By: Owen Wilson, Westminster University
Hey everybody, it’s Owen here! Again, I am from Westminster University in Salt Lake City, and this is my second blog. Less exciting than Naadam, this week meant moving out of base camp and taking care of our last tasks before we return home.
October 17:
The morning of the 17th, we woke up at 7:30 a.m. to -17 *C and a classic Amka breakfast of porridge, eggs, frybread with Nutella and sweetened condensed milk, and milk tea or coffee. After dishes, we all got in the Delica and ran to town (Ulaan-Uul) to refill our 5-gallon water jugs. We’d done this many times before, but soon the river will be frozen over, and this is one of the last times we’ll have a reason to come out here. The water was cold and the view beautiful.
With laundry and extra-curricular snacks in hand, we came back to camp for a work day and got set up in our camp chairs. I also had a job to do. Since we’d gotten the cats, Amka’s ger had suffered a number of seemingly mysterious solar charger mishaps, and had its wires pulled down towards the cats’ little door. I was still trying to find the culprit. And while I had my suspicions, for the moment all I could really do was re-insulate the loose wires with electrical tape to get Amka’s freezer working again and go about my business.
Despite that, I battled with the panel, inverter, and wires for an afternoon before calling it quits. As the night bled into the newly snowy evening, we were fed well again and settled in for a movie. Milana had tired herself out enough that Bobby the cat had to come and investigate.
October 18:
On the 18th, we spent the first half of the day taking turns doing a plant identification quiz. While I am notoriously poor with plants, I did not fail this one, so shout-out to my savior, Potentilla fruticosa! After lunch, we went on a Grinnell Journal hike to the (meaning copious notes required) to take tree core samples, and another species quiz while we were out. As soon as we set out, the first tracks in the snow we saw were a fox, moving inquisitively through the snow and crossing the trail. I was pretty impressed that we’d had a predator track gift-wrapped for us within two kilometers of camp, but the rest of the day was about to get even better.
In a small offshoot of the main riverbed of the Mungash, we ran into some significant moose tracks heading south. We’ve seen similarly sized tracks in mud before, but the toe-dragging, the dew claws, and the roughly 15-centimeter-long individual spores were something I’d never seen with my own eyes. In the same section of riverbed, an arctic hare’s pawprints were leaping playfully up and around the log-strewn bank. While we got quizzed on both of these tracks, I was having the time of my life with this little glimpse of our long-eared friend’s adventure written in the snow.
When we left the forest, on a faraway slope churned up by boar tracks, we saw a green-deeled figure leading a beautiful white horse down towards us. Judging by his stature and the rifle across his back, I was fairly sure who it was as soon as he reached the bottom of the hill; for others, like Erin without her glasses, it was hard to recognize Nyam-Ochir’s smiling face until he was right in front of us. Even while patrolling and protecting the wild pigs, he still had time to talk and laugh with us for a moment, and I took a second after he left to investigate the tracks. He was after a serious drove of hogs.
To cap off our wildlife day, just before a chilly and densely wooded forestry plot, a wedge of whooper swans flew by overhead. Their lithe white bodies and little black feet were clear as day from below, and they spoke to us and each other with long yellow bills that glowed gold in the fading light. Once we’d wrapped up our journals, and spent some time with the yaks, it was time for a good night of sleep.
October 19:
This morning, we went out on another hike to a brand new forestry plot. To get to this one, we followed the Mungash upriver for a kilometer or two, and then climbed up the side of the bank to river left. Then on the way there, through some misfortune, I dunked my toes in the river and let some water get in. While I stamped my feet the whole time, it turned out we were scheduled for a plot completely devoid of the larch trees we’d been studying. Not everyone thought it was as funny as I did.
We adjusted our plot, took care of business, and on the way back I hauled it to camp to warm the toes up. Thankfully, they recovered pretty quickly, moving fast, and we spent the rest of the day wrapped up in the ger working.
October 20:
This day was a workday spent wrestling with the cats and our assignments. No photos made it out of the ger, and Jamie led what I am sure was a riveting discussion about applied ecology.
October 21:
This Wednesday was yet another workday for me, and we split into two groups: two of us (myself and Jamie) went to Ulaan-Uul with Erin, and the others headed to more forestry plots. Unfortunately for the blog, I was with the more boring group, and I spent the day in town on my research project.
At the ranger station where we work, however, two auspicious events happened at our front door. The first was the local conspiracy of large ravens devouring a sheep carcass a meter or two from the fence, which we could see in great detail; the second was watching the rangers construct a brown bear cage in the parking area. It was about my height and maybe three meters long by two wide, so a bear was probably the only animal that enclosure would be required for, and it still took me an hour to puzzle it out while I was supposed to be writing.
October 22:
Being allowed to shower again was the most notable part of the day. Now that the weather is cold and snowy, being able to warm up in the sauna and get clean feels like the serious luxury that it is. Jamie and I also hit the pull-up bar especially hard before getting clean.
October 23:
The morning of the 23rd was another time for project work, but this time we were heading to town for a special performance of cultural songs. From the faraway, exotic location of Bozeman, Montana, Badmaa had made some calls and set us up to learn and record traditional knowledge and stories from the local singers. They wore beautiful ceremonial white deels, and a few rangers and station workers came to watch with us and translate.
The best unexpected highlights were 1) Jamie and Erin’s performance of Neon Moon, and 2) getting Amka to sing for us. She has to be one of the most talented people I have ever met, and she apparently taught the lead singer of the local group when she was younger. It all made for a lovely full-circle moment.
October 24:
For our last full day in the Pen, we packed our tents away and got our affairs in order for the move tomorrow morning. In the afternoon, Jamie and I split from the group (in the midst of doing many more pull-ups) to go to a track-filled site to the north and west of us.
There we saw the tracks of an elk, fox, a yak parade on the nearby road, a wild boar or two, and our first true wolf prints of the semester. It was a fitting conclusion to the end of our time in the pen, and we spent a minute sitting in the deep woods listening to the songbirds flitting between the trees.
That evening, we slept in the kitchen and enjoyed the warmth of the stove for our last night at basecamp. Amka put us to bed with a candle, and our cat, Bumbaa, snuggled up nearby.
