Petra Rethmann(Rethmann 2001 , Sorin-Chaikov 2003 ). These texts have performed
different functions, ranging from analyses of historical change in in-
digenous regions to supporting official myths about the progress of
the Soviet Union. What they did not do, and were not destined to do,
was to convey a sense, a feel, of living. But that was what I then saw
as my task. To do precisely this: to put into words not only what ani-
mals, fur, and all the other things might mean but how all of this was
experienced, what life in northern Kamchatka was like. That was
what I had set out to do.
Although, among other things, “Skins of Desire” was meant to chal-
lenge conventional Soviet-centered analytical trajectories and inter-
pretations, it was not meant to be heretical. It truly emerged out of
a kind of viscerality that marks living on the land. It was not meant
to provide yet another functional analysis of reindeer husbandry and
herding but rather to convey a sense of presence, of just “being with”
and “being there” (Taussig 1987 ). This, it seems to me, is one of the
hardest things to convey, although this difficulty should not prevent
us from trying. Perhaps it is so difficult because, so far, nobody seems
to have worked out what, really, that notion of “being” is. Some sort
of nothingness, Zen teachers might say. And those most frequently
evoked—Heidegger, Sartre—might agree. For most anthropologists
it goes without saying that “being” is culturally and historically con-
tingent, never simply a given that is always already there. And yet,
in a way, “being” is always already there—perhaps in infinite ways,
but there.
SilenceSilenceSilenceSilenceSilenceIn late January 1992 , I arrived for the first time in Tymlat. We, a local
reindeer herder, Tymlat’s veterinarian, and I, had embarked on this
journey by dog sled because at that time helicopters were no longer
flying, and fuel for snow mobiles was expensive and rare. The night
was freezing, and the journey arduous and long. The snow was al-
most too soft for travel, and our sled continued to sink deeply into
it. The veterinarian loosened the reigns of the dogs and, snow to our
hips, we began to push. Halfway on our way to Tymlat, we stopped
for a couple hours at a place people in the region call piannoe ozero,