Snow Leopard: Stories from the Roof of the World

19. Gobi Magic

— 151 — 020 Each journey to the unknown begins by leaving the known. The familiar. The comfortable. Such thoughts filled my mind as I worked through my checklist for a field project in Mongolia. The last two items brought back the uneasy feeling in my stomach: #62—photos of my wife and three small sons, from whom I would be away for several weeks. I culled pictures from family albums to a handful that made me smile and turned to #63: phone my family in Tennessee to check on my father. On my last visit a few months back, Alzheimer’s disease had stolen his memory of me. His condition had not changed; I was wished safe travels. At leaving time, our little “ranch” swirled with mixed emotions. My sons, ages six, three, and one, sensed the change in the normal rhythm of a peaceful world. “Daddy, where is Mongolia?” Daddy, how long will you be gone?” “Daddy, we will miss you.” My wife Annie’s assurance that she and the boys would be fine didn’t assuage the heaviness on my heart. I was averaging one or two fieldtrips a year, having just returned from Pakistan a few months Gobi Magic D o n H u n t e r Mongolia—As foretold, a journey to the desert delivers lively mental and physical stimulation . . . and a touch of magic. D o n H u n t e r — 152 — back. It seems everything in life comes with a price, even the good things. When I first began working internationally there were no kids; ten years later, my family owned my heart but competed with a rare cat for my time. When the kids came along, Annie and I agreed to a three-week limit on my trips, the minimum time to accomplish fieldwork but not the months some colleagues spend away from family. I wasn’t resentful, but, in fact, each trip became harder as I missed seeing my sons grow. As on each trip before, my guilt receded, goaded by an irrepressible, atavistic excitement about striking out on a journey to a new place, remote and faraway. I was aware that my battling emotions were not unique to me. At these times, I wondered where such intense feelings came from. My mind drifted to Homer’s Odyssey and item #32 on my packing list: a good book. I left my known, my familiar, in February, breeding season for the snow leopard, optimum time for capture work. Tom McCarthy had invited me to join him at his research camp in Mongolia’s Gobi Desert. His radio-collared cats had ranged far from where they were collared, making it difficult to follow their movements. Tom and I believed satellite collars would solve the problem, so we each acquired one for his study. It was a grand opportunity for me: hands-on snow leopard studies are as rare as the animal itself. I’m not superstitious, but I noted that my time in Mongolia coincided with Chinese New Year, 1996, the Year of the Rat, promising a time of “lively mental and physical stimulation.” The first hint at such stimulation came in Beijing twenty-four hours later when I learned that my flight to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia’s capital city, had been cancelled: “So sorry Mr. Hunter, big problem, no flights, big problem, so sorry, it New Year, no flights.” The Rat: after considerable physical and mental stimulation, I managed to catch the lone flight to Ulaanbaatar. My host in Mongolia and Tom’s resident science collaborator was Dr. Jachingyn Tserendeleg, head of the Mongolian Association for the Conservation of Nature and Environment, a very active nongovernmental organization. As the first Mongolian to work in the Antarctic and the country’s chief endangered species expert, G o b i M a g i c — 153 — Tserendeleg had earned great renown in Mongolia. I had met him a few years earlier at a snow leopard symposium in Xining, China. This highly accomplished conservationist drew me in, his fame and ego buried beneath genuine calm and confidence. His almond eyes the portals of a sanguine inner being, he was always quick with a contagious, full-faced Mongolian smile. I looked forward to getting to know him better. After a breakfast of sliced meat, cheese, pickles, fruit, toast, and instant coffee presweetened and milked, I walked to Tserendeleg’s apartment building a few hundred...