Rowing to Baikal: Sixty Days on Mongolia's Selenge River

By Peter W Fong

After plans were announced for multiple dams in Mongolia's Selenge River watershed, award-winning author and veteran flyfishing guide Peter W. Fong was spurred to learn more about this remarkable ecosystem. On a first-ever scientific expedition from the headwaters of the Selenge to Russia's Lake B

• Language: English
• Publisher: Latah Books
• Release date: Dec 5, 2023
• ISBN: 9781957607283

Peter W Fong

Conservationist and adventurer Peter W. Fong has a hard time keeping still. He's worked as an artist-in-the-schools in Montana, a travel guidebook writer in China, and a flyfishing guide in Mongolia. In 2018, he led an international team of scientists on a thousand-mile expedition from the headwaters of Mongolia's Selenge River to Russia's Lake Baikal.His stories and photographs have appeared in The FlyFish Journal, High Country News, The New York Times, and many other publications. His first novel, Principles of Navigation, won the inaugural New Rivers Press Electronic Book Competition. A chapter book for children and adults, The Coconut Crab, was released in 2022 by Green Writers Press.Peter is the recipient of an individual artist's fellowship from the Montana Arts Council and a former Moran artist-in-residence at Yellowstone National Park. For more information about the 2018 Baikal Headwaters Expedition, visit www.baikalheadwaters.org. 

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Praise for Rowing to Baikal

"Rowing to Baikal is an instant classic in the disturbing genre created by people in love with massive ecosystems in the process of being destroyed. Peter Fong’s portrait of the rivers that carry a fifth of Earth’s freshwater to Lake Baikal is both panoramic and intensely personal, stretching from the political nightmares that threaten Baikal to love for the tiny pikas (Little Kings, Peter calls them) that still perch on boulders in the headwaters surveying the beauty and heartache far below. Eighty percent of the world’s rivers are now dammed at stupendous cost to ecological and cultural health. That more dams within a year may decimate this planetary treasure stands in maddening contrast to Peter’s courageous account of his voyage. I love this book, and pray health to its waters."

—David James Duncan, author of The Brothers K and Sun House

There are few more beautiful places on earth than Lake Baikal and its vast surroundings; this account of a noble adventure will leave you with deep impressions of the place and its people, its past and its possible futures. Surely a fifth of the earth’s fresh water deserves your attention!

—Bill McKibben, author of Eaarth and The End of Nature

"Both a rollicking yarn and a moving portrait of a complex, remote place, Rowing to Baikal goes up mountains and down the Selenge River to show us the politics, significance, and beauty of the Mongolian-Russian borderlands. Full of camels, rare fish, and unforgettable people, Fong makes you care for this river and the cultures it nurtures."

—Bathsheba Demuth, author of Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait

"Rowing to Baikal is an engrossing tale told by the intrepid Peter Fong, whose vivid prose carries readers to the farthest ends of the earth, and expands our sense of discovery, responsibility, and interconnectedness—our ken, as it were—as all good stories should."

—Chris Dombrowski, author of The River You Touch

"In Rowing to Baikal, Peter Fong has written a graceful and illuminating account of the Baikal Headwaters Expedition. Fong leads a captivating cast of characters in a search for solutions to the entangled dilemmas of river conservation and energy independence for Mongolia, weaving together ecological observations and a passionate voice for the river’s future."

—Nancy Langston, author of Climate Ghosts and Sustaining Lake Superior

"Rowing to Baikal is a magical story of a scientific expedition through the Selenge River watershed. Peter Fong has picked up the pen from the likes of Peter Matthiessen and Carl Safina. This treasure is a travel narrative, conservation account, and an environmental justice treatise all wrapped into a perfectly paced adventure with kayaks, shamans, vodka, and always, swimming just ahead, the elusive Baikal omul and the Mongolian taimen: two rare fish with climate change and geopolitics nipping at their tails."

—Richard J. King, author of Ahab’s Rolling Sea and The Devil’s Cormorant

"Rowing to Baikal is a contemplative study of the Selenge River and the people and species living along its waters and banks."

—Wendy Hinman, Foreword Reviews

ROWING to BAIKAL

Also by Peter W. Fong

Principles of Navigation (2013)

The Coconut Crab (2022)

PETER W. FONG

ROWING to BAIKAL

Sixty Days on Mongolia’s

Selenge River

Rowing to Baikal:

Sixty Days on Mongolia’s Selenge River

Copyright 2024 by Peter W. Fong

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

For permissions, contact: [e-mail]

Book and cover design by Kevin Breen

Cover image used with permission from Peter W. Fong

Unless otherwise noted by a caption, photographs throughout the book

are courtesy of Peter W. Fong

Quotations from Saving the Sacred Sea: The Power of Civil Society in an Age of Authoritarianism and Globalization, by Kate Pride Brown, copyright © 2018 by Oxford University Press. Reproduced with permission of the Licensor through PLSclear.

Excerpts from Siberian Journey: Down the Amur to the Pacific, 1856–1857, by Perry McDonough Collins, edited by Charles Vevier, reprinted by permission of the University of Wisconsin Press. Copyright © 2011 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System. All rights reserved.

Quotations from A View of the River, by Luna B. Leopold (Harvard University Press), copyright © 1994 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Excerpts from Not Quite Shamans: Spirit Worlds and Political Lives in Northern Mongolia, by Morton Axel Pedersen, copyright © 2011 by Cornell University. Used by permission of the publisher, Cornell University Press.

ISBN: 978-1-957607-22-1

Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request

Manufactured in the United States of America

Published by Latah Books

www.latahbooks.com

Latah Books and the author are grateful to the Wild Salmon Center for their generous support of this project.

International boundary

River

Watershed

Town/City

Contents

Prologue: The Name of the River

Packing the Horses

To the Summit

Establishing Relations

Giving Up the Reins

The Patience of Fishes

Into the Boats

Convection and Translation

Taimen, Large and Small

In the Dark

The View from Town

The Language of Flood

Beyond the Confluence

Trouble at the Bridge

Bedload

By a Dam Site

Changing Temperatures

After Snow

Just in Time

Border Crossing

Russian Hospitality

The Shamans of Ulan-Ude

Into the Delta

Last Day at the Oars

Russification

The Sturgeon’s Muzzle

Cue the Champagne

The Finish Line

Best Possible Outcome

Epilogue: Greater Powers

Acknowledgments

Notes

About the Author

Nature has her proper interest, and he will know what it is,

who believes that every thing has a life of its own, and that

we are all one life.

—Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Prologue: The Name of the River

The Selenge River near Zuunburen, Mongolia.

This is a story of wholes and fractions. Siberia’s Lake Baikal contains one-fifth of the fresh water on the earth’s surface, while two-thirds of its species of plants and animals exist nowhere else. One river provides more than half of the lake’s annual inflows. Without this river and its tributaries, there would be no Baikal as we know it.

Although the whole world reveres Baikal—the planet’s largest single repository of fresh water and a UNESCO World Heritage Site—only a small percentage knows the name of its principal source. The headwaters of this incomparable river arise nearly a thousand miles from the lake, in the far north of Mongolia. The river basin is the site of numerous proposed dams and diversions, including both hydropower projects and schemes to supply water to faraway cities and mines. Its name—the Selenge (or Selenga in Russian)—is said to derive from the Mongolian verb seleh, or to swim. And trying to describe its intrinsic value can sometimes feel like swimming upstream—against a very strong current.

The dangers to the Selenge are not limited to the usual suspects: drought, human migration, and unregulated mining. Instead, the river has become a veritable hostage of global geopolitics, a victim of Mongolia’s legitimate desire for energy independence from Russia and China’s ravenous Belt and Road Initiative.

In 2017, the World Bank placed a temporary freeze on plans for two dams in the Selenge basin. While that decision felt like a victory to both local residents and international activists, the necessary engineering and feasibility studies have already been completed, and these plans could be revived at any time. Someday, perhaps, after careful consideration and committed attempts at risk mitigation, the communities involved will decide that the health of the river is not inconsistent with hydropower development.

And that’s what scares me.

A 2017 U.S. Geological Survey document reported that its authors were unable to find published faunal surveys or specimen records for the [headwaters region] in English, German, or Mongolian. How is it possible, I thought, for us to allow ourselves to know so little about one of the world’s great treasures, to consider its alteration without even becoming aware of what changes might ensue?

The story of this river cannot be told in simple terms or from a single perspective. Like Baikal itself, the Selenge is vast and complicated, a source of national pride and international envoy. It is Mongolia’s most substantial river system by far, draining an area of more than 170,000 square miles—a region larger than the state of California.

Four of the Selenge’s Mongolian tributaries—the Orkhon, the Eg, the Ider, and the Delgermörön—are each longer than the Thames, England’s foremost river. The Orkhon, in fact, is longer than North America’s legendary Yellowstone, a river that I once considered my home waters.

The upper reaches of the Delgermörön, one of the Selenge’s two highest-elevation tributaries, arise in a place known for its harsh weather and unpredictable inhabitants. The Delger flows through a strictly protected zone, in some sections forming a politically sensitive boundary between Russia and Mongolia. Over one particularly beautiful seventy-mile stretch, the river is flanked by an ever-changing succession of steep canyon walls—a landscape as dramatic as any in Montana.

During my pre-expedition research, I’d discovered at least two parties that had descended the mainstem of the Selenge, though neither chose the Delger for a launching point. One expedition started on the Ider and was chronicled by a former National Geographic Adventurer of the Year, Colin Angus; his book about the journey is titled Lost in Mongolia: Rafting the World’s Last Unchallenged River. The other began on the Eg and was led by Rutgers professor Olaf Jensen, a cofounder of the Mongolian-American Aquatic Ecology Research Initiative.

Traveling in an inflatable boat equipped with a small outboard motor, Olaf’s team sometimes covered more than sixty miles in a day, completing the trip in just a few weeks. He and I agreed that our expedition, while restricting ourselves to non-motorized boats, would attempt to replicate two of their data sets: the first a log of all the wild mammals encountered along the river; the next an accounting of all the anglers, including date, time, location, and type of gear in use (fly, spinning, or handline).

Our other objectives would be threefold: collect baseline data on aquatic fauna, including invertebrates and fish; survey residents of riverbank communities regarding watershed health and ecological awareness; and draw international attention to a remote and beautiful landscape that has been stewarded by countless generations of nomadic herders. Along the way, the team would work to foster a common understanding of the issues that confront the river and its most charismatic species of fish, the taimen. This long-lived and predatory member of the trout and salmon family can reach lengths of five feet or more.

The taimen is listed as an endangered species both in Mongolia and in Russia’s neighboring region of Buryatia. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the taimen has lost nearly 20 percent of its range in Mongolia while its population has declined an estimated 50 percent. The upper tributaries of the Selenge are considered sanctuaries for taimen in Mongolia, and DNA evidence has suggested that the Selenge strain is genetically distinct from that which inhabits the Amur River tributaries to the east. More than three-fourths of the published research on taimen in Mongolia has been conducted in this gravely threatened watershed.

*****

Before the 1960s, there was only sporadic concern for Baikal as a fragile treasure. According to at least one historian, the change can be traced to a 1958 event in Irkutsk: the Conference on the Development of Productive Forces of Eastern Siberia. Here, the chief engineer of a hydrological planning commission, N. A. Grigorovich, proposed that the lake’s level be lowered—through the deployment of a quantity of explosives comparable to an atomic bomb—a full five meters, or more than sixteen feet. Such bold action, he argued, would substantially increase the region’s hydroelectric capacity. We should take from Baikal not only its fish, Grigorovich declared, not only its beauty, but also its power. The resulting backlash from scientists, writers, and bureaucrats helped to launch a preservation movement that continues—with occasional successes and many failures—to this day.

Recalling this story, I can’t help but observe that it was a crazy vision of Baikal as an explosively enhanced generator of electricity—a lunatic idea that was, thankfully, never realized—which mobilized a generation of Soviet citizens to action against often insurmountable odds. Could a similar mechanism be at work even now in a neighboring country, along the banks of the Selenge and its tributaries? Here I am reminded of a traditional Mongolian riddle, this one regarding the wind: Although he has no feet and hands, he opened the door.

1: Packing the Horses

The Baikal Headwaters Expedition on

the slopes of Mount Belchir.

At sunrise the expedition meets outside the headquarters of the Ulaan Taiga Strictly Protected Area. For these first weeks of the journey, there will be seven of us: one Russian, three Americans, and three Mongolians. Because we are standing at an elevation of more than five thousand feet, not far from the border with Siberia, the mid-August grass is the color of autumn and crisp with frost. On the trunk of a nearby larch tree hangs the massive skull and horns of a wild Mongolian mountain sheep, or argali. As the largest wild sheep in the world, argali are a favored target of trophy hunters, but this one—Tumursukh tells us—died of old age in the Ulaan Taiga.

Tumursukh is the protected area’s superintendent, one of a five-person team who will serve as our guides to the summit of Mount Belchir, whose slopes bear the source of the Delgermörön River, the principal tributary of the Selenge. This seldom-visited region is remote by any accounting. Ichthyologist Mikhail Skopets, for example, has arrived via a long flight from Khabarovsk to Irkutsk, then a full-day train ride from Irkutsk to Mongolia’s capital, Ulaanbaatar (popularly abbreviated as UB), followed by a shorter flight from UB to Mörön, and finally a four-hour drive to park headquarters in Ulaan-Uul.

The word ulaan in Mongolian translates as red, while uul means lake. According to a sociological study of shamanism in northern Mongolia, Ulaan-Uul in the late 1990s was notorious for its drunken violence. In fact, the local doctor considered his village the most alcoholic, most violent, and most impoverished in the entire country. The author suspects that this reputation arose partly from the anxieties provoked by the end of socialism, and partly from the influence of restless shamanic spirits. In the words of a local hunter, We are different because nature is different here. We receive many things from it—too many different things—and this makes our minds powerful and strange.

The headwaters region is commonly known as the Darhad Depression. The first part of the name comes from the word darhan, which can mean something that is sacred, protected, exempted, or an area set aside for religious reasons. The second part has something to do with geology rather than psychology: here the term depression refers to the glacial basin that lies between the Ulaan Taiga and the next mountain range to the east.

Before the 1924 establishment of the Mongolian socialist state, the Darhad area was a stronghold of Tibetan Buddhism as well as local shamanic traditions. Followers of both faiths suffered under socialism until the 1990 democratic revolution resulted in a repeal of the ban on public religious activities.

Among Mongolians from other regions, Darhad people have developed an unusual reputation. As one local man told the sociologist, There are two special things about Darhads: our ability to joke and our ability to curse.

Although the locals have been nothing but kind to us during our brief stay, we will leave Ulaan-Uul this morning, driving north and west over unpaved tracks to a trailhead about twenty-five miles away. There we will reunite with two of the park staff and fourteen horses, who departed from the village on the previous day.

After identifying the origins of the watershed, our original plan was to follow that trickle downhill, on foot or by horse, with camels to carry the gear. Once the river became navigable, we would proceed by kayak, then eventually switch to inflatable drift boats. After discussions with Tumursukh and others, however, it has become apparent that the authorities in UB will not allow us anywhere within five kilometers—about three miles—of the Russian border. Since the river closely accompanies the border for more than ten miles, this means that we must visit the uppermost headwaters on foot, then detour around the most politically sensitive territory and approach the first navigable section from the protected area’s southern boundary.

As our Land Cruiser thumps and judders across the landscape, I try to participate in the conversations occurring behind me, in the back seat. On the left is Lanie Galland, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Nevada, Reno whose conference presentation on the genetics of taimen, the world’s largest trout, was delivered at an American Fisheries Society special symposium. In the middle is Mikhail Skopets, henceforth Misha, formerly of Russia’s Institute of Biological Problems of the North. And on the right, Guido Rahr IV, who for the past six weeks has been serving as an intern for my longtime employer, Mongolia River Outfitters, or MRO.

And yet, despite the newness of our acquaintance and the intense interest I have in their shared impressions of Mongolia, my mind begins to wander. At long last, we are approaching within a day’s journey of the headwaters of the Delgermörön—a region that I have daydreamed about for years, despite the rumors of impenetrable bogs and irrepressible mosquitoes. From the satellite images, it looks to be starkly beautiful: gray rock, blue lakes, the river gathering volume like a sapling, newly rooted.

But instead of beauty, my thoughts are turning to logistics. The Delger joins the Ider River about 250 miles (400 kilometers) from its headwaters to form the Selenge proper. The Selenge then meanders almost twice that distance (800 kilometers) across northern Mongolia, gathering additional tributaries until it becomes a watercourse of immense proportions, where winds out of the Siberian north are powerful enough to blow unwary boaters back upstream. It crosses the Russian border near the town of Naushki, then proceeds nearly another 200 miles (more than 300 kilometers) north to Lake Baikal, where it forms the world’s largest freshwater river delta, partly protected by the Kabansky Nature Preserve.

This is the math I do in my head: 1,500 divided by 25 equals 60. That is the length of the Selenge and the Delger in kilometers, divided by an anticipated average distance per day, meaning that after sixty days, more or less, I will be rowing an inflatable boat atop the biggest body of fresh water on the planet.

Because sixty days is only two months, which does not seem long at all, I redo the arithmetic, starting at the river’s headwaters in the Ulaan Taiga, then continuing downhill to that unknown place where the initial trickle will gather first into a brook and eventually become a stream. At this point in my calculations, the expedition should be barely a week old, though no doubt our forced reliance on horses and camels will make it feel like a much longer span (at least to me). Seven days, perhaps, before we can climb into the boats, before the journey becomes all riffles and pools, with no dams and very few bridges.

But here’s another bit of math: Of the river’s 1,500 meandering kilometers, I am familiar only with about 10 percent, a mere hundred miles or so. By that reckoning, embarking on this expedition from Mongolia to Siberia is akin to setting out on the road from New York to St. Louis and only knowing the way to the Poconos. Or more fittingly—due to the scarcity of English speakers and the presence of an international border—departing from Paris for Budapest and only knowing the route to Reims.

That is, it would be like either of those, if we were riding bicycles instead of rowing boats, along a route liberally populated with restaurants, hotels, and other travelers’ conveniences. But we are not—and for that I am grateful.

Instead of sampling truck-stop barbecue or roadside cafés, we will collect data on, among other things, water quality, aquatic insect populations, and taimen genetics. And my obsessive calculations? A symptom, perhaps, of both anticipation and anxiety, like a rookie point guard mentally rehearsing plays before tip-off, or a teacher counting heads before a school field trip.

*****

After our group catches up to the horses, the going gets truly rugged. I try to video the first incident that requires towropes and pulling, but my phone reports that media cannot be captured, whatever that means. Part of the route follows the Mungarag River, boulder-strewn in some places, a meadow stream in others. Our progress is so slow that the horses often pass us. We clamber out of the cars in the worst spots: water crossings where the track disappears into bogs and rills, some a foot deep.

When the vehicles can go no farther, Tumursukh and Bassan, a ranger, pack the horses using handmade leather bags and a motley assortment of straps, bracing a foot or knee against the loads to tighten them. I sit on a pile of blankets in the warm sun, listening to the back and forth of voices. The wind is cool and the air clear. Far to the east, a tattered curtain of rain drapes the high peaks of another protected area under Tumursukh’s supervision, the Horidol Saridag.

We have budgeted only two horses for gear, as all riders will wear their own packs, but the loads require three. Someone must walk and I volunteer, eager to avoid the saddle. Tumursukh only smiles.

The first and third pack animals require a hobble before they will acquiesce to their burdens, but the second submits without struggle. The drivers, who will stay behind with the vehicles, teasingly predict rain tomorrow, then proceed to discuss the meagerness of rations. A single loaf of bread for two days, complains one driver to the other. On the first day, I will only smell it.

I pull out my notebook to record this nugget, then hastily scribble a few overheard snippets from Misha. His reputation among anglers and scientists invokes action heroes like Indiana Jones, but to my ear the resemblance is closer to a stand-up comedian—say, George Carlin: My stomach thinks my throat has been cut. A human can survive without fishing but why risk it? Your elbow is close, yet you cannot bite it.

*****

Mongolian horses are short and stocky, nothing like the quarter horses and paso finos that I knew and avoided in my youth. I’ve had some relatively pleasant experiences aboard them, despite the unfamiliar Russian-made saddles typically imposed on foreigners, but have yet to feel actually comfortable on horseback.

In Mongolia, where horses are an integral part of nomadic life, admitting to a fear of riding can provoke pity and incredulity. Nevertheless, I repeat my preference for walking—in vain. Though I technically know that you should always approach a Mongolian horse from the left side, I somehow find myself standing on its right, whereupon Tumursukh patiently ushers me to the correct position.

I watch as all the others climb aboard with relative ease and confidence: Pujee, the expedition’s cook, who I have known and liked for years; her son Enkhtuvshin, himself a father of three; Soyoloo, a co-worker at MRO since he was a teenager, pressed into emergency service as a translator; Guido, who is not yet twenty years old; Misha, who is past sixty; and Lanie who, after somehow managing to adjust the stirrups to her long legs, christens her bourbon-colored mount with the name Whiskey.

My horse is a paint with a shorn mane. He has a quick smooth gait that he deploys at rare intervals, but his default is a dawdling walk that leaves the two of us behind all the others—even Bassan, who is splashing across the boggy ground on his own two feet.

When given his head, my horse prefers a jouncing trot that defies all my attempts to post, even to stand. I do my best to sit properly, but the stirrups are too short, the saddle too small and too hard, with exposed steel fore and aft. I try adjusting the position of my hands, of the reins, of my knees, calves, and thighs—anything to encourage the continuation of that comfortable gait—but I don’t seem to possess the right combination of strength, balance, and gross motor skills.

When we reach our campsite, among the trees on a rocky bench above the outlet of a shallow lake, I wait for one of the rangers to take the reins. Once out of the saddle, I can hardly stand. I would’ve said that my thighs had been doing most of the work, but it’s my knees that feel both stiff and weak, as if they’ve been engaged in strenuous effort for a full marathon. The GPS says 6.6 miles from the trailhead, but my knees say that distance is sadly underestimated.

After lighting a fire, Tumursukh brews a strong concoction from a bag of mixed leaves and stems. Taiga tea, he calls it, all the ingredients harvested locally. It tastes very good: fortifying, almost meaty, though perhaps that’s just my imagination, as next to him on the ground sit a bag of dried meat and a container of butter mixed with flour and sugar.

Once the tea has been consumed, Tumursukh uses the same pot, hung on a stick over the coals, to make a version of soup with dried mushrooms as the principal ingredient. This constitutes dinner for the park staff, while Pujee serves the rest of us a lettuce salad, sliced white bread, and a stew of meat, potatoes, carrots, and noodles.

Some of the crew go off foraging in the twilight and return with currants and blueberries. Before long I am foraging too, down in the valley bottom, a relatively level place studded with gray boulders and low bushes hung with dark fruit.

2: To the Summit

Lanie and Soyoloo at the summit of Mount Belchir.

We breakfast early and mount the horses soon after, riding out along the lakeshore, through head-high brush, across muddy rivulets that drain the spongy hillside.

The park’s team of five people includes three men and two women. All are more comfortable in the saddle than me, more knowledgeable about the local flora and fauna, and will prove faster over Mount Belchir’s varied terrain. Tumursukh, whose name translates literally as Iron Axe, is forty-nine and has been working in conservation since his teens. His assistant, Davaatseren, though slight of build, is sure-footed and tireless. Although she wears her round glasses and shy demeanor like camouflage, neither can hide her enthusiasm for the mountain. It is unbelievably beautiful there, she says. The two rangers, Batzaya and Bassan, are both younger than forty and very fit. The latter will demonstrate a particular concern for my welfare, sometimes showing me exactly where I should place my feet on the climb up. (He specializes in logistics.) The second woman is Lhagvajav, her hair shorter than mine and not nearly as gray. When she was polishing her boots this morning, she would say only that she is an employee, though I know she works at park headquarters, sharing an office with Bassan. I don’t dare to ask her age.

Misha is wearing rubber hip boots, rolled down to his calves, with a walking stick strapped across his rucksack like a wizard’s fighting staff. I don’t know whether to be anxious or in awe, because I’m wearing running shoes. Of my four pairs of footwear—the other three include sandals, mud boots, and wading boots—these seemed the most practical. They’ve covered many miles on both trail and pavement, they’re comfortable, and—most important to me—the soles are worn nearly flat and mostly smooth, meaning that they slide easily into and out of the stirrups.

Mongolian horses are not petted or fed in the manner of North American horses, but I’ve been scratching mine behind the ears occasionally since we met. He’s a strange beast, seldom drinking when the other horses do, and rarely reaching down for a mouthful of green grass. Instead, he grabs for dry willow or thorny caragana.

Lanie’s horse, Whiskey, is twenty-two years old. The first time this horse approached the mountain was