Reflections on the Steppe
Tuesday, October 12th, 2004
We are lucky…days are brisk but sunny…the sun glints off bare hills covered in golden fall grass. This feels like fall in southeast Oregon where I grew up. I soak it all in while Bob goes on a 4 hour hike through birch groves and box canyons full of grazing mustangs. How do you know they were mustangs I ask Bob…he says” they had labels on each side.” Places were steeper than he anticipated…had to run from one tree to another to keep from falling down the hill.
The next afternoon we paid three dollars to an elder Mongolian in traditional clothing to take us riding horses through the hills with him. Give him his head, I said to Bob who was trying to make his horse gallop! But there was no saddle horn on the tiny saddle to hang onto and it was difficult to post in the ornate metal stirrups. Mongolian saddles are definitely different than Western saddles I was used to as a girl in cowboy country USA. Still, the same freedom I used to feel…while riding…in the wind…in the hills…where I grew up… This is as close to heaven as it gets I thought…connected…connected to the earth.
Zoe