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Reindeer Mushrooms
Mon Jun 13, 2005
Listen in RealAudio 
Hi, I'm Bryan Yeaton for The Weather Notebook. Recently, our correspondent Allan Coukell visited Asia, and talked to some nomadic herders. He wanted to know the weather conditions that prompt them to move camp.
High in the mountains of Mongolia, near the Siberian border is a cluster of teepees – home for 200 nomadic reindeer herders.
(reindeer snorting sound)
The reindeer are gentle and tame. They spend their days grazing in high mountain valleys. At night, the herders bring them in and tether them next to the tents.
(sound of milk squirting into metal pail)
Twice a day, the women milk the deer to make cheese. The people move with the seasons, always following the deer to fresh pastures.
(Bayaraa talking in Mongolian)
Bayaraa is a quiet man in his fifties. He told me how he decides when to move from the high summer pasture to the lower elevation autumn camp.
(Bayaraa up, briefly in Mongolian, then voiceover:) “We leave in the middle of August when the weather is getting colder. At that time of year, all our reindeer go chasing after white mushrooms, and it is difficult to find them.”
The reindeer are more than a source of food to the herders – when it comes time to move, they are also pack animals and saddle mounts. Bayaraa says they are better than horses, because they can walk through deep snow.
Allan Coukell lives in Boston, Massachusetts. The Weather Notebook is a program of the Mount Washington Observatory, supported by Subaru of America. Find us online at www.weathernotebook.org.
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