Chad Hanson, author of Swimming with Trout, as well as In a Land of Awe, noted an odd discrepancy between the words we use with wild fish compared to wild horses. Offspring of hatchery-reared fish, fed and protected by state agencies to be released in streams across public lands, become WILD in a single generation. Wild horses in the western U.S. are protected by a 1971 Federal law, and horses roamed the landscape for at least a couple hundred years before that. But publicly funded multi-use land management agencies refuse the term wild regardless of countless generations. In official lexicon, these animals remain feral, their value denigrated.

At Fossil Butte National Monument in southwest Wyoming, a classic evolutionary story displays the cat-size skeleton of what became the Equus caballus we know today. Some tribes maintain that horses never disappeared from this continent, but most people believe today's mustang herds descend from horses brought with European colonizers. Ranchers added animals over time. As climate change dries the range and human population and consumption impacts soar, land managers find wild horse herds relatively easy targets for removal. Cattle eat the same grass, and earn more money. While some scientists aim to bring wooly mammoths back to life, others disappear the intensely alive wild horses thriving on this well-suited habitat.

Carol J. Walker, author of Wild Hoofbeats: America's Vanishing Wild Horses, is one of several individuals stepping up to remind people of the important legacy these animals offer. She and her photographer colleagues, including Hanson, recently created an online art auction to provide funds supporting wild horses removed from the McCullough Peaks herd in Wyoming. Horses accustomed to open range need extra accommodation to live successfully, and activists also hosted an online call with "lessons learned" so potential adopters can better prepare suitable homes. Doing What they can With what they have, they offer all funds from the auction to help.

(excerpt from my upcoming novel The Scent of Distant Family): Through her legs, feels the roots of their prehistory in this place, and she feels ghost toes clustered above the solid hoof that remains a part of their movement across continents and back. She tosses her head at time and bares her teeth in a wide yawn before joining the current of horses moving toward wind and grass.