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Sometimes a photograph can make something look idyllic and calm, when the reality is that it was neither. I had been traveling by horseback through some very remote parts of Mongolia, and had been battling swarming horse flies, bot flies, mosquitos, and when the bugs were gone, there was weather. Here, we were pushing our tired horses to escape a swarm of horse flies after a 12 hour ride through a rain storm.
Editor’s Note: Ben Horton has gotten around. As a National Geographic photographer he’s covered every sort of adventure from diving with sharks off the Costa Rican coastline to dogsledding on Ellesmere Island. And he wants you to go, too. And if you don’t go to the arctic, or the Brazilian rainforest, maybe his imagery will inspire you to go somewhere you’ve been meaning to for a long time. Even if it’s just to the other side of the state you’re living in. Horton gives us the story behind nine of his favorite images from the last half decade or so. Images that represent a deep love of our planet, and protecting it.