Two weeks ago I was in New Mexico with a shoot crew making photographs at Ghost Ranch and around Abiquiu and Georgia O’Keefe was everywhere. I missed my horses even though the crew had me running a horse through the Rio Grande for them and galloping around in the sage on horseback along the rim of the gorge outside of Taos at sunset. I came home and discovered the bands of mustangs that have existed all this time on the wild public lands that sweep between the farm and Nevada (and beyond). I have moved into comfortable silence with my wild horses, watching from near-far as they move through their territory, I yearn to know them better and I will, with time. I have pressed my hands to the faces of my own horses, felt their sun warmed velvet on my calloused fingertips and the smooth bone that runs beneath their hot breath and wide set eyes. I did all that and I saw all those things and I lived my life with my own lovely steeds and out popped rings featuring horse skulls: An ode to Georgia (I dislike her flowers but I adore her skulls), a whispered prayer for the wild ones I have come to know as my own, and a love letter pressed in sterling for the two I ride and cherish.
It seems all my world is horses now…I can’t remember the time when it wasn’t.
