How did I get here.... in the middle of seemingly nowhere, punishingly hot and so dusty you feel the grit of it in your teeth in summer and a cold so bitter it numbs your skin in winter. Always - ALWAYS - windy! Sometimes a pleasant breeze in summer or fall that softly brushes across your skin... but usually it is a wind that you lean into when walking and requires bracing yourself if photographing. How did I get here?

Not by a way that most people would consider reasonable or logical... I grew up in the mountains of northern Idaho, with forests of tall trees, a clear river to swim in on hot summer days, and the freedom of a 500 acre ranch that me and my Arabian mare explored every day we were allowed.

Then 20 years as an adult living in places like Seattle, Texas, and Detroit.

I enjoyed the wild places of Washington state, I explored Texas with my Army husband, and then we moved to Michigan for a few years after he left the military. And somewhere along those travels something started whispering to me... wyoming!!! It was a whisper that was constant... that I fell into and knew I needed to follow, and so we packed up what we needed, sold or gave away the rest, and moved westward to Wyoming!

Within weeks of moving to Wyoming things such as news articles or tourist kiosks would catch our attention about mustangs.... at that time I knew nothing of their life in the wild, or the politics that surrounded their existence, but I was captivated by the idea of them. And then one day, six months after we had arrived in Wyoming, my first encounter with wild horses - driving across a high desert landscape, miles from anything, there they were, horses standing on a hill watching the cars below go by. I stopped as quickly as I could on the shoulder grabbing my little point and shoot camera, but as I slowed the car they went on alert, noticing the change in speed and direction, no doubt feeling my interest in them, they turned and galloped through the sage and disappeared into the hills - all I caught that day on camera was a few distant and mostly fuzzy images - but ohhhh how my heart and imagination were captured, because until that moment they were only a dream, something I heard of but did not know how to find, or even if I would find them in those wild lands!

That day was the beginning of my quest to learn about mustangs in the wild... the search, were these truly wild horses? Would I find them again? Were there more to be found and where could I find them!?! I returned to that roadside stop many times, sometimes I found mustangs, more often I did not, but the spark was there! And so I began to explore more places, searched hours on various websites for information, met people that were kind enough to give me directions and guidance - and I found them - in the desert, in the sage and sandy hills, and on the mountains across the Wyoming desert.

So here I now find myself, 12+ years (at the writing this blog) from the moment wild mustangs sparked something in my heart that has grown into a wild fire of passion. I have loved some so deeply that they are as much my family as a blood relative, observed family bands growing with young mares and new foals, watched those young foals grow up and leave their family band to roam as bachelors or to begin their own family bands, and have witnessed the loss of the elders as their time passes and they leave the younger generation to be the guardians of their mustang legacy in wild desert winds and sacred places.

And now, I am asking you to join me on this journey.... to walk with me along the trails of the wild ones, sit in the desert sand and sage with wild winds whispering across our skin, as we learn the secrets this great land shares with us, the land that holds knowledge from before man walked it, a land that knows it is the place mustangs belong because it is, after all, their land.