Chad Hanson - In a Land of Awe: Finding Reverence in the Search for Wild Horses

Praise for In a Land of Awe: Finding Reverence in the Search for Wild Horses

In a Land of Awe is the authors voyage of discoverypart poetry, part history, part philosophy, part adventure. Wild horses are transformative, and Chad Hanson describes how they transformed him from avid cyclist and fly fisherman to wild horse watcher, admirer, and advocate. So beautifully written it will transport the reader, as it did for this wild horse lover.

Ginger Kathrens, founder of the Cloud Foundation, Emmy Awardwinning filmmaker, wild horse adopter, and documentarian

Chad Hanson has written a wonderful book exploring his fascination with the wild horses of the American West, taking readers on a journey inside the lives of these magnificent animals and the wild places where they still live. Weaving together sociology, ecology, and history, Hanson explores the importance of a reverence for nature to human psychology, why wild horses inspire awe, and why saving them is essential to preserving the last vestiges of all that is wild in the West. An excellent read!

Suzanne Roy, executive director, American Wild Horse Campaign

Chad Hanson brings us into his encounters with wild horses so that we may examine the value of wildness in our lives, and the immense crater that will remain if it disappears. This examination of why and how wild horses enrich our society and our souls makes us consider what is really important.

Carol J. Walker, author of Wild Hoofbeats: Americas Vanishing Wild Horses

Tearfully delicate and deeply sincere, In a Land of Awe paints a lyrical portrait of what it feels like to experience the rich textures of the American West. Its a journey story that naturally intertwines the nuances of the issues it explores. Not only will readers be inspired to care; theyll be compelled to go out into nature in search of wonder and wild horses.

Ashley Avis, founder of Winterstone Pictures, president of the Wild Beauty Foundation, and writer/director of Disneys Black Beauty

Hanson sets out to find the soul of the American West, through the majesty of open spaces and the magic of the wild horses that inhabit them. In a Land of Awe takes the reader on a journey through the human psyche and through enigmatic Western landscapes, with lyrical storytelling peppered with penetrating insights. A page-turner.

Eric Molvar, author and conservation professional

In a Land of Awe offers a close look at the mysterious and fascinating world of wild horses. Walk with Chad Hanson on this journey. Find truth, beauty, and maybe even yourself on the way.

Clare Staples, founder and president, Skydog Ranch & Sanctuary

Horses are amazingly sensitive sentient beings. Chad Hansons beautifully written and highly personal In a Land of Awe does an outstanding job of informing readers about the awe-inspiring lives of wild horses in the West: their families and their futures. Readers will come away feeling deeply connected or reconnected with horses and their homes.

Marc Bekoff, PhD, author of Rewilding Our Hearts: Building Pathways of Compassion and Coexistence and A Dogs World: Imagining the Lives of Dogs in a World without Humans

In a Land of Awe

Also by Chad Hanson

Nonfiction

Trout Streams of the Heart

Swimming with Trout

Poetry

This Human Shape

Patches of Light

Scholarship

In Search of Self: Exploring Student Identity Development (Editor)

The Community College and the Good Society

In a Land of Awe

Finding Reverence in the Search for Wild Horses

By Chad Hanson

Broadleaf Books

Minneapolis

IN A LAND OF AWE

Finding Reverence in the Search for Wild Horses

Copyright 2022 Chad Hanson. Printed by Broadleaf Books, an imprint of 1517 Media. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Email copyright@1517.media or write to Permissions, Broadleaf Books, PO Box 1209, Minneapolis, MN 55440-1209.

Except from The Wild Divine is taken from Bright Dead Things by Ada Limon (Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 2015). Copyright (c) 2015 by Ada Limon. Reprinted with permission from Milkweed Editions. milkweed.org

Cover design: Cindy Laun

Print ISBN: 978-1-5064-8219-4

eBook ISBN: 978-1-5064-8220-0

For Tuffy...

... and in memory

of Lara Joy Brynildssen.

No synonym for God is so perfect as beauty.

John Muir

Horses make a landscape look more beautiful.

Alice Walker

The sea, the woods, the mountains, all suffer in comparison with the prairie... the prairie has a stronger hold upon the senses. Its sublimity arises from its unbounded extent... its calm, self-confident grandeur... its power of throwing a man back upon himself.

Albert Pike, Journeys in the Prairie

My god is the horse.

common saying among the Mandan people

I lived in Wyoming for a decade before I learned that the state hosts sixteen herds of wild horses. I didnt move to the West for the mustangs or the plains, however. I moved for the mountains and the trout. The state of Wyoming is a fly fishers paradise. Free-flowing streams roll down from glacier-studded peaks. Then the waters move through forests and in between the walls of rock canyons. The states rivers have furnished the setting for countless stories and magazine advertisements. They also provide clients for the shops and outfitters that line our downtown streets.

I am like everybody else. I moved to the West for the backpacking, fly fishing, and other high-country adventures. Then, one morning, while driving a stretch of dry prairie with my wife, Lynn, I noticed a band of wild horses through the window of the car.

I dont fish for trout much anymore.

Until I saw them in front of me, I assumed that wild horses were part of our past. I pictured them as the sort of thing that schoolkids read about in books. I placed mustangs in a mental category next to unicorns, and that is where they stayed untilby chanceas a way to avoid high wind and hail on a westbound interstate, Lynn and I took a detour through the Great Divide Basin. We were rushing along, trying to find a way out of a storm, and there they were. I remember crouching in the grass with my eyes locked on them. I watched their behavior toward one another, and I thought about how they fit on the land, between bunches of sage. Theres only one way to describe my feeling: Awe.

As part of the research for her book The Nature Fix , Florence Williams interviewed Paul Piff, a psychologist at the University of California. According to Piff, awe is something that blows your mind in a literal, biochemical sense. In the nineteenth century, both Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau pointed out, and scientists confirm today, nature provides the most likely setting for feelings of reverence. Think of a waterfall, a shooting star, or a flock of sandhill cranes so big the birds block the light from the sun. Picture a band of wild mustangs running on a ridge. Such sights provide us with occasions to transcend.