Lynne Pomeranz - Among wild horses: a portrait of the Pryor Mountain Mustangs

Among Wild Horses

A PORTRAIT OF THE PRYOR MOUNTAIN MUSTANGS

Photography by LYNNE POMERANZ
Text by RHONDA MASSINGHAM
Foreword by HOPE RYDEN

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Edited by Deborah Burns

Art direction and text design by Mary Velgos

Cover design by Kent Lew and Mary Velgos

Text production by Liseann Karandisecky

Cover photographs by Lynne Pomeranz

Lyrics of La Primera by Ian Tyson Slick Fork Music. Used by permission

Map on page 2006 by Kevin Kibsey

Photos 2006 by Lynne Pomeranz

Text 2006 by Storey Publishing, LLC

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Massingham, Rhonda, 1959

Among wild horses / Rhonda Massingham ; photography by Lynne Pomeranz.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 978-1-58017-633-0 (hardcover w/ jacket : alk. paper)

1. Wild horsesPryor Mountain Wild Horse Range (Mont. and Wyo.) 2. Wild horsesPryor Mountain Wild Horse Range (Mont. and Wyo.)Pictorial works. 3. Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Range (Mont. and Wyo.) 4. Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Range (Mont. and Wyo.)Pictorial works. I. Title.

SF360.3.U6M37 2006

599.6655dc22

2006017422

In tribute to all the wild horses
who live and have died in glorious freedom

How gorgeous are the wild horses of the Pryor Mountains! And how beautifully have Lynne Pomeranz and Rhonda Massingham rendered them. This book arouses memories of the years I spent admiring, photographing and writing about this special herd.

I first visited the Pryor Mountains in 1968 as producer of feature stories for ABC Network News, after being alerted to a government plan to dispose of the herd. In the eyes of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management wild horses were trespassers and overgrazing public lands. Unless removed, they claimed, this herd would die of starvation. People living in the nearby town of Lovell, Wyoming, disagreed with that assessment. They reported that the 200 horses on the mountain were in excellent shape, and they offered to sponsor the herd, even drop feed to the animals should such unlikely need arise.

This conflict, together with my footage of the horses, was aired on ABC News in July 1968, and the public responded with dismay to the governments plan. Nevertheless, the Bureau continued work on an expensive holding corral into which they planned to funnel the horses.

It was then that the Humane Society of the United States went to court and presented a photograph of the holding corral, the existence of which the Bureau had denied under oath. This so embarrassed Interior Secretary Stuart Udall that he immediately designated the Pryor Mountains a Wild Horse Range. Case closed!

And so this beautiful herd was first to gain legal status. Two years would pass before enactment of the Wild Horse and Burro Act extended protection to all wild horses.

Meanwhile, I was so taken by the existence of wild horses that I took a leave of absence from ABC to travel about the West, researching scattered herds of mustangs for a National Geographic article and a book. I didnt know it at the time, but I had traded in my television career for a life of bliss studying and writing about wild animals. It was the best decision I ever made!

Thank you, Pryor Mountain wild horses. You changed my life!

Hope Ryden, author, Americas Last Wild Horses

SHAMAN, AT 19, is the oldest band stallion on the Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Range.

BLANCA AND FOAL. Shielding her foal, Blanca sniffs the wind.

IT FEELS LIKE A FAIRY TALE COME TO LIFE: beautiful, wild horses running free in the mountains of Montana and high desert of Wyoming. They are regal, proud, spirited, watchful, wise and very, very real.

Of all the wonders of the world, the survival of the horse as a species is a particular marvel. It is a story not of a few hundred years on the North American continent, or a few thousand years of domestication. It is a story of millions of years of evolution, adaptation, and survival. Subsisting on the poorest forage, equines can inhabit sparse, even hostile environments. The wild horses of the Pryor Mountains are a phenomenal part of this tremendous epic.

Preserving these animals wild habitat and way of life has become a mission for a growing number of individuals who understand the unparalleled value of Natures true fairy tales. The words the horses changed my life could be their anthem. How sincerely they are spoken. How reverently. How often! For these horses have a profound effect on people. They lift the spirits, quiet the mind, and soothe the soul.

LIVING FREE in a wild land is the birthright of all of Americas mustangs.

To experience these mustangs in the wild is to witness a rare and exquisite example of Natures glory. Bright, alert eyes sparkle with intelligence, lush manes and tails tantalize the wind, sinewy flesh and momentous bone gambol over ancient trails. Their very presence whispers an echo of another time. To be among them is to know a wildness unchanged by human will.

In their own way, these wild horses exemplify the best of what we hope for in ourselves: strength, courage, even kindness, forgiveness, and love. They endure and accept. They resolve their differences then move on. But what leaves us most wistful what we envy most is their raw, unabashed freedom. They neigh it on the mountain and whicker it from the desert. It races along high ridges and down grassy slopes, lolls in the warmth of the mountain sunshine, and wallows in the red mud of water holes. Joyful, lazy, exuberant and ultimately content: it is the freedom of these exquisite animals that catches our hearts.