Explore // Elevate // Evolve
Installment #1 Sam Potter
A Picture is Worth 300 Words // Sam Potter
Journal Entry from my time with the Kazakh Eagle Hunters of Mongolia
The lands here are the kind of beauty that doesn’t ask to be seen. Big and quiet and still; being on a horse is just perfect for it, and the fact that I’m riding alongside the Kazakh eagle hunters of Mongolia and their meter-tall golden eagles is something that hasn’t quite set in yet. We’ve gone up and hunted in the mountains a few times now, and on the ride back from our last hunt I separated myself from the group. I wanted to feel alone in this place for a minute, I also wanted to run my horse, and listen to music. I’m always trying to pair things with my surroundings; books, movies, music. They can complement and even add to my experience, and I have the most perfect playlist for this place, it’s the only thing I want to hear besides Bashkahan and Sidjuk’s (the eagle hunters we’re staying with) hums and trail songs. I’d often try to join in, they’d always get a kick out of that. I also sang Caroline by Colter Wall from time to time as my trial song, they loved that. I can’t sing for shit, but they didn’t mind, music is so much more than a pretty sound. Music can give you a view into another life, another culture, another world. In the Amazon, many stories of past and present were told to us through song, and a few elders even asked me to sing a song from my home to them haha, that made me uncomfortable, but somehow my toneless cracking voice almost complemented the rhythmic clunk of hooves that broke the vast silence of these lands. As I winded down out of the Altai mountains Bob Fudge by Colter came on and our little house came into view. A white, smoking dot, sitting off in the distance amongst rock and ice and golden grass. The lands between home and I were open and empty, the rivers moved slowly and strangely as If not sure which way to go. I looked over my right shoulder to the distant snow-covered mountains, let out a “yewwww”, kicked my horse who I later named sausages, and took off, we were flyin.... it was a good moment.
-Sam Potter