Description
When Stephen Bodio was a young boy in the early fifties he saw an image in National Geographic which became forever etched in his mind: It was a photograph of a Kazakh nomad, dressed in a long coat and wearing a fur hat, holding a huge eagle on his fist. Thus began his fascination with East Asia and with the culture that hunts, not eagles, but with eagles. Mongolia, a vast country located between Siberia and China and little known to outsiders, was long under Soviet domination and inaccessible to westerners. When it became independent in 1990, Bodio began planning a pilgrimage to see if the eagle hunters of “The Picture” had survived. A lifelong falconer himself, he longed to visit the birth place of falconry and observe the traditions that had survived intact through the ages. His fantasy was realized when he traveled independently to the westernmost region of Mongolia and spent months with the people and birds of his dreams. In Eagle Dreams, Bodio gives life to his dreams and the people, landscapes, and animals of Mongolia that have become part of his soul.
