The early days of television romanticized the cowboy and the American West (there were "Indians" around too but they were hardly romanticized). I was young and very smitten with tales of Roy Rogers, Trigger, and Fury on the fuzzy black and white screens of the day. I daydreamed of little else but cowboys and horses. My reality was something else, however. I was a city slicker, living in a crowded neighborhood surrounded by factories and refineries. With people for next door neighbors and fences for kids, not horses. Much to my chagrin! In those early days my only horse was a dream.

And that's the way it was until I was eight years old. Tired of life in the city my parents purchased a farm on the outskirts of my hometown, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Things were looking up. Soon I acquired my very own horse, a golden palomino, the spitten image of Trigger. I thought my heart would burst. Champ was my first love, the center of my universe. Girls be damned (at least for awhile). Whenever I wasn't at school I was in the saddle, in pursuit of stray cows and bad guys, combing every inch of wood and meadow. I was finally living the dream.

The above photo is of a recent trip to Wyoming for my first experience with free ranging horses of the American West. These horses are descendents of domestic stock from long ago, and are thus really feral, though they have lived wild and free for centuries. Many years have passed since the days of my cowboy fantasies, but this was still a nostalgic journey. The horse in the above photo, fourth from left, is the spitten image of Champ, my first palomino.