Life in the Wild, Wild East

I think a lot about the pioneers settling the “Wild West.” I am living in a very similar way to those folks, but living with (instead of killing off) the indigenous people. Today is a fine day, about 70 degrees with a pleasant breeze. The horses are hanging out, tails swishing the flies I can hear buzzing around. The calves walk around looking for mischief and have to be shooed away from chewing on the laundry Enhee hung this morning. The old bull is tied to the corral and is bellowing now and then with indignance. I haul two 2-gallon buckets of water from the river up to my ger. I heat the water on the wood stove and then pour it into a small baby bathtub. I secure my door with a rope from the inside and take a sponge bath with a washcloth and soap (not washing my hair, which is much more of a project than I can deal with today). Next I add powdered laundry soap to the water, and take it outside to do my clothes. I’ve developed a good technique after 5 months of doing my laundry by hand and can actually get my clothes clean. Although Enhee sometimes cannot help herself from jumping in to wash a collar or a seam she feels I’ve neglected, stopping dramatically to show me the dirt with a “tsk, tsk” before scrubbing with vigor.

With my clothes through the wash cycle, I use the still-warm water to wash my floor. The floor of my ger is made of a patchwork of old linoleum that is taped together with packaging tape. I sweep it with a small horsehair broom, and use an old piece of a stove as a dustpan. Next I wash the floor with the brown laundry water and an old rag. Now I struggle to carry the heavy tub over to the grass and dump the water. I use a little clean water to clean out the tub, and I’m ready for the rinse cycle. One more bucket of water up from the river, swishing, wringing, swishing, wringing, and the clothes are done. I hang the clothes on the horsehair rope that runs around my ger to hold it together. In the dry warm air and sunshine, it will take about 4 hours for the clothes to finish.

I have gone back in time. I spend most days in the space that could be the 1800s.
I have used some herbal remedies, and refused others. For a sore throat, I drank a bitter herbal concoction instead of drinking urine (either treatment being acceptable to them, and one being highly preferred over the other for me). No matter how often I clean, the dirt and dust blow into my ger. Knives, dishes, and kitchen implements are washed in hot greasy water and then polished with the cleanest rag available, which is sometimes not very clean. There is no refrigerator, so the meat is hung and hacked at for up to a week. Flies and beetles share every space. Everyone here is covered with mosquito bites. We collect and use dung for fuel when the wood pile gets low. There is always dung to shovel, wood to chop, water to haul, food to prepare, animals to milk, milk to make into cheese or butter or khummis or vodka. There is usually time to steal a nap, go for a walk, visit the grandparents, or work on an art project. The night sky is as dark as it would have been one hundred years ago, with the Milky Way running down the center, stars spilling every which way. Family is everything, and neighbors are always there to lend a hand when needed. Bonds are tight. The mother is the center of this stable wheel that turns and keeps things working. The ger offers warmth and shelter. When it is full of people and laughter, it is wonderful to be there. Life, for the most part, is in balance with the surrounding environment.

In some small ways, the future is also here. I write on a netbook computer, talk on a cell phone right from the ger, and can hear the TV piping in media from Russia, China, Korea, and the States. A solar panel powers rechargeable batteries that power the TV and cell phones. Soon, I will go back to my place in the future; with soft beds, hot water, reliable electricity, automobiles, and indoor plumbing. I’ll be returning to a land that aches from disintegrating families, and that is rabidly consuming an unsustainable amount of the world’s resources. The night sky blocked out with light in the cities that are growing closer and closer together. I’ll have 30 kinds of laundry detergent (or any other product) to choose from. The thought of all that freaks me out.

But I miss my people. That is the thread pulling me back to the future. It’s the 500-test fishing line that will haul me across Asia and Europe, flying the kite of my plane to New York and then landing me in the boat of Denver. Flying directly from the 1800s to the future present in the US would give me the bends. I’d be like a deep bottom rock fish brought up too fast, bloated and in shock, gasping for air. Better to be slowly reeled in, different but familiar ways reminding me of my home and place in the future. Re-Westernized when I arrive in New York. Home. From my ger, with the flies buzzing and the chewing of a calf outside my wall, home feels very far away indeed.