Emmie Sperandeo: The Trail Less Traveled

Professional rancher Emmie Sperandeo inspires millions by sharing her life and photography on the range, but before she reached her vista, she had to blaze a trail to get there.

When she moved to Montana in 2020, Emmie Sperandeo had an upbringing riding horses and tending animals on the little homestead where she grew up in Florida, and a dream to ranch. Actual ranching experience though? She had none.

After college, Emmie had been working in the tech world, feeling more and more disconnected from herself, from her identity of spending time in nature and around animals. She realized she was spending most of her time unhappy. Moving West to find work as a ranch hand was a risk, but she thought, Even if I crash and burn, it will be worth it to get back to who I am. She would stay in Montana for a month, she decided, and then return back to the city.

It’s been four years since that decision, and Emmie’s never looked back. She bought a truck and a trailer to live in as she moved from ranch to ranch all over the U.S. and internationally—”the best way to see the world,” she said.

But not everything on this path came easy. Emmie posts those challenges, too; living honestly is important to her. Being a traveling ranch hand meant constant change and dealing with new situations, problem solving on the fly, and being the new person on the ranch every time she started at a different operation.

And there was her own imposter syndrome to reckon with, “especially as a woman in agriculture, who didn’t grow up doing it,” she said. In the beginning, she often caught herself thinking, Who am I to be here? I’m not good at this. I should give up. “But I told myself: you’re not good at this because you haven’t done it before. Even if you do it wrong, you’ll do it right the next time. You’ll get better.”

Her newly chosen lifestyle also reignited her passion for cinematography, which she’d studied in university. “I thought, this is such a beautiful way of life that I love so much, that I also felt wasn’t being captured enough.” She started documenting her days through photos and film, and using the time she spent alone at night (there was a lot of that, she says) to put together visual stories that she uploaded to Instagram and TikTok of working with cattle, riding horses, other ranch hands working, and life lived on a range. She’d never posted on social media before. But she felt like she was doing something meaningful, and she wanted to share it. Even if no one saw it.

Her social media blew up—so much so that it became another way to support herself financially. “I ended up getting more opportunities to film in different places, so it was the best of both worlds,” she said. “I’m able to ranch and work with my hands and the land, and ride horses, and work on creative projects.”