Erin Cassidy
August 2, 2026

If I had to pick a favorite part of the day in the field, I think I’d say mealtimes. That might come as a shock to those who were there with me, and often heard my waxing poetic about how much I missed burritos and hamburgers. But while the food in the field could feel a bit repetitive, the time spent sitting around a makeshift table was special. Whether passing around our precious sauces and spices, sharing random anecdotes about our lives, or just inhaling delicious tsuivan and gambir after a long day working, our mealtimes were the times I found myself most grateful to be where I was. 

One meal in particular sticks out to me. After ten days of excavation, we were done. The trenches had been closed, the sieve tripods taken down, and we were all probably the dirtiest we’d ever been. It was a bittersweet walk back to the campsite. We were tired by then, yet none of us were ready to leave. By the time we got back to camp, changed into marginally cleaner clothes, hauled fresh water up the hill, and settled in for dinner, the exhaustion of the last two weeks had begun to set in. We gathered under the tarp that had served as the roof of our dining room, sat on the stumps that had been our stools, and started debating whether rice, soup, or noodles would be best as our final meal. 

To all of our great shock and excitement, the meal we got that night was spaghetti with red wine (to drink and in the sauce). While that was probably the most delicious meal I had ever eaten—food always tastes amazing in the backcountry—what made it so magical was the people I shared it with. We stayed up for hours after the dishes had been scraped clean sitting around the campfire, toasting, talking, singing, and hosting a fashion show. Though the food was long gone, the meal brought us all together, and it’s those memories that I look back on most fondly. 

My dad once told me that a good, fulfilling life is not complete without three meals you could never forget. They don’t have to be at 4-star restaurants with food that costs an arm and a leg. They just have to make good stories. That meal after our last day of digging will always be one of my three. A good meal is not just about the food; it is the environment you eat it in and the people you eat it with. I would never have told you before this trip that my perfect dinner would be spaghetti followed by wine poured into a bowl, but I also had never experienced anything like what I got the pleasure of experiencing in Mongolia. There is nothing that really compares to being thrown into a completely new environment with people you have never met, and no friendship that comes close to the type you create while in those situations. 

Back home, when people ask “So, how was it?” this is the first story I tell. Because while there’s so much I could say about our trip to Mongolia, the camaraderie we shared on that day around that table sticks with me.