing, soup boiling. Two days earlier, this pack of wolves had killed the ranger's two horses. His grieving and gold teeth apparent, he mentioned that wolf skin clothing is the warmest fur around, requiring six wolves to make, covering from head to foot.

Alexander Vereshagin, the jovial head biologist for the park, and two rangers arrived with five horses for our survey expedition, a count of the argali sheep and ibex, as well as collecting information on snow leopards and wolves and patroling the park. Vasilliy would survey the Koendu valley on foot. Other rangers would survey the buffer zones around Inelchek: a survey of the entire 1340 square kilometer nature preserve

Akeel Saddles a Horse

. We would leave tomorrow--Alexander, the two rangers, and I, with our four horses and one horse for carrying extra food and supplies, to survey the remote core area for eight days.

For these eight days, from December 8 to 15, Satan was my steed as we crossed the rugged Celestial Mountains. Satan was my friend, my adversary, my trouble, and my companion during these times. Sometimes he listened, sometimes he did not, but sometimes he didn't listen and it was for good reason, so I also needed to listen to Satan: he knew the land better than I did.

The other three carried a whip, a useful tool for making the horses go faster, but one that widened the barrier between man and horse, one that already existed because horses naturally want to be wild and man wanted to subdue the horse. Looking in Satan's large brown eyes, I could sense this, and it wasn't personification: it was reality. Each of the four horses, when we stopped to count argali and ibex would struggle between the the hands of desire to escape and fear of punishment.

One of the rangers offered me a whip, which I chose not to carry. Satan went slower because he didn't feel the pain of a whip, going slower at the pace of cowboy music, the kind with harmonica or straw between the teeth, ambling along

Alexander at the Sarychat-Ertash Boundary Sign

.

In the morning, I mounted Satan for the first time, not having ridden a horse in a couple decades, to ride over a 4,200 meter pass. An inner voice told me to be calm, confident, and not let Satan know that I had lingering doubts about surviving eight days on a horse called Satan. The same voice said it will all be okay; Satan was looking out for me and I'd catch on quick, right?

"Chut," we all called to our horses, and we were off.

Before the Eshegart pass, we counted a herd of 36 argali, then another group of six, a pair running through deep snow, a fast-moving octet on the way down into the Ertash Valley. Several hours later, we reached a small cabin, the Eshegart camp, our home for the night.

Getting off Satan, my left snow boot grips caught on the stirrup, sending me cascading downward to the ground, my camera with heavy telephoto lens striking my face, nearly knocking me unconscious as Satan moved around, nervous. Luckily, I was able to release the boot, now strongly aware of Satan's nearby horseshoes and the throbbing lump on my jawbone

Alexander Films Passerines

.

An early winter sunset later, the four of us were warming ourselves next to the dung stove, slowly talking in broken Russian, English, and Kyrgyz...and Latin.

Alexander and I leafed through the Birds of the USSR, lit with our headlamps. He pointed to the birds found in the park, noting that 74 species lived here in the summer, but only twenty-four stayed for the bitter winter. These birds--the griffon, the Lamergeyer, the Golden Eagle, the larks, the finches--were the hardy ones, who could find seed in icy patches of grass or relied on a Siberian cold front to provide them with frozen carcases of argali and ibex. We talked sometimes using latin genera sometimes with hands, sometimes pointing, and sometimes leafing through my Russian-English Dictionary.

Akeel Kurdalief--broad in the shoulders, tough, a hard-working get-things-done Kyrgyz cowboy, born and raised in the Celestial Mountains--he listened while tending the fire, preparing tea, our bellies full from dinner. For five years, since he was thirty-six, he has roamed these valleys as a ranger, his family staying at home, awaiting his safe return.

Argali Skulls

Ten years junior to Akeel was Askat Abdkasif Saksanich, who opened the cabin door, brining in arctic air as an unwelcome guest but also a bucket of dried sheep manure as a welcome fuel to keep us warm for the night. Askat showed irritation that I had a Russian-English dictionary and not a Kyrgyz-English one and was sure to tell me the Kyrgyz name for things, if Alexander mentioned the Russian name.

Russian and Soviet control were still very much a backdrop to Kyrgyz life as they searched for a new identity, pinched between CIS and NATO interests (both the Russians and Americans had airbases here) and the desire to grow the economy and create a prosporous state, albeit one with crooked state boundaries drawn by Stalin to create instability between the people of the former Turkestan: the Pamiri Tajiks, the sedentary descendents of Timur in the plains, the mountain Kyrgyz nomads, the desert Turkmen, and the Hordes of the grassy steppes.

Part of the new Kyrgyz identity was right before my eyes in these two Kyrgyz mountain cowboys. But it was not new, it was just re-emerging after years of suppression. Its name was Manas. Manas was a legendary horseback warrior of the mountains, whose story, Epic of Manas, is the longest recorded. Manaschis sing the tale to audiences, inspiring patriotism, bravery, toughness, a nomadic life of horses and danger and fighting for what is right, going back to the roots fed by the blood of the people. These two cowboys, they were Manas, embodied.

continued...

Post your own travel photos for friends and family More Pictures

Koendu Camp	Koendu River, Seemingly Frozen in Time	Lloyd and Ascat	Lloyd and Ascat Riding
Lloyd and Satan	Lloyd Eating Ibex	Sary Chaz Mountains and Plateau	Shoeing the Horses
Window Ice

Slideshow Print this entry Share Bishkek hotels

Previous Entry Next Entry