It’s a beautiful mid-September day. The sun is not covered by clouds, the biting winds have the mercy to cease once every half hour or so, and I am on the bumpiest ride of my life with a growing herd of me-ing companions. (My fellow tractor rider, Þuríður Kristjana Þorbergsdóttir, informs me that in Iceland sheep “me” instead of “ba.”)

I came to Glaesibaer farm in Sauðárkrókur, a town in northern Iceland, with my co-worker, videographer Gabriella Garcia-Pardo, to help make a video for National Geographic News about Göngur, which is the annual herding of horses and sheep back to the farm after their freerange summer mountain grazing. I, however, had not ridden a horse since I was 14, when I