The Wild Horse, Late Winter

There are an estimated seven hundred wild horses on the northern Colorado range — descendants of escaped or released ranch stock, technically feral, locally controversial, and almost entirely uncontacted by photographers. I have photographed two bands. Both photographs took years.

The horses do not want to be photographed. They do not want to be near you. The closest I have ever stood to a wild band was three hundred yards, downwind, in a snowstorm that obscured both me and them, and the resulting frame — eight dark shapes moving through pale grass and falling snow — is one of the photographs I am still surprised by.

I do not publish the GPS coordinates of where it was made. I would, if pressed, not even publish the county. The photograph is a record of the horses; the photograph is not an invitation to find them.