Ramin Rahimian/Reuters/File

Oprah Winfrey, speaking at a rally for then-candidate Barack Obama in Des Moines, Iowa, in 2007, is now reportedly 'intrigued' by the idea of a run for president herself.

Why do voters – some of them, anyway – thrill to the idea of a celebrity serving as President of the United States?

President Trump is Exhibit A here, of course. The developer/reality show star has broken the norm that all US presidents have experience in political or military office. But now many Democrats are excited about a candidate that in their dreams trumps Trump’s celebrity strengths: Oprah Winfrey. Ms. Winfrey is rich, famous, and beloved, and on Sunday she gave an impassioned speech on #MeToo that lit Democratic hopes and dreams like a spark in dry underbrush.

Part of this boomlet is due to unique circumstances. Mr. Trump has broken the norm that presidential candidates can’t win without high political or military experience. Winfrey is a singular figure with a following that borders on a religious movement.

But part of it may also be based in voter desires to feel an emotional relationship with their leaders – and the failure of the leaders of the Democratic and Republican parties in recent years to deliver that kind of link. Like Trump, Winfrey has a personal magnetism that in today’s social media age transcends traditional politics.

“Voters want to connect with leaders on an emotional level as well as a political level. Charisma allows them to do that,” says Jeremy C. Young, an assistant professor of history at Dixie State University in St. George, Utah, who studies emotion and politics. 

A January surprise

The Oprah-for-President explosion came as a January surprise in Washington. Her Golden Globes speech, however, was finely honed, perhaps to produce just such an effect. It moved effectively from her personal inspirations as a young girl, to historical injustice against women such as Recy Taylor, a black woman raped by six whites in Alabama in 1944, to the present day exposure of sexual exploitation and harassment. 

Winfrey has occasionally made overtly partisan moves in the past – most notably when she endorsed Barack Obama in 2008. But in general she has been political without being obviously political. On television she often discusses lifestyle issues in a slightly political way, tinged with a self-help, live-your-best life philosophy. Right now she has a following that transcends race, class, and political lines, says Dr. Young. In some ways, it is quasi-religious, he says, making it almost unfair to compare her with more prosaic celebrities who have hinted at political ambitions, such as Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and businessman Mark Cuban.

Winfrey is uniquely qualified to make the jump from entertainment to politics, according to Young.

“She is really charismatic. She is a trained actress. She has this incredible following,” he says.

Like Trump, Winfrey is a person whose actual ideology is a bit fuzzy. Is she a liberal? Is she a moderate? Still, she could probably unite factions of the Democratic Party in part due to her overwhelming celebrity. There is nothing wrong per se with famous people running for political office, says Young. But they need to see holding office as something important in itself, not an adjunct to their existing fame. 

“I don’t think necessarily having a celebrity become a politician is a problem if the celebrity is serious about it,” he says.

Winfrey’s intentions aren’t clear at the moment. It’s possible the Sunday speech was a calculated opening political move. It’s also entirely possible it was intended as an acceptance speech and she’s been as surprised as anyone else by the pent-up explosion of Democratic desire she run for president. 

“I do think she was intrigued by the idea,” said CBS Morning host Gayle King, a friend of Ms. Winfrey’s, on Monday, adding that at this time Winfrey isn’t actually considering a presidential run. 

President Trump said on Monday that he doubts Winfrey will mount a serious candidacy. He boasted that if she did, he would beat her.

Such a race would “be a lot of fun” Trump told reporters during a meeting with US Senators on immigration reform.

“I did one of her shows. Her last week,” he added.

Brand versus boring

If Winfrey does run, it may be Trump that made it possible, of course. He’s the pioneering celebrity president, someone who proved that a well-established entertainment brand could have appeal for something beyond ratings.

He’s also proved that many of the warnings about the chaos that could result from a president who seems unprepared for the job can come true. It is possible that celebrity might be a negative with voters in 2020. They may want someone more boring who they can ignore for days or weeks at a time.

“Even people with experience have trouble with the job,” says Chris Edelson, an assistant professor of government at American University in Washington, noting that Bill Clinton struggled to adapt to the presidency’s demands.

It’s hard to gauge for sure how many voters are really excited by the prospect of President Winfrey, Professor Edelson says. Her favorability numbers are very high, but that is not everything. According to Gallup, Hillary Clinton remains the most admired woman in the United States. It takes 60 million votes or so to win the Oval Office.

The second Winfrey declared a candidacy her numbers would tumble.

“To the extent people are excited, she is starting from a high point right now,” Edelson says.

Fame before office?

Is America developing into a nation where fame becomes a prerequisite for high political office? That’s unlikely, but possible. The mixture of celebrity and power – common in some other countries, such as Italy – is entirely new in the US.

Perhaps the problem now is that many Americans view the established party structure as corrupt, or ineffective, or hard to get through to, says Steven White, an assistant professor of political science at the Maxwell School of Citizenship at Syracuse University in New York.

“They see celebrities as something that can break through that,” he says.

It’s also possible that voters are less interested in the policy aspects of the presidency and more focused on its performative aspects. Under Trump, the Oval Office is indisputably more dramatic and showy. Consider his upcoming “Fake News” awards, and the celebratory parties he has held at the White House following successful congressional votes.

“There’s a possibility that a lot of people view the president as being the spokesperson for the country, and what it stands for and values,” Dr. White says. “They see Oprah as able to espouse a world view that inspires them.”

But Winfrey might actually have a harder time winning the Democratic nomination than many people anticipate, he adds. Democratic Party elders have more control over their process than Republican counterparts, due to so-called “superdelegates,” who are typically elected officials. They might think a boring politician a better foil for Trump than another celebrity.

Shaneen Allen’s rise from single Philadelphia mom to global gun rights icon has the elements of a John Grisham thriller: violent crime, race, and the power of the state over the individual.

An African-American, Ms. Allen was arrested in 2012 after a traffic stop in New Jersey. She faced up to five years in prison under New Jersey law – not for lacking a concealed-carry permit for her firearm, but for having the wrong one.

A bill passed in the US House in December and now up for consideration in the Senate would force all states to abide by each other’s permits, meaning that concealed-carriers such as Allen would no longer have to navigate a Rorschach-like map of regulations as they navigate the country.

It would also mean gun-wary states such as New York would be “bound by the boldest experiment” – including states that put basically no restrictions at all on concealed-carry – as South Texas School of Law professor Josh Blackman has put it.

That a black single mom has become the poster-woman for a national concealed-carry reciprocity bill has further put Republicans in an unusual – some say awkward – position. By raising legal gun carry to a civil rights issue, the party usually arguing in favor of states' rights finds itself defending federal supremacy.

Ben Fogletto/The Press of Atlantic City/AP/File

Shaneen Allen (right) and her attorney Evan Nappen talk to media outside Atlantic County Criminal Court in Mays Landing, N.J., after a motion to dismiss the gun possession charges against her was denied. The handgun that Allen was carrying when she was pulled over on a New Jersey highway could have sent her to prison for years if not for a pardon from Republican Gov. Chris Christie. The legal saga of the Pennsylvania mother of two has helped inspire a measure that could change handgun laws across the country.

“The history of racism and guns is for real, and you see it in this case: Shaneen Allen was pulled over for failure to maintain a lane, some jazz like that – some people think it was DWB [driving-while-black],” says Evan Nappen, her attorney. “Then you have this law-abiding, honest woman from a tough part of Philadelphia – where she has gotten robbed twice – who does the right thing, follows the law [to carry legally in her home state] and New Jersey wants to incarcerate her.”

The reciprocity bill is only one of a series of assertions of federal power by Republicans and the White House. Three days after recreational marijuana became legal in California, Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Jan. 4 rescinded a key Obama-era memo that gave states legal cover to set their own policy on the drug. The tough talk extended to immigration issues, as well. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Tom Homan suggested on Fox News last week that federal agents might arrest elected officials, saying, “We gotta start charging some of these [pro-sanctuary city] politicians with crimes.”

Even as gun ownership has waned per capita in the US, guns have, in a sense, become more public than ever. Concealed-carry permitting has skyrocketed from a few hundred thousand people in the 1990s to more than 16 million today.

In California's Sacramento County, one out of every 164 residents is now armed in public, ranging from rural gold country to the streets of the state capital. As a group, studies have found, concealed-carry permit holders are more law-abiding than even active police officers.

As the practice has expanded, so has the right. Thirty years after Florida pioneered the so-called “shall-issue” movement, the vast majority of states already honor each other’s carry codes. A Florida permit-holder can basically travel armed from Lake City, Fla., to Provo, Utah, without worry.

Yet eight US states, mostly in the Northeast and Midwest, have resisted the trend. New York, Illinois, and New Jersey are among those who reserve the right to decline an application and require “good reason” for wanting to carry, such as being a retired cop or traveling jewelry salesman.

It is an issue bound by culture, tradition, and broad local sympathies and fears around guns, exacerbated after a record year of mass shootings in public places. It also cuts straight to historical tensions between the North and South, including constitutional wrangling over commerce and equal protection clauses, experts say.

“What is going on now with guns is a strange [replaying] of the free soil controversy preceding the Civil War, where Northern states are saying, ‘No, this is gun-free soil and you can’t bring your guns here,’ and the Southern states are saying, ‘An attack on gun ownership anywhere is an attack on gun ownership everywhere,’ ” says James Gardner, a constitutional law professor at SUNY’s University at Buffalo.

More darkly, critics say, the arming-up of America carries similar political echoes as the run-up to the Civil War, when, as South Carolina Sen. James Hammond said at the time, "the only persons [in Congress] who do not have a revolver and a knife are those who have two revolvers."

The view from Florida

Florida may have pioneered carry and self-defense ideas that Mr. Nappen says “gave this power, this right, back to the citizens.” Yet Florida is one of only five states to ban open carry. The state attorney general supports national reciprocity, but one of its state attorneys opposes the bill, calling it an affront to federalism.

“Ultimately, this legislation eliminates all regulation of concealed carry: no training, no background checks, no limitations — and no questions asked — for every community across the country,” state attorney Andrew Warren wrote, noting that “19 states do not require any gun-safety training, 15 allow domestic abusers to carry concealed weapons, and 12 have no requirements whatsoever.”

The bill has pitted a sense of overriding states' individual wishes and local character against shifting legal views of the Second Amendment, which the Supreme Court has expanded only recently to include self-defense.

One constitutional weakness in the current bill is that it not only protects travelers, but makes it possible for residents of “may-issue” states to skirt the law in states where they are domiciled. The Supreme Court has never ruled on whether there is a right for law-abiding Americans to carry a concealed weapon.

“The Constitution protects the right to bear arms both at home and outside, but courts have also seen [local carry limitations] as reasonable,” says Mr. Blackman in a Monitor interview. “That is … why [congressional bill-writers] would be smarter by trying to force states to become shall-issue states” rather than forcing them to recognize out-of-state permits.

Ultimately, he adds, “the argument is that [national reciprocity] is what is required by the Constitution.”

Yet for some, the fight may be less legal and, instead, “really a question of culture,” says Virginia lawyer Stephen Halbrook.

One of his clients, a Florida man named Dale Norman, lost his appeal after he was thrown to the ground, handcuffed, and fined $300 in Fort Pierce, Fla., after someone saw his half-visible concealed-carry weapon and called the cops. The judges noted there is no federal right to carry openly. The Supreme Court looked at the 2012 case but did not take it up.

“I had a case of another lawyer who got busted at JFK [airport] for checking a gun in accordance with TSA rules,” says Mr. Halbrook. “The judges were basically shocked to think that somebody could have a gun [in New York], not have a New York permit, and you couldn’t arrest them. That is what federal law [allows], but they couldn’t bear that possibility.”

States' rights rhetoric vs. reality

To be sure, the US has a long tradition where states’ rights rhetoric is “as much a function of tactics as of genuine conviction,” as the late University of Alabama historian Forrest McDonald wrote in “States’ Rights and the Union.” 

But that founding debate also crashes into modern political reality, critics say, as Republicans risk opening up gun permitting to federal whims, subject to which party is in national power.

“The correct reaction by a true conservative would be that [gun-carry licensing] is a matter for states to sort out between themselves,” says Steven Strauss, a visiting public policy professor at the Woodrow Wilson School in Princeton, N.J. “First of all, it is not unreasonable that someone from Mississippi going to another state should familiarize themselves with the law. And if you have agreed that the federal government can override the states, you can’t come back later [when another party is in power] and say, ‘Oh, we didn’t really mean that.’ ”

Some conservatives are clearly struggling with that dynamic.

In New Jersey, Republican Gov. Chris Christie has pardoned individual gun-carry permittees, including Allen, but now opposes the national reciprocity law. Experts are skeptical that the Senate, where Republicans have a slim 51-to-49 seat majority, can muster passage of such a controversial law in order to send it to the president’s desk.

But Allen, in some ways, represents how the issue of concealed-carry has changed the national debate. In the wake of her arrest, she changed her party affiliation to Republican and just before Christmas told the Associated Press: “Hopefully I’ll be at the White House next to [President] Trump signing this bill.”

Doug Struck

Robert Lewis, a National Park Service Ranger, chatted while off-duty at Kings Canyon National Park in California. Mr. Lewis used to be a policeman in San Francisco but after he and his wife had a baby, he gave up night shift in the Tenderloin District for night skies.

Robert Lewis describes himself as “an optimist who wears body armor.” He has seen the need for both.

Mr. Lewis is a National Park Service ranger. He is in the protection division, so he does wear a Kevlar vest. Until recently, he was a policeman in San Francisco, often patrolling the grimy underbelly of the urban circus, what he calls “the bottom of the bottom.”

When his wife had a baby, he decided that “working the 3 a.m. shift patrolling the Tenderloin district was probably not what I wanted to do with a daughter.”

Now his workplace is a stunning breadth of forest, reaching from titanic sequoias to a folded carpet of Sierra Nevada Mountains that fades blue at the horizon.

His experience – from the city to the forest – offers a view of the human condition that Lewis ponders, sometimes with curiosity, sometimes with amusement. It is a valuable perspective in this sampling of views in a reporting trip across America.

Take crooks, for example.

“In San Francisco, you’d go to an auto burglary. There’s glass broken, stuff from inside the car is missing. You follow the trail of detritus into the weeds, and there’s some guy rooting through the backpack. Here, you go to a broken window. There’s a bag missing from inside the car. You follow the trail of detritus into the woods, and there’s a bear rooting through the backpack. It’s the same thing!”

Lewis laughs. “Humans are animals.”

He chats sitting at a picnic table at a campground with a majestic view in this park just south of California’s more famous Yosemite National Park. He is off-duty; he’s scrupulous about that.

Lewis worked at Yosemite and a half-dozen other national parks and wilderness areas, ranging from the Virgin Islands to Glacier National Park, before joining the San Francisco Police Department. On the city force, he saw scenes “as bad as anywhere in the world. Broken bones that healed crooked, abscesses, living in their own feces and vomit, there’s no hope they would ever get out of it.”

But he saw good, too: “It always struck me to see people go out of their way, risk their life, to help.… Just regular citizens risking their lives helping somebody they don’t even know.”

As a policeman, he dealt with the economic disparity of the country. He recalls rousting a homeless encampment in the shrubs next to the home of a wealthy man who did not even know they were there.

“If you are at the bottom, you have an awareness of the top,” he says. “But if you are at the top, you don’t know whose heads you are standing on.”

Even in the sylvan national parks, homeless people come to camp. The dishwashers and cleaners have to work a week in the Wuksachi Lodge to earn what guests pay to stay for one night.

“Poverty is a relative condition,” Lewis says. “There’s always going to be somebody at the bottom and always someone at the top.”

Lewis found urban police work an education. “It was super interesting. I learned a ton.”

But his heart beats most comfortably under a flannel shirt. He named his daughter Eleanor, after Lake Eleanor in Yosemite, which he explored on an earlier parks service assignment patrolling the back country on horse and muleback for six days at a time – “one of the best jobs I ever had.”

The sheer beauty of this country’s expanse is a benefit of the job. “Last night, there was a guy who broke his leg in Tokopah Canyon in Lodgepole and I went to go help carry him out of there. On the way back, I stopped at Halstead Meadow. The sky was just …” He pauses, hunting for words rich enough. “There’s no lights … It is so beautiful there.”

He grins like a kid amazed at his own luck.

“Beautiful … beautiful. Who gets to do that? These rich guys who have those yachts in the Virgin Islands, there’s no amount of money they can pay to have the kinds of experiences that I have had. That’s worth something. I may never have a house in Zurich, but I’ve had a lot of good things. I’m luckier than I deserve to be.”

Part 1: A young woman comes to L.A. to follow her dream – helping the homeless

Illustration by Eric S. Carlson

The Upward Sun River archaeological site in central Alaska's Tanana River Basin was once a campsite for the Ancient Beringians.

A six-week old infant who died some 11,500 years ago in central Alaska is now providing clues about how the Americas first came to be populated.

Genomic data from remains of the girl – named “Xach'itee'aanenh T'eede Gaay” (Sunrise Girl-Child) by the local indigenous community –  broadly support a migration model that scientists have long argued for, while also revealing the existence of an ancient population previously unknown to science.

“We’ve said for decades that the first Americans came from Northeast Asia to the Americas during the late Pleistocene, but the empirical evidence for that has not been at our fingertips as it is now,” says Ted Goebel, an anthropologist at Texas A&M University in College Station, who was not involved with the study. “To finally start to see the genomic evidence come forth to help us test these theories we’ve developed based on stone tools is really cool."

The girl was a member of an ancient population that the report authors have named “Ancient Beringians.” Beringia is the name given to Alaska, Eastern Siberia, and the land bridge that periodically connected the two during the last ice age.

The findings suggest a revised family tree: a single ancestral Native American group split from East Asians about 35,000 years ago, before later splitting, some 20,000 years ago, into two distinct groups. One was the Ancient Beringians, and the other constituted the ancestors of modern-day Native Americans, who later split into northern and southern populations about 15,700 years ago.

“Trying to integrate these findings with what we know from archaeology and paleoecology presents exciting new puzzles,” says Ben Potter, an anthropologist at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks and one of the lead authors of the study, which was published Jan. 3 in the journal Nature. He first discovered the archaeological site in 2006 and has been working there ever since. “The peopling has been shown now to be more complex than we thought previously.”

Scientists have sought ancient human remains from Beringia at the end of the last ice age, says Victor Moreno-Mayar, a geneticist at the Centre for GeoGenetics at the University of Copenhagen’s Natural History Museum of Denmark, who conducted much of the genetics work for the study. The discovery of three individuals, one of them cremated, fulfilled this wish.

But Xach'itee'aanenh T'eede Gaay's genome held a surprise: it was clearly Native American, but not from either of the two major modern Native American groups. “It represented a population that diverged from that common ancestor,” says Dr. Moreno-Mayar.

All of this helps narrow down and strengthen the theories of just how those populations arrived in the Americas. It also lends support to the so-called “Beringian standstill” hypothesis, which posits that there was a period of time in which a genetic isolation of ancestral Native Americans occurred before they migrated south, either in Beringia or in Northeast Asia.

But mysteries remain, including definitive answers about where and when some of these population splits occurred and which migration routes were used.

In their paper, the authors outline two possible models. In one scenario, which Dr. Potter favors since it matches well with archaeological data and paleoecological data, the split occurred in Northeast Asia, and the two separate populations later crossed over the land bridge prior to 15,700 years ago, when the Native American ancestors split again. With the ice age still at its maximum around 20,000 years ago, Potter notes that any further migration would have been difficult.

In the other theory, the ancestral population had already arrived in Alaska or eastern Beringia by 20,000 years ago, and the split occurred there, with the second split into North and South American populations occurring south of the ice sheets.

What happened to the Ancient Beringians? They might have died out, says Potter, or they could have been absorbed by Northern Native Americans who migrated back to the far North.

Dr. Goebel likens the puzzle to a murder mystery. “You read the book, and the author divulges new clues over the course of the book,” he says. “Every time a new genome is analyzed and reported, it provides a new clue that’s making the pathway to uncover the real story that much clearer.”

In a few days Otgonmuren’s family will pack up their ger, their round felt tent home. It is late August, time for herders to relocate for the winter.

Some of them will relocate, that is. His sisters will stay in town to attend boarding school. Mungunshur, 16, plans to be a doctor. Munkhzul, 8, also plans on college, though she’s not yet sure what she’ll be.

Everyone knows what Otgonmuren will be. The slim 15-year-old with a strong singing voice will be a herder, like his father. It’s what he’s done since dropping out of school eight years ago: looking after the herd of 300 sheep, goats, horses, and cows.

“My daughters can go to another place, maybe even another country, but my son has to stay here so he can herd,” says his mother, Purevchuluun, who like many Mongolians uses one name. 

Otgonmuren’s situation isn’t that unusual in Mongolia, a landlocked nation of 3 million where one third of the populace practices herding. Last year around 100 students dropped out of school in the northern province of Khovsgol where Otgonmuren lives, according to Otgon-Erdene, a local government education specialist. Most were boys – a reversal of most countries.

Mongolia’s boys have largely caught up, after the country’s reverse gender gap soared in the early ‘90s. But they still make up only 38 percent of higher-education graduates, according to the National Statistics Office. As the country urbanizes, Khovsgol social worker Bayarsaihaa is among those who worry that herding boys could be further left behind if the lifestyle they’ve trained for begins to vanish – erased not just by modernization, but a warmer, drier, and more dangerous environment.

“If they don’t graduate and they don’t become herders, they don’t have a job,” says Bayarsaihaa.

‘Non-formal' students

Otgonmuren attends a week of instruction in the fall, and a week in the spring, like three dozen other “non-formal education” students here in Tosontsengel, a foothills town of 4,000. Across the country, about 10,000 students age 10 and older participate in such programs, according to the Ministry of Education – 68 percent of them boys.

In between those weeks, they forget most of what they learned, says Sarahntuya, Otgonmuren’s teacher.

She moves around her simple wood house as she talks, feeding her youngest son, 5, and a toddler granddaughter. There is a well in the yard and a forlorn-looking dog tied up by the outhouse. Like many residents, Sarahntuya lives in a log cabin hidden behind tall walls – a family compound, or hasha. Despite this uninviting appearance, people are friendly. It’s not unusual to drop in unannounced, even on a teacher.

But few “non-formal” students show up in the spring to test for the next grade and eventually graduate, she says. Many of them can’t read. Some don’t even know the names of colors.

“They’re like five-year-olds, they’re like my son,” says Sarahntuya.

Boys from herding families fared better before the country’s abrupt democratization and privatization in the 1990s. Under socialism, herding was a collective activity; fewer families needed boys to quit school and help, says Enkhtuvshin Shiilegdamba, country director of the Mongolia Wildlife Conservation Society. In the first few years, dropout rates for boys and girls combined reached almost 20 percent. By the late 1990s, only 50 percent of boys were enrolled in secondary school, versus 71 percent of girls.

Today, that’s improved significantly. Here in Khovsgol Province, a recently completed five-year UNICEF program provided financial and technical funds to operate mobile schools in gers. UNICEF also helped fund inclusive education for children with disabilities, and to improve communication between schools to track the highly mobile population. In 2016, there were only 612 dropouts in the entire country, according to Ministry of Education data, and the reverse gender gap has almost disappeared for grades K-12. But that leaves out “non-formal” students, like Otgonmuren.

In addition to math, Mongolian, and other academic subjects, Sarahntuya tries to teach them more practical skills, from opening a bank account to talking on the phone and sending text messages. At the school, where Lenin’s portrait is still displayed prominently in the entrance, Bayarsaihaa, the social worker, worries about the children’s social development. They are shy about approaching former classmates, she says, even when back in town.

“Students study each other,” she says. “Children who drop out don’t get that.”

Outside pressures

Children may not like school, Bayarsaihaa says, but it is the parents who decide to take them out. She tries to convince parents of the advantages of an education, but doesn’t always succeed. Once children drop out, they’re difficult to find. Herders usually move their gers several times a year – and not always to the same locations.

Many teachers are married to men who dropped out, too, and Sarahntuya herself is married to a herder. But her husband is also the principal. The couple plans to pass the herd on to their sons, but to pay someone else to watch the herd, while their children pursue careers that utilize their college degrees.

Otgonmuren’s family, whose only income comes from herding, does not have that option. Fewer herding families do, as environmental changes make it an even more difficult lifestyle, says Tungalag Ulambayar, adviser to the Minister of Environment and Tourism. Mongolia has experienced an average temperature increase three times the global average in recent years, and a general “drying up,” says Ms. Ulambayar.

“Mongolians usually say dzud, that kind of major disaster, happens every decade,” she says, referring to summer droughts followed by severe winters. In 2010, a single dzud killed 8 million animals. “Now it’s increasing, it’s like [every] five or six years.”

Under socialism, the government owned the livestock, so herders did not feel losses – or successes – as deeply. With freedom came the opportunity to own as many animals as you can afford, and the livestock population grew from 30 million to 70 million, according to Enkhtuvshin of Wildlife Conservation Society.

“Rangeland specialists are quite concerned that we’re getting to a really degraded situation from which it’s difficult to recover,” says Enkhtuvshin. Today, the Wildlife Conservation Society is teaching herders more sustainable practices.

Changing years and seasons

Back in Tosontsengel, Otgonmuren’s mom has noticed the changes. Over milk tea and freshly picked berries, Purevchuluun remembers rainy summers with plenty of grass, and fatter animals that could better handle the winters.

But other changes have been positive, she says. Although the family’s summer location has no running water, they do have a solar panel and a television. Inside the ger, the family makes efficient use of the small space, sticking toothbrushes, sunglasses, and papers in the wood beams supporting the ceiling, and arranging furniture against the felt walls.

Purevchuluun, with permanently rosy cheeks, sits near the stove in the center, with pots dangling from the wood ceiling frame above her. Family members regularly duck in and out of the ger’s low doorway. Her daughters busy themselves heating milk tea, while Otgonmuren races off on a motorbike to buy bread. After many hours spent with the animals, he is learning to read their needs, his parents say. One of the only lessons that remains is experiencing a dzud.

Otgonmuren likes everything about herding, he says once he’s returned, but is particularly fond of galloping his horse. At school, he used to like math and Mongolian, and still studies both during his two weeks of classes each year. Last spring he attended the end of school party with his class, though he no longer studies with them. The children were nice, but he knows other students who have dropped out who have not been treated kindly.

He has taught himself how to repair motorcycles and cars, and his mother says they may send him to a mechanics course in Ulaanbaatar – although it isn’t clear when, or who would help while he’s away.

But the summer is almost over. This time of year is always hard.

“In the summertime we are all together,” Otgonmuren says. 

Katya Cengel reported from Mongolia on a fellowship from the International Reporting Project (IRP). You can find her on twitter @kcengel

AP Photo

Ryom Tae-Ok and Kim Ju-Sik of North Korea compete during the pairs short program at the Figure Skating-ISU Challenger Series in Oberstdorf, Germany, Sept. 28, 2017.

When South Korea proposed last year that North Korea participate in next month’s Winter Olympics, it hoped to turn the event in its Taebaek Mountains into a “peace Olympics.” Sure enough, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un not only accepted the offer in a New Year’s speech, he agreed to hold talks – which took place for 10 hours on Jan. 9 –  with the aim to “defuse military tensions” between the two countries.

In making this surprise move, Mr. Kim may be simply diverting the world’s attention once again as he builds up a nuclear arsenal. Yet even the hawkish Trump White House supports South Korea’s initiative, and perhaps for good reason. Countries in a potentially deadly conflict often choose a peaceful diversion like sports or joint research to break the ice, scope each other out and – maybe, just maybe – break the barriers of mistrust and prevent a war.

A sampling of how the February Olympics might play out in Pyeongchang was seen last summer when North Korea’s top athletes for the Olympics, figure skating pair Ryom Tae-ok and Kim Ju-sik, trained in Canada alongside South Korean skaters for two months. Stereotypes melted. They began to root for each other.

“When I meet them again, I want to say, ‘It’s good to see you after a long time,’ ” South Korean skater Kim Kyu-eun told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. “And I want to compete well against them as friendly rivals.”

In exploring their bonds beyond the bombast of North-South rhetoric, the skaters turned a zero-sum competition into a postive-sum opportunity. That is how it goes when nations at odds build bridges, say, in joint development of ocean resources or in an exchange of cultural works. Shared interests can define a common good, which then allows an agreement on universal values at work and perhaps a spiritual accord that helps transcend fear or a desire for domination.

Such a lifting of thought has been found in “ping-pong diplomacy” between China and the United States in the 1970s, in the mutual trade pacts between Germany and France after World War II, in joint space exploration between Russia and the US, or even in midnight basketball games in gang-infested American neighborhoods.

Peace can come quietly through a back door by a shifting of national identity or a cultural difference. North Korea is under economic pressure from the world right now to change its ways. In accepting the offer of joining South Korea at the Olympics, it may find a common light that will lead it away from its dark path.