Rachael Lundin

Horizon Line Books presents: Mongolian Love Letters: Finding My Footing at the Edge of the World. Written and read by Rachael Lundin. Copyright 2026, by Rachael Lundin, All rights reserved.

This book is a work of memoir. It reflects the author’s recollections of experiences over time. Some names and identifying characteristics have been changed, some events have been compressed, and some dialogue has been recreated from memory.

For Breezy, who carried a lonely twelve-year-old girl into a world of possibility.

For Roan, who felt every storm and waited anyway.

For My Little Pony, who said “Hi! Did you know we’re on an adventure?” at exactly the right moment.

Good horses, all.

Chapter One: Where do I Start?

Dear Charlie,

How do I even begin to tell this story? Some letters are written in ink, others in miles traveled and mountains crossed. This one begins with the rumble of horse hooves.

The Mongolian Steppe had no mercy after sunset. The night consumed everything. The cloud cover meant no stars, no moon—just utter black with no way to differentiate ground from sky.

Darkness, however, did not mean silence.

The wind, ever-present, whooshed and moaned, cut only by the whinnies of our horses. I have learned that horses have different kinds of whinnies: soft nickers for greetings and loud bellows to welcome a friend at a distance. My horse’s sounds were becoming something else altogether. His high-pitched panicked whinnies called desperately for his herd. With each cry, his muscles tensed beneath me, coiling like a spring. He was going to bolt any moment. I could not let that happen.

Somewhere ahead, our team had disappeared. Beside me, Brandon’s voice echoed my fears. “I can’t see them anymore, can you?”

“No.”

I gripped my reins tighter and tried to project confidence I didn’t feel. Two years of planning, one devastating loss, and ten days of riding had led to this moment: lost on the other side of the world, trying to convince a nervous horse that I knew what I was doing.

I didn’t.

I couldn’t see my horse, let alone the ground beneath us. The flat terrain had vanished, replaced by a series of rises and falls that rolled beneath our horses like waves in a storm. Each downward plunge made my stomach lurch, my tired muscles screaming while I tried to maintain balance. The leather reins, slick with sweat—mine or the horse’s, I couldn’t tell—threatened to slip through my cramping fingers.

“It’s OK, you got this,” I said, my voice spilling out whatever soothing sounds came to mind. The words were nonsense, but I desperately needed my horse to believe them, and to believe he was better off with me than running full tilt into nothingness.

“But we must be going the right way. They have to be out there somewhere,” Brandon said—more to himself than to me, I thought.

He was right; they were out there, somewhere. Everything was out there, somewhere. Home was somewhere. Safety was somewhere. Our team was somewhere. But we were nowhere, navigating by faith and our horses’ instincts through the moonless night.

I thought of you then, as I had so many times during this journey. What would you say if you could see me now? Your worry for me in that moment would have been palpable. I was trusting my life to a horse I barely knew, in a night so complete it felt solid.

A tree materialized, a denser shadow against the void. My horse swerved. I caught my breath and forced out words of encouragement: “You got this. It’s going to be OK.”

I wasn’t convincing anyone.