Sheridan King: Grande Dame of Tuolomne

Sheridan King’s life has been a two-act play, divided in the middle by 1983, the year she took a summer job leading trail rides in Yosemite National Park.

Until then, King had traveled the U.S. working a variety of jobs — school…

25 Years After the USSR

Television sets manufactured in the USSR would sometimes spontaneously explode. It’s hard to say exactly what the…

Photo Essay: Dacha Season Kicks Off in the Russian Countryside

Tips for Fellowship Applicants

This time last September, I sat in my home office back in Missoula, Montana, having a tiny panic attack. The deadline for the Fulbright National Geographic Digital Storytelling Fellowship was three weeks away. My cluttered desk summed up the state of my application…

Russian Vegetarian Cooking Shines During Lent

During the Russian spring, the sun transforms into a pancake.

The Cowboy Trade Builds a Bridge of Friendship Between a Russian and an American

Yury Rybakov hadn’t ridden a horse before. Nor had he herded cattle or thrown a lariat. But he had the cowboy bug and wanted me to teach him a thing or two.

(Part Two) The Smell of the Slaughterhouse

For the first half of my life, I was squeamish about blood and guts. It was a source of embarrassment to me, growing up playing ice hockey, when the smallest sight of blood would topple me to the ice. But all changed when, at age 21, I butchered my first…

Ranching May Offer Soviet ‘Ghost Farms’ of Kazakhstan New Life

On the steppes of northern Kazakhstan, a collective farm town called Chilinka Sovkhoz crumbles, abandoned. The 250,000-acre farm was once home to over 60,000 livestock (mostly sheep, but also cattle and horses), and an…

Russian Cowboys Learn to Ride Western

American cowboy Shane Stotler points out his truck window at a herd of cattle just cresting a hill on the horizon. Normally, he’d be out there riding with the Russian workers he’s been hired to train by Miratorg, Russia’s largest cattle operation. Instead, he’s…

The First (And Only) Russian Ranch Video Awards

Now that all the hullabaloo of The Oscars has died down, I direct your attention to Russia’s movie industry where Westerns are all the rage.

Not Westerns of the Clint Eastwood variety, but promotional Western videos about…