On Herds, Heartbeats, and Home
Wild horses fade into the hillside at Cold Springs, the place where Liberty’s story began.
My love for wild horses began in April 2017 with one unforgettable mare, a dapple grey mustang branded 4005. I first saw her at a Bureau of Land Management holding facility in Oregon, where hundreds of mustangs stood behind fences. But she was different. When I lifted my camera, she didn’t just look at me, she saw me. Her steady gaze cut straight through the noise around us, and something shifted inside me.
That moment pulled me into their world. Since then, I’ve gone to the places where wild horses still roam: dust rising, manes tangled by the wind, family bands moving as one across open ground. What I try to capture isn’t just their beauty, but their way of being — protective, curious, resilient, endlessly expressive. Each photograph is a glimpse of their story, shaped by survival and connection. In the end, 4005 became more than an image. She became Liberty, my mare, my companion, my anchor. Bringing her home was both unexpected and inevitable.
.Years later, I felt a pull to return to where her life began. For the first two and a half years, Liberty called Cold Springs, Oregon, home. In May of 2020, while the world slowed to stillness in lockdown, I finally made the journey.
Cold Springs is a wide grassland, scattered in spring with wildflowers and framed by old juniper trees. Sagebrush stretches across the horizon, releasing its earthy perfume into the warm air. To this day, the smell of sun-warmed sage and juniper takes me back there, to her first home, and to the wildness she carried with her.
One evening, as the sun sank low, I stood in that place and lifted my camera again. Across the hillside, wild horses retreated into the golden light, their silhouettes dissolving into shadow. I named the photograph Return to Home. It’s an image I treasure, because in it I see Liberty’s story, and my own — the place where our paths began to converge, long before we met.
Through Liberty, and through every wild horse I’ve photographed since, I’ve come to believe these images matter. They remind us that wildness still exists, and that it still has something to teach us — about resilience, about belonging, and about finding our way home.