History of the West

I live on top of the world, where the never sun and mountains violate, 8000 feet closer to the sky. In my mountains, when the spring finally comes to save me from a perpetual winter. The world comes alive again and I remember what it is I'm here for.

I'm the only daughter in a long line of ranches. When we finally let our horses out for the first time every spring, I love to watch the rediscover the world. I can see an expression of my own restless spirit.

Charged by an appetite of adventure, they take the land without hesitation, they are pure power. When I see them running wild and free, I often think of the first horses, until they were the true times of America.

The stories we hear about the west were all lies. The history of the west was written by the horse. Where ever a saddler left a footprint there was a hoof print beside it. Men came further and further west, to state their claim on the great American wilderness.

But they included a strength that couldn't be tamed by the wild horses, mustangs. The saddlers call them parasites that could strike that land a start their own herds. They could not domesticate them so they destroyed them. Slated and hungry, they were on their way from disappearing from the face of the earth.

Some times when the lie disappears and the after image remains, just for a moment. Mustangs are the image of the west, no better than ghosts hardly there at all. No one really wants them not ranchers, not city people, which is their destiny.

Let them disappear once and for all, with all the misfits, loners and relatives no one cares about anymore.

Lucky for us a few mustangs survived, hidden away in the mountains. We need to protect them, for they are the hopes for some kind of living memory. Of that the promising land could be, and could be again.

I believe there is a force in this world that lies beneath the surface, some thing vomitive and wild, when you need another push just to survive. After blooming flowers, which bloom after darkness, that turns the forest black.

Most people are afraid of it and keep it very deep inside them selves. There will always be a few people with the courage to love what it is untamed inside us. One of those men is my father.

There was once a time when Americans came to discover their true destiny. Today they seem every which restless inside, and I am still looking for the same thing, a place where they can be aphoristic about the world. A place where they can help be who they want to be. They can feel that this life makes sense.

A place where they can feel nothing but the feeling called "free".