For as long as we have been a race, we have worked side by side with horses. Wild Horses of the West commonly referred to as Wild Mustangs are what come to my mind first as I see them on occasion on my journeys and many road trips. As a matter of fact, when I think of free spirits or anything wild and free for that matter, I think about wild horses. Mustangs are descendants of Spanish, or Iberian, horses that were brought to the Americas by Spanish explorers in the 16th century. The name was derived from the Spanish word mesteño, which means “ownerless beast”, fitting I think given that they are so untamed and such wildly free beings.
If you have never seen wild mustangs running across a sage flat in the American Northwest, I assure you that it is something you should do at least once in your lifetime. It is absolutely one of the most spectacular sights you will ever see. The way that they carry themselves is graceful and majestic, they are a part of life to marvel at and their very existence has me thinking about them often during my travels.
Recently we set out to track down a herd of Wild Mustangs in the state of Nevada. They were said to frequent a certain mountain range and its foothills, however, it was a lot of big country and appeared to be a fairly daunting task once on the road. For this job, I employed the use of some very specialized binoculars that allowed us to cover great distances and utilize the binoculars to see much further into a lot of different areas than we otherwise would have been able. We spent our entire first day without a single sighting, as a matter of fact the only thing we did see was a lone coyote out on patrol hunting up rodents for its supper.
That evening we made a simple dry camp up on a beautiful jag of BLM land in the sanctuary of a juniper patch, watching the stars overhead was a surreal sight as I must have counted over a hundred shooting stars that night! I had a feeling inside that the next morning was about to get even better! With dawn approaching and the dark night sky giving way to the sun slowly casting a faint glow across the sky, we began to pack up our simple yet primitive camp. After snacking on a breakfast bar and a little water, we were off on our way to search for Wild Horses again! The sun hadn’t even come up yet when we rounded a long sage point. There off in the distance we saw two young bachelors reared up on their hind quarters jousting with each other! Off to the side a short distance there stood maybe twenty or so members of a large band! Alas, this is what I had come for and what a marvelous sight! Wild Mustangs feeding and playing in the crisp morning light, simply incredible!
We cautiously flanked their position as to not spook them or change their behavior, as we sat off of them a few hundred yards and simply observed from a distance. I had my 400mm f4 lens on mount and began to edge toward a spot that I felt they may feed close enough to in order to take a few photographs. As the sun rose in the sky, this beautiful band of mustangs were everything I had ever imagined and more. Moving gracefully across the land, we bore witness to the relationships that interweave them. The way they spoke to one another was mostly by body language and each knew what the other was saying without uttering much of any sounds. They quietly fed through the bitterbrush, I could hear them chomping and biting at the leaves as they grazed within a hundred yards of where I sat in the sage. The two young colts began to jostle and fight each other, stirring up dust as the mares moved their foals off to safety. The rowdy two continued to rear up and fight, often antagonizing the other which continued to perpetuate the whole ordeal all morning. As all this went on, I was able to capture some truly stunning shots of them in action! It truly wasn’t long at all before the entire band of Mustangs surrounded me, much too close in fact for any photos to be taken, so I simply sat in the sage and admired them as they quietly fed by me without a care in the world. There aren’t many words in my vocabulary to attempt to actually explain how I felt being in their presence at such close proximity! These were not tame animals; they were wild and free! They would look at me as if entirely unbothered and they had an odd curiosity with me, as they knew I wasn’t there to cause them any harm, yet they would stop to smell my camera lens hood and one began to nibble at it. It was only a yearling that came up to me to do this and after a few moments, the momma mare came by to nudge him away.
In these simple moments I see the bond we all share, that even species and language barriers are often something that is easily negotiated with calm and pure intentions of the heart. There that morning on that sage flat, there were words unspoken of the wild and free, there were words of the heart, with trust echoing off of every interaction. If only we as a race could learn from the simple interactions that we have in nature, we might learn how to work together and create a higher understanding of our collective consciousness. This interaction left a remarkable and lifelong impression on me and within, I couldn’t help but to be mesmerized by the beauty that surrounded me in that moment. A memory and a scene that I will take with me forever and talking about it simply does no justice to the experience.
When I arrived home to my studio and began to search through the many images that I had captured of these majestic and amazing animals during my visit with them, I couldn’t help but relive my time spent in those moments of heartfelt interaction. Many of the shots were magical moments shared with a Mare and her young foal or a couple of yearlings playing at their mothers’ side. The connections that they share and the intimacy that they show to one another was truly heartwarming. The collection of images that I garnered from this special visit was entirely captivating and to anyone who marvels at the raw beauty of these incredible animals will love these Fine Art Photographs in my collection at www.marlonholden.com titled WILD SPIRIT. Those along with a handful of carefully selected Icelandic Horses grace the same page and should you visit the page, sit and look at the imagery, hopefully you too feel in some ways the same way that I felt sitting there in the sage with these wild hearts of our Iconic American West!