All through the endless grassy sea of the rolling steppe country I contemplated what brought me to Mongolia.
Just after my soulmate died in 2020, Australia’s covid lockdown and border closures kicked in. In those dark dog days when I was confined alone to a house that suffocated and threatened my very sanity, one word emerged in the darkness: Mongolia.
I can’t explain where this came from. It just arose and didn’t go away. During the crazy hardships and challenges of the next few years, where I was sure that either I or the world had gone mad, possibly both, “Mongolia” arose as a whisper on every breeze.
Two years later when the borders finally opened, my Kiwi family came to Australia for the first time since before hubby died. They stayed with me for two or three days before heading interstate, where I was to join them shortly. First Brisbane flooded and I couldn’t leave. Then Northern NSW was totally hammered. Not only were all three of my adult children and their families reunited, I was once again cut off and alone. The final blow fell when we lost all forms of communication.
My heart was trashed all over again. In commiseration with myself, I turned to my personal brand of therapy – ordering Lonely Planet guidebooks. If my own world was continually denied me, I would just bugger off somewhere else.
Which brought me to Mongolia, three years and four months after those bleak early days.
What was the drawcard? To breathe the air of never-ending openness, with no reminders of a past that was finished too soon or a future that was broken. To escape to a land that was different, to tap into an alternate reality; where my spirit could roam free from the pain that is raw grief.
To cry into a strange wind.
Now that I am here, the need to let a unfamiliar wind dry my tears has passed.
As the first rays of the sun caress the mountains and sand dunes, changing colours as the day unfolds, I am embraced by beauty.
The drumming of horses’ hooves as they race across the steppe returned to me what I thought was gone forever – my heart’s ability to sing. The broad wings of eagles gliding on the thermals reminded my spirit of its own love of soaring.
This land which has endured its own harsh realities, survived life that comes and goes – often brutally, has restored a sense of peace in me.
Ironic, for a country that produced one of the greatest warriors and conquerors the world has known.
