Thursday, April 17, 2014

A 13-year-old eagle huntress in Mongolia


A friend shared this photographic story by photographer and travel writer Asher Svidensky, and I think it is magnificent. Ashol-Pan may be the only girl apprentice using eagles for hunting in 2000 years. She frees the birds to find their prey. There is so much that is astonishing here. The distance and heights traveled. The beauty and freedom of the eagles aiding humans. The vistas.The evolution of tradition. The photographs. Something in me soars with this!

Read and see the other photographs here: BBC's "A 13-year-old eagle huntress in Mongolia"

photo by travel writer and photographer Asher Svidensky

9 comments:

  1. you're right. i don't know how to speak about it. i thought it was a painting. actually, i took for granted that it was and in this way it was easily dismissed as man's fantasy. but it is real. her smile is real. the eagle's flight is real and it's returned flight to her even though we can't see it is real too. and yes, the incredible world around them is real also. holy holy))))

    and what would we do for our food? i heard just a week ago that one of the major manufacturing plants in canada was discovered to be cooking deformed chicks alive by accident in a process which was supposed to euthanize them in a humane way. also, i can't get free from my mind a video my daughter showed me of men working in a facility that processed pork and how many workers on the floor brutally thrashed piglets to their deaths. i don't tell you this to be cruel. i tell you this because we participate in something that is unnecessarily cruel. despite the girl's smile there is death in this photograph too but not the kind of death we participate in.

    xo
    erin

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    1. Erin, it is right that you share and compare the inhumane treatment of animals and other fellow beings as we in the industrial world gather and prepare food. I have a holy fear that these people will lose their tradition as they are exposed to Western ways. But wouldn't it be the most brilliant thing if pockets of peoples were to hold such traditions even in the face of the greed of multinational corporations?

      Do those who do what they do in the facilities you mention do so because they lack the deep and strong bond of tradition passed down from generations to treat the planet and its inhabitants with respect?

      Did you watch the clip of one of the boys hunting? Amazing. Tradition has it that the eagle gets to eat the lungs. The Kazakhs use the fox coat for clothing.

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    2. ruth, i hadn't seen the links earlier. ohmygod, i don't know how to think any more. i feel like crying. all aspects of the story - i feel like crying.

      and i want to say yes to you. i want to say, yes, it would be amazing if pockets of peoples were to hold such traditions because i want to agree with you AND i want for people to hold their traditions, but ruth, we need more than pockets. pockets will be undone or obliterated with the steamrolling of progress. (look how the group lights up at the laptop and the images! and why not! it is intriguing to see such things but it is a door that opens and by god, we walk directly to our ruin each time inevitably with the insertion of luxury and distance.) the only real answer lies in an absolute paradigm shift. absolute. absolute. and the shift must be back to how these people are living now! this is the true progress! never in my life will i have progressed so far that i might touch an eagle and that we might work together to obtain food for each of us, just enough, just enough))))

      (i've not seen any video yet. i go back tomorrow when i can manage to take in more.)

      xo
      erin

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    3. I agree completely, Erin. It will take more than pockets. And I felt the same twinge seeing the lit faces around the laptop. It will take a great will of those with the power to make the shift. I see it happening too late (it's already too late, we are plunging so fast). But I don't want to let go of hope. I don't know how.

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  2. What a stunning and interesting photo essay. There is a purity in the face of this young huntress that takes my breath away, and the bonding between the huntress and her eagle is palpable. This essay also reminded me of something I observed frequently when I cycled through China in the eighties. The Chinese engage in cormorant fishing. They release a tethered cormorant from their small boats and allow it to dive for fish. The fish cannot be swallowed, however, because the tether around the cormorant's neck is restrictive. The fisherman simply reel the cormorant in, take the fish, provide a small reward to the bird, and start the process over again.

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    1. George! You cycled through China!? This is something I did not know about you. Extraordinary! And you bring this memory here of the cormorant fishing. I have simply never known of these methods of hunting and fishing. I was ignorant that falconry was anything but an aristocratic practice similar to fox hunts on horseback. These discoveries are beautiful!

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  3. I'm left speechless. The out-of-time-and-place surreal feeling I get when I try to take this instant photographed here. What a world she inhabits; and how is it different and like the one I inhabit. Don't we risk life and limb all around us to make a living, to maintain traditions that have fed us? We've just had a town's small upheaval here in a place with just four hundred plus voters, put down only by a margin of eleven votes. The issue some fishermen rejecting or wanting to reject what marine scientists want to do with ocean reserves and fishing regulations.

    On another note, the side poem, Caravanserai takes me away too; to places beyond my horizons, asking the same questions...

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    1. Rosaria, this disconnect in your locality, between those making a living by fishing and and scientists perhaps trying to regulate the fish population, I guess it has always been this way and always will be. And yet there are populations where intuition and nature's rhythms are followed in ways that make so much more sense. In fact, this is the whole purpose of this blog, to discover the origins of life along the Silk Road and try to understand more of our human story through these stories and histories.

      I was especially moved by the interview clip between Dan Damon and Asher Svidensky, in which Svidensky said that 60-70% of the education people in this part of the world are female. In spite of my uneducated views of Genghis Khan (that he was no more than a ruthless, bloodthirsty conqueror), women have always been treated in a more equal way there than in many parts of the world.

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  4. When I was in Mongolia a few years ago, I got to hold one of the eagles used for hunting. It was a big bird, and beautiful.

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Think of this box as an oasis, a caravanserai where we're having a conversation. :)