Caminante, no hay camino,
se hace camino al andar.
Traveler, there is no road,
the path is made by walking.
- Antonio Machado
Many of the best days of my life have been spent in the saddle.
As a city kid from San Francisco, it feels crazy to say that. I grew up on a hill so steep, it required adult supervision to leave the house. I started navigating the city by bus when I was fourteen. And while the idea of riding horses was always something that intrigued me, it was always just that—an idea.
That was until I was rejected for a Fulbright grant shortly before graduating college. A naive arrogance left me with no backup plan.
A well-timed brunch with a friend of a friend put the idea of working on a dude ranch in Colorado in my mind and a few months later I was shoveling shit, brushing and saddling horses at four in the morning getting chewed out for moving too slowly.
I got quicker quickly, but never in my wildest dreams did I imagine ending up making a living running horses across the mountain plains of western Mongolia.
I’ve spent the last four weeks doing just that. Guiding sixteen wonderfully adventurous humans across Bayan Ölgii on horseback.
Leading tours in Mongolia was never something I planned on making a part of my life. It was born out of necessity in 2024 as I had to try and figure out a way to fund my research here.
I’m so grateful that work was eventually published with National Geographic, but what might surprise you is that that story was all licensed after the fact. I was never on assignment meaning it was always up to me to figure out a way to pay for everything. I had to be really creative, and a little delusional if I’m being honest, to make it happen.
During my first two years of guiding, I was taking things on a year-to-year basis. I wasn’t sure if this was something I wanted to do long-term. That was until I took my first eight-person group to western Mongolia.
Something remarkable happened.
I saw a small community form in front of my eyes.
During the last moments of my most recent tour, I found myself laying in the warm grass after watching my weary travel companions peel themselves off their saddles one last time—they were exhausted. We had braved summertime thunderstorms for two days, the crowns of our heads turned towards the wind in an attempt to avoid the hail pelting our cheeks while lighting struck in the distance.
With my eyes closed, taking in the most beautiful weather we’d experienced all week, I heard one of my guests Andre pose a question to the group;
“When were you most uncomfortable during this trip?”
I loved hearing his question and was deeply moved as I listened to my new circle of friends respond with real intention.
Long, cold days of riding.
A week without showers.
Being offered the cheek meat off a boiled sheep’s head.
Andre expressed his gratitude for the discomfort that had pushed him to better understand a culture that was completely new to him. Everyone was tired, but there was a resounding buoyancy that hadn’t been there a week ago.
I never expected these tours to become such an enriching part of my life. Enriching because I see how positively impactful they are for the people I’ve been bringing here as well as for the communities I’m working with in western Mongolia. I get to be a small part of expanding peoples’ minds ever so slightly all together.
It's an incredible gift.
Right now I’m sitting in a cafe in Ölgii, a tiny city in western Mongolia resting my body, reveling in gratitude after the end of a wildly successful month. I’m mentally drained, but my body feels like it could keep riding for another month. Maybe more. As I look out the window, I’m watching three cows cross the road.
While I’m sure there’s a joke in there somewhere, I’m just enjoying watching this corner of the world go by.
It’s amazing to think that had I gotten the Fulbright the first time I applied, I would have never worked on that dude ranch and leaned to ride.
As I started my research here in 2023, had I been on assignment or gotten some major grant, I may not have had to be creative in the same way.
I might not have ended up guiding these tours.
In so many ways, I’m deeply grateful for how everything keeps working out.
"the path is made by walking."
Or maybe, in this case, by riding.