I.R.A.M. Sponsor Mustang Prairie Lark

I.R.A.M. Sponsor Mustang, Prairie Lark

Words by Dayton O. Hyde
Narrated by Martin Meyer
From Imagine A Place Sponsor Mustangs DVD
Directed/Edited by Christopher Crosby

Blue roan mare born in the desert in Nevada gathered 1987 Released at IRAM Aug. 15, 1988

I first laid eyes on Lark at the wild horse holding facility in Bloomfield, Nebraska in 1988. I was sitting on a fence watching hundreds of newly captured wild horses, when a beautiful blue roan filly came out of the herd and trotted toward me. It was as though she knew I was setting up a sanctuary for wild horses, and was determined to be the first one on the truck.

The filly had large black lustrous eyes wide set in a head of blackest ebony, with a thick mane and a lush foretop hanging almost to her flaring nostrils. Just what she saw in me, I'll never know, but she followed me down the fence when I left nickering loudly, calling for me to turn back. She needn't have worried. Five minutes later, I had paid my fee and signed papers for her adoption.

Along with three hundred other mustangs, Prairie Lark, was shipped to my Black Hills Wild Horse Sanctuary in South Dakota. For a time I was too busy tending to the new arrivals to single her out, but one evening as I was setting up a camp in Chilson Canyon, she came down off the rim rocks to visit me. From then on she never left my side, soon I could slip up on her bareback and ride her back into the canyons. In my lifetime I have never ridden her equal.

But sometimes I would catch her grazing off in the distance at the other wild horses and I sensed that however much she loved me, she needed to be free. As I pulled the saddle off her for the last time and opened the gates. She trotted off, pausing once at the top of the trail over the rim before joining the herd to look back at me and nicker a goodbye.


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