They Say it was a Wrestler...

by Mark

A few days back, my entire workplace got invited to a neighboring soum (pronounced "soam" - equivalent to a US state county) for a lunch party honoring one of the winners of the best products awards from our Trade Fair. They were unable to attend the ceremony and thus felt it was necessary to thank all of us with a meal...since in turn we would be bringing them their various awards. The location reminded me a lot of Eastern Washington (maybe a few more trees), and with it being the middle of autumn everything was changing colors. It was beautiful.

But it was the post-meal adventure that really captured my attention. You have to realize that Mongolia is made up of various mountainous areas and in between these are rather large, incredibly flat valleys. In the middle, I mean dead center, of one of these valleys there is a very large rock.

As you get closer, you realize that it's got to be nearly 50-60 feet tall. And it's not coming from inside the earth, rather it appears to have been placed there by design.

Of course there's a tourist marker giving some information about it's significance in Mongolian history, but the real point of making a trip this far off the main road is to make a wish. The trick is to stand on the West side of this towering rock, find a rock of approximate baseball size, make a wish, and attempt to throw your stone over the giant monument. Most know my baseball background...

So most people stare at this giant slab of mineral matter and wonder just how it may have gotten there. In Washington state most of our large, randomly placed rocks, arrived either by the more natural way of giant glaciers during colder periods in the history of our world...or let's just say by giant trucks. The story here in Mongolia is that a famous wrestler from Arkhangai, to prove his strength, simply picked up the rock from the neighboring mountains and place it in the middle of the open field. So I ask you, how do you think it got there? "They say it was a wrestler." haha.

But then again they said I couldn't throw a stone over their rock...