Author Description

Nine years after seeing a tiny painting of a shaman on a reindeer in front of a teepee and training in traditional Mongolian medicine, Sas Carey is invited to the Mongolian taiga to access the health of reindeer herders. As a registered nurse trained in traditional Mongolian medicine, this begins a Quaker leading (calling) for her to travel arduous horse paths each year to connect with nomadic reindeer herders. As in the painting, the herders live in urts, teepees, and ride their reindeer. While she assesses health care to create a database, gives vitamins, performs energy healing and teaches public health, the herders share their lives with her. The lines of who is giving and who is receiving become blurred. She is introduced to the sacred healing world of shamanism. Her focus now is to support and preserve the traditional Mongolian nomadic culture. "Motivated by her western medical training to learn traditional Mongolian medicine and committed to humanitarian pursuits by her Quaker roots, her search for medical knowledge turns into a spiritual quest when she is confronted by an ancient shamanic ritual, a dream come to life. Sas finds her own mystical connections from past lives to a country and place that could not be more incongruent to her home in rural Vermont, USA. Sas' written word is up close and personal: one can almost smell the freshly made reindeer milk tea, recline on reindeer hides, and smell the burning or juniper incense." ~~Sanj Altan, President of the Mongol-American Cultural Association after reading the English version