LIFE BY THE HORNS: Our Hairy, Humpy, Horny Human Future, And The Way Yak (FIELD NOTES - 2026)
- Dr. Rob Williams
- Dec 1, 2025
- 14 min read
Updated: Dec 4, 2025
Note: The Field Notes for emerging book LIFE BY THE HORNS is complete. As always, your questions, comments and good ideas are welcome via contact AT doctorrobwilliams DOT com. Yak to the Future, we go!
Autumn 2025: " Merci Beaucoup" to Rosula Blanc for Suisse Yak Trekking and Alps Yak Wrangling - Essays and Reflections from Dr. Rob Williams and son Theron Williams for your reading enjoyment.
Winter 2025: Thanks to the "Yakademics" for hosting me on their yak-focused podcast.
Autumn 2024: Thanks to Vermont neighbor Amy Hornblas for hosting me on WMRW radio to explore "inspired yakking" for kids of all ages.
Image courtesy National Geographic.
SUBTITLE: What We Can Learn From The Yak
Table Of Contents (TOC)
ROB WILLIAMS, PH.D.
"The farther we get from Nature, the sicker we Become."
James Nestor, Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art
“The most important gift is to reclaim the adaptive nature of our species.”
Tyson Yunkaporta, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save The World
“The experience of being lost is uniquely human.”
MR O’Connor, Wayfinding: The Science And Mystery of How Humans Navigate The World
"Surely, yaks are the answer."
Michel Pessel, Mustang - The Forbidden Kingdom: Exploring A Lost Himalayan Land
"We have just recently started to apprehend the incredible richness and otherness of nonhuman being and the impossibility of surviving a man-made world."
Paul Shepard, Where We Belong
PREFACE/ #YLM
Welcome to a unique 21st century moment for we sapiens as a species. Beyond US COVIDtopian politics is what the global mainstream environmental movement dubs the “Age of the Anthropocene.” Dig deeper. We Humans are being “herded” via a 4th Industrial Revolution “Great Reset” towards a Transhumanist future, a so-called “Singularity” in which we are being “encouraged” to merge our human minds and bodies with digitally networked machine technology. But there is another Path we may choose for ourselves as a species. Life By The Horns. The Yak Way. Let US consult this "Sexy Beast." What can we learn from the Yak - this hairy, hump’y, horn’y creature - about being more fully Human in this pivotal evolutionary moment for we sapiens? #YakLivesMatter.
INTRODUCTION/Yak Shaving: Approaching This “Sexy Beast”
“Yak shaving” defined? Here goes. “What you are doing when you're doing some stupid, fiddly little task that bears no obvious relationship to what you're supposed to be working on, but yet a chain of twelve causal relations then links what you're doing to the original meta-task.” In short, “’yak shaving’ is all that stuff that you need to do to solve some problem.” My problem? How to make sense of this “sexy beast” known as the yak. The solution? Write a book. But first! Import yaks to Vermont (2008), run a yak farm (2008-2013), crowdfund and operate a seasonal grass-fed yak meat food cart (2013-Present), and stage a series of global research trips to see yaks in action and interview yakkers (2008-Present). The introduction concludes with a mysterious midnight encounter during May 2016 with yaks in Nepal’s remote and mountainous Manaslu region, a catalyst for me to begin writing Life By The Horns.
Can we homo sapiens “hack the yak”? If so, what does the yak have to teach us? And are yaks elusive by evolutionary design? This chapter frames these three central yak-focused questions, and introduces the reader to two pioneering 20th century scientists - Jacob von Uexill and Paul Shepard - whose ground-breaking work help inform this book’s approach to “yak hacking.” The chapter is framed by Mongolia’s Altai petroglyph yak etching discoveries at beginning, and the 21st century delivery of 5G infrastructure via yak back to the top of Mt Everest, the world’s highest peak, at end. We 21st century sapiens living in the Age of the Anthropocene have much to learn from bos grunniens. Let’s “hack the yak!”
Yaks “go wild.” Yaks display their evolutionary adaptations in both bodies and behaviors, carrying 8,000 years of evolution for surviving and thriving in our planet’s most inhospitable environments. Yak adaptability becomes a metaphor for human adaptability - what can we learn as sapiens from 8,000 years of yak evolution? To answer this question, this chapter explores my family’s “wild” idea to import the first yaks (“taking stock”) into Vermont, and then introduces the reader to yaks through an “on farm” seasonal descriptive approach that combines an analysis of yak characteristics and behavior with the story of our yak herd in Vermont’s Mad River Valley, using human ecologist Paul Shephard’s “we modern sapiens are still Pleistocene (“go wild”) beings” concept as a bridge connecting grunniens and sapiens. We 21st century sapiens living in the Age of the Anthropocene might learn from yaks’ deep desire to “go wild!”
Yaks “know place.” They express this through their bos grunniens’ evolutionary and biological adaptations, This chapter takes the reader to the Himalayan Plateau, the yak’s evolutionary birthplace, sketching the yak’s emergence from ancient auroch to bos mutus (the wild yak) to bos grunniens (the domestic “grunting ox”), moving from yaks’ ancient Eurasian origins (China, Tibet, Mongolia, India, and Nepal) to yaks’ more modern expansion into Europe and North America (Canada and the United States). The myth’ing links of yakking cultures present us with yak-rich prehistoric alternatives to linear history – how did our Pleistocene ancestors and their pastoral yakking descendants hunt, gather, forage and deploy themselves across and through “place”? We 21stcentury sapiens living in the Age of the Anthropocene might learn from yaks’ deep desire to “know place!”
Yaks “live light.” Yaks are thousand plus pound ungulates built for ease of movement across the world’s most challenging terrain, and they dislike fences, barns, and borders that present obstacles to their mobility. Other than their hides, yaks take nothing with them on their journeys. A 2017 adventure to the yak-rich country of light-living Mongolian nomads provides the springboard for exploring yak hair made high end fashion and outdoor adventure gear companies (London based Khunu.com and Hong Kong based Kora.com), and frames how yaks serve as cross-cultural connectors across borders for the Chinese and Mongolian peoples. China contains the vast majority of the world’s yak population, while Mongolia has a long love affair with the yak, from before Genghis Khan to the present. And yet, China and Mongolia approach their historical and cultural relationship to yaks in very different ways. China is one of the oldest “farmer power” civilizations, while Mongolia remains a semi-nomadic culture where yaks roam more freely. We 21st century sapiens living in the Age of the Anthropocene often surround ourselves with Things, but yaks remind us that “living light” brings advantages and opportunities. We 21st century sapiens living in the Age of the Anthropocene might learn from yaks’ deep desire to “live light!” We’ll meet entrepreneurial businesses who are working with Tibetan Plateau transhumant yakking communities to source yak fiber and convert it into high-end yak products – sweaters, scarves, and outdoor/technical gear - for the global marketplace, featuring the cross-cultural entrepreneurs running US Sherpa (Nepal-Vermont), Kora (Colorado), Khunu (England), and Norlha (Tibet).
Yaks “free range.” This chapter introduces the reader to the US yakking community, exploring the creation of two competing US yak trade groups – IYAK and US YAK – and their contentious debate around what makes a yak a “yak.” Travel to Loveland, Colorado and a 2018 gathering of US YAKkers, herded together to share their yak wisdom, meet each other’s bos grunniens, learn the latest in yak husbandry and genetics, and enjoy each other’s company. We 21st century sapiens living in the Age of the Anthropocene might learn from yaks’ deep desire to “free range!”
Yaks “get high.” The yak is built to thrive at altitude, and yaks have worked in close concert with high mountain transhumant communities - nomadic yak pastoralists like the sherpa and the Drokpa - for centuries. This chapter explores the evolving relationship between yaks and human yakkers, beginning with the origins of yak-based transhumant communities on the Tibetan Plateau and concluding with the modern Drokpa nomads and their 21st century challenges ahead. Along the way, we explore hormesis, flow, the Wim Hof Method’s promotion of cold-water immersion and hypoxic breath work, and the recent discovery of the Denisovans’ and the high altitude EPAS1 gene shared by both sherpas and yaks. We 21st century sapiens living in the Age of the Anthropocene might learn from yaks’ deep desire to “get high!”
Yaks “grow grassy.” Grass-fed yak beef is our planet’s “greenest red beef,” for two reasons: 1) yaks consume less pasture grass per acre than any other bovine, and 2) yak meat is higher in protein and omega 3s, and lower in fat, than any other beef option. This chapter spotlights 21st century debates about global meat consumption, using the author’s Vermont’s YakItToMe! mobile BBQ food wagon as a springboard to explore the global terroir of yak. Rather than rushing into a “post meat” synthetic and chemically-driven Beyond Beef future, we 21st century sapiens living in the Age of the Anthropocene might consider adopting grass-fed yak meat and reincorporating decentralized pastoral beef raising into our 21st century agricultural practices and foodscapes to blunt the negative impacts of the global corporate commercial mono-crop agricultural juggernaut, as well as learning how transhumant cultures incorporate the yak into their decentralized food production systems - “go grassy” and digest the meat of the matter. We 21st century sapiens living in the Age of the Anthropocene might learn from yaks’ deep desire to “grow grassy!”
Yaks “chill out.” The tightly-wound Swiss are Europe’s most organized yak herding network, but Swiss yaks push their human yakkers to “chill out” - and the high mountain Alps landscape is ideal for yaks and the yakkers who work with them. This chapter explores Suisse yak hoffing (“farming”) and the challenges and opportunities for 21st century yakking in central Europe. We visit Suisse yakkers across the country, from central Switzerland’s Berne region near Zurich to the southern Alps. Stops along the way include Daniel Miller, the “Godfather of Suisse yakking,” Rosula Blanc, intrepid yak whisperer and long - distance yak trekker, and nine other yak operations who are all members of the Swiss Yak Federation. We 21st century sapiens living in the Age of the Anthropocene might learn from yaks’ deep desire to “chill out!”
Yaks “be herd.” This chapter uses the phrase “be herd” in two ways - 1) raising one’s voice to speak within a larger community, and 2) participating in like-minded goal-oriented group behavior - and explores how yaks function both as unique individuals and participating social members of their larger herds. This chapter is the second in our three-part US yak trilogy within the book highlight the ongoing continental debate between IYAK (the International Yak Association) and USYAKS (an IYAK splinter group) about the future of yakking in North America, with a focus on the debate about yak genetics and what these profound disagreements reveal about both yaks and yakkers. We 21st century sapiens living in the Age of the Anthropocene might learn from yaks’ deep desire to “be herd!”
Yaks “find frontiers.” Yaks’ ability to cover epic ground, roaming widely across vast expanses of challenging terrain, is legendary in the stories found in global yakking cultures. We 21st century sapiens living in the Age of the Anthropocene have become accustomed to living sedentary lives, more stationary than kinetic. Exhibit A: humans in Alaska appear to spend much of their time in tiny metal wheeled boxes called RVs with ironic names like “Arctic Fox,” “Sun Seeker,” and “Raptor.” Alaska’s “Last Frontier,” comprised of 375 million acres, offers unparalleled opportunities for yaks and humans to roam. Despite Alaska’s immense size and impressive wilderness tracts, however, the yakking community in Alaska is intimate, contained, and just beginning to network together after initial efforts to import yaks for meat and milk failed nearly a century ago. This chapter focuses on Alaska’s yak community, including visits with David McCoy, charismatic founder of 49th State Brewery which serves legendary half pound grass-fed Alaskan yak burgers (Denali and Anchorage); Anchorage’s Alaska Zoo; the Kaspari yak ranch and Delta Meats (Delta Junction, AK); Sunny Hill Yak Ranch (Willow, AK); and Alaska Yak/Circle F Ranch (Kenny Lake, AK) where the Chugach mountains morph north into the Wrangell-St Elias Range, the US’s largest national park. Here, meet a home-schooled family of twelve who tend to Alaska’s largest yak herd. The chapter ends with a modest proposal, modeled after George Catlin’s 19th century idea of a “wilderness park.” To wit: assemble a small “starter” Alaskan yak herd and release them into the Wrangell wilderness, allowing yaks to find frontiers while we track their behavior over time. We 21st century sapiens living in the Age of the Anthropocene might learn from yaks’ deep desire to “find frontiers!”
Yaks “wrangle resilience.” In this chapter the third and final of our US yak trilogy within the book, we travel 6,500 miles to 24 yak farms in 19 states over two weeks during December 2020 to explore how yaks and yakkers are faring in the time of the COVID. Along the way, we talk with yakkers from both US YAK and IYAK about continued attempts to define yak’ness, and the future of the North American yakking community in the time of the Virus. We 21st century sapiens living in the Age of the Anthropocene might learn from yaks’ deep desire to “wrangle resilience!”
Yaks “stay spirited.” Yaks embody a certain swagger – they project a unique yak-like confidence with every fiber of their being. We 21st century sapiens living in the Age of the Anthropocene sometimes seem dispirited - unsure as a species of who we are, where we came from, and where we are going, especially when confronted with the 4th Industrial Revolution’s Transhumanist “Great Reset.” This chapter considers what yaks have to teach us about being geo-spiritually confident as a species even as we acknowledge the impermanence of all things - a “be here now” meditation that explores evolutionary tools and techniques we can adapt when confronting catastrophes, imagined and real, beginning with the 2015 Langtang Valley post-earthquake disaster. We 21st century sapiens living in the Age of the Anthropocene might learn from yaks’ deep desire to “stay spirited!”
CONCLUSION/Yak To The Future - The Way Yak
(An Open Letter from Team Yak to Team Human)
“The animal at the center of our being abides.”
- Paul Shepard
- Thinking Animals: Animals and the Development of Human Intelligence
Hairy, humpy, horny hellos, Team Human!
The Yak here – your four hooved friends - with some future-focused field notes for humanity from our various vantage points - the Altai Mongolian steppe, the high hills you call “the Himalayas,” North America’s Rocky Mountains, the Suisse Alps, and Beyond.
Yak Hacking
As the world’s highest dwelling mammals, we beings you call “yaks” (in your species’ lingua franca), we creatures you taxonomically classify as bos grunniens (the “grunting bovine” - thanks for that), we’ve been observing your development for thousands of years. Yes, you and we have co-domesticated for millennia courtesy of your pastoralist people, but (!) we’ve also kept ourselves semi-wild (bos mutus, as you say) to this day – a hedge against your species’ tendency for, shall we say, assertiveness, even dominance over the rest of us.
Wild at heart, our atavistic nature inspires these ruminations below - what we call “The Way Yak” (TWY). In the spirit of sharing our shaggy wisdom with you homo sapiens, we offer you these TWY field notes, drawn from our umwelt, our biosemiotical journey, how we imagine our own place in this big, beautiful, living, breathing cosmos. Think of these suggestions as a collective “yak hack” from us to you - freely shared, in hopes of being helpful for you humans.
Big Picture
We yak recognize your species seems confused, at a civilizational crossroads.
Your collaborative cleverness, your ingenious nature in reorganizing Nature, your ever-more-powerful technologies, your litany of endless existential concerns: racism, climate change, capitalism, COVID, sexism, AI, and trans everything - transcapitalism, transgenderism, transhumanism – as well your endless list of “isms” and “ologies” – all of these human habits appear to be paralyzing, rather than liberating, you.
Present Moment
We yaks observe your species, and what you might call the “Disease” you collectively embody. You remove yourselves from the Sun and from Nature, you are too sedentary, you sit too much, you immerse yourselves in your screens, you are chronically stressed, you eat soft shitty food, you sleep poorly, and the stories shared in your communities often seem designed to disempower, driven by distraction, division, and danger / fear.
As our Earth’s most influential species, your “Disease” spills over into our lives, as well. You press us into service as beasts of burden to accelerate your unmaking of Nature – witness our carrying of giant 5G tower equipment to the tops of our Earth’s highest Himalayan mountains in 2020. You CRISPR experiment with our genetic destiny – which you politely refer to as “de-extinction” - courtesy of research laboratories like your “Pleistocene Park” in Siberia. We could go on and on – suffice to say, your actions have consequences for us all.
Yak Shaving
If we may say so, you humans excel at “yak shaving,” what the tech-minded among you define as “the act of pursuing a seemingly endless series of small, interconnected tasks that must be completed before you can get to the original, larger goal.” Endlessly lost in the Trees, you forget about the Forest – the living, breathing Kingdom that keeps you, and us, and indeed, all Living Things alive and breathing.
So!
Forgo this funny phrase known as “yak shaving” (you’re welcome, BTW), and keep your eyes on the prize - for a future of healthy, happy humans bodes well for us yaks, and indeed, for all species everywhere in the Realm.
To wit – The Way Yak, in condensed “field notes” summary form.
Go Wild
Spend less time inside – sedentary, sitting, screening – and more time outdoors, Team Human. Nature is our best Teacher, as we yak have come to know. Soak up sun, touch grass, smell rain, taste snow, forest bathe, walk under stars, swim, slow down, and simply be.
Know Place
Going wild means trading “no place” for your place. Inhabit your home – mind, body, spirit – and immerse yourself in where you live, as we yak do, with all of your senses – seeing, smelling, tasting, touching, and most of all, listening.
Live Light
Everything in the universe you need to live light is contained within your mind, your body, and your spirit. Jettison all “things” that do not serve you, and like we yak, live simply, as the old adage goes, so that others might live.
Free Range
Sedentary seated screening runs counter to your beautiful biological design. Like we yak, range, free – expand your mind, move your body, satisfy your spirits, and do so in the company of other creatures – footed, feathered, furred, and finned. We all have so much to teach and learn from each other.
Get High
Climb the mountains and get their good tidings, as one of your kind once said so beautifully. And as you do so, remember, too, that you have the power to bring the mountain to you with every breath, in every moment. We yak know that the view is always worth the challenge, and the journey to the summit is where and when magic is made.
Grow Grassy
We eat one another – sharing our energy - in an endless ebb and flow, an ancient and beautiful biological dance. Fear neither the flesh of the plant nor the animal. All we yak ask? Respect and honor our presence and our contribution to what your species calls “the cycle of life,” and what we yak and most other species observe, simply, as “Reality.”
Chill Out
Relax. Unwind. Slow down. Ruminate. Be.
If you need coaching here, simply observe us yak in daily (non) action.
Be Herd
Recognize that you are at once both an individual creature – powerful beyond measure – and a member of your herd. Raise your voice, speak your mind, share your sense of what seems to be true for you, and remember to listen, too, as you make space for others in your herd to do the same. We yak notice this seems particularly difficult for you right now, fueled by your obsession with your digital devices. Maybe put down the devices, lift up your heads, and look around?
Find Frontiers
Discover daily, as we yak do, what lies beyond you – past the familiar, the habitual, the mundane, the cliché. Like you, we are creatures of habit. As highly mobile creatures, too, we appreciate the power of what is possible when we seek beyond what we already know. Do the same.
Wrangle Resilience
Cultivate daily positive stress by doing something every day that scares you, as one of your kind once provocatively suggested. Your species’ word for this is “hormesis” – voluntary stress regularly applied in a titrated measurable does with recovery – to build resilience (adaptable elasticity) of body, mind, and spirit. You’ll become stronger, and as a result, will your herd. For we yak, this is secret sauce, and how we’ve stay wild all these years.
Stay Spirited
Spirit is fueled by the power of conscious, strategic breathing – and you humans enjoy 20,000 breaths daily. Imagine, as we yak do, that each of your breaths is a gift, potential, opportunity, the chance to steer yourself in whatever directions you decide.
Finale
The fates of we yak and you humans are inextricably bound together.
We are wishing for you only the best – and are cheering you on from our perches in the high hills all over this beautiful living and breathing earthly realm both of our species call “Home.”
We urge you to live life by the horns, following the yak way.
Once you go yak, you may never go back.
Yak to the Future, we go!
With deep affection for you, Team Human.
Love,
The Yak
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