This summer I spent three weeks in Mongolia and discovered a wonderful country where the people seem genuinely connected to the land and their animals. My friend and I travelled for three days to stay with the Tsaatan near the Russian border; they still live in teepees and they still ride reindeer. It was one of the most magical experiences I have had. I’m so glad that some of them have been willing to allow visitors to stay with them. 

I was here before them.
Witness to frozen wastelands;
when hoar frosts spun tight fitting webs
and swathes of moody clouds cast dark shapes
over pristine snow that only betrayed life from
the light imprints of Wolf, Ibex and Sable.

I was here when those chilling months
shifted to let the first weak rays of a low sun
cause the flakes to retreat and perish;
when the borders changed and Mongolia
yawned to swallow them back in.

It was with soft step they traversed the miles
astride their gentle reindeer
whose nodding antlers
and wistful dark eyes
paved a new way through
the marsh and the swamp.
They cast aside impenetrable branches,
creating an indelible print
that then pointed a way to what had lain secret
by these shallow streams for centuries.

Hacked from the womb of a boreal forest
I stretched up to the empyrean
and locked heads with the others who stood tall
to be draped in the scratchy, oily skins of the ones
who had trod majestic across the Taiga.

I watched as light would ebb away into the void of the steppe
and produce from it a formidable shadow;
a crepuscular scarecrow;
a shapeshifter arranged
under a headdress of faded feathers that
foundered under the weight of a thousand spirits
who crept under our eaves to answer their questions
before evaporating under the beat of a drum.

Over time we learned to bend under aggressive winds
and sudden storms; to become gradually desiccated
and cadaverous under an unforgiving sun
before being carefully laid to a strange hibernation
nestled amongst the cotton grass and lichen
when they left for a solstice honoured elsewhere.

I know they’ll return when the clouds roll back
and the beetles awake to creep from the grass.
I’ll see their silhouettes pushing ahead
and I’ll know to await my reincarnation
when once again I’m pulled from the earth
to tower beside this mountain pass.