Horse Stories: Riding with the Wind

Horse Stories: Riding with the Wind presents soul-touching stories of birth, death, hard work, speed and thundering hooves that tell of a lifelong love of horses in the West.
The author's fascination with horses started at a young age when she'd ride anything, including pigs and cows. She's been in rodeos and races, on trail rides and cattle drives, and on runaways and green broke horses. She even got married on horseback. She's encountered them all: the affectionate horses that'll nicker a greeting every morning; the heroic ones that've saved lives; and the ornery ones that'd rather take a chunk out of your arm. She's rescued horses from certain death and nursed their wounds from barbed wire and junk piles. These heart-warming tales glow with her savvy horse wisdom, earned over a lifetime with these captivating animals.
The stories don't tell how to buy a horse, how to train a horse, how to handle different temperaments or even how to break a horse to ride. They are stories about one woman's enduring love for horses.

Liz’s Blog 11/6/10 The computer is still off line so I’m blogging away to myself, hopefully to upload at a later date. The drive out of Mt Isa was amazing. When we checked in to the caravan park last night we didn’t see the mine or how close it was. As we drove out on the main street it loomed over us and just got bigger and bigger. It was the whole place. Got a photo but it just wasn’t enough. We cruised on past heading for the border to the Northern territories and the Threeways road house, just north of Tennant Creek. The road s the Barkly Highway which the stop go man was right about. It was awesome. Long , flowing and as long as you didn’t stop you were the only one on the road. There were occasional flocks of campervans grouped around the occasional rest areas. The speed limit was 110km and it was all the way. No need to slow down for corners as they were all built to match the speed limit. Our first stop was Camooweal just inside the Queensland border, this was a petrol stop as there was no more until the Barkly roadhouse 268km away. The minute we crossed the border the territory changed – it was “tableland” miles and miles of silver grassland as far as the eye could see, waving I that blasted wind, not a tree in sight, you could see the curve of the earth at least that’s what Trevor said. And the really good part, the speed limit changed to 130km/hr. It was awesome !!! The downside of course was the increased buffeting on your head, which really worked those neck muscles. The k’s just ticked by and sooner rather than later we hit Barkly roadhouse. Quick fill up and off again as there is a long way to go today another 380km. It went quickly despite the distance. We passed several campers, a lone guy on a Kawasaki, whom we passed several times as he passed us when we stopped to relieve our “numb bums”. The scenery changed frequently, one minute there was miles and miles of tussock , the next was miles and miles of scrubland, then rolling hills and on and on. It was amazing. Our next stop for the night is Threeways roadhouse. A long building with caravan park, tent sites and motel rooms outback. It supplied all sorts of fodd, groceries items, souvenirs, but all for a price. The burgers were $10 each but so huge you couldn’t get your mouth around them. There was a water shortage so we each had to pay a water tariffe, but the rooms were nice enough. Petrol was $....... When we got here we met half a dozen guys on motorbikes, 3 BMW 800F, 2 V-stroms and a guy on a road bike all going round the other way. They call themselves “round the block.com” and had T-shirts. I’m not sure if they knew each other or were just doing it together, but they were all loaded up, and tenting. They had come from Alice Springs today, which had the Finke Desert race starting on Sunday. (I know I had never heard of it either). Apparently a race across the desert lasting several days, a bit like the Dakar. The consequences of this of course is no accommodation. The guys on their bikes said they had to camp in a “dustbowl” as there was nothing else. Do we continue to Alice or divert to Darwin. After several phone calls we found a bed in a motel (Best Western, a bit pricey) for tomorrow night ( everywhere else was booked, although they suggested we try the casino as a last resort, or if we wanted to run out of money. I can just see the valet parking our bikes). Hopefully after tomorrow other accommodation will free up as we wanted to go to Uluru and back to Alice for a 2nd night. Tonight Trevor’s had diarrhoea overnight and an allergic reaction to something. Thank goodness for antihistamines. That’s all for now. See you in the morning. Off to Alice Springs, the Finke and hopefully an internet cafe to either upload all this or find a fix for the computer.

“The Lone Pine” Anne Brigman 1908 (reprinted in 1940) Silver gelatin print Anne Brigman was born in 1869. She lived in Hawaii until she was sixteen, when she moved to California. After starting her artistic career as a painter, she began working with photography in 1902. Her work showcases, in her own words, "slim, hearty, unaffected women of early maturity living a hardy out-of-door life in high boots and jeans, toughened to wind and sun." Brigman sought to liberate women from the constraints of a previously Victorian society. She placed her subjects in the rugged western landscape, nude and in touch with the natural world. She even posed herself in some of her photographs – careful though to obscure view of her left breast, lost to cancer. Brigman’s work was noted by Alfred Stieglitz and he invited her to join an elite group of American photographers known as the Photo-Secession. Its members were dedicated to promoting photography as a serious genre of fine art. Brigman was the only Secession member working west of the Mississippi and one of only a few women. Her work was held in high esteem, especially on the west coast where she influenced many of her contemporaries. In 1929, her photos took a different direction as she focused on more landscape-based subjects. Brigman died in 1950 near Los Angeles, a year after publishing “Songs of a Pagan,” a book of her poems and photographs. Brigman’s work is pictorialist in style. As opposed to survey photographers, who were out to document the west and its people from an almost anthropological point of view, Brigman strove to elevate photography to a higher art form. She appreciated the work of F. Holland Day and his attention to classicism and included elements of his work in her own. She deviates a bit, though, and integrates her subjects even more into the landscape. In “The Lone Pine,” her female figure crouches down, mirroring the curve of the wild tree behind her. As Brigman herself stated, she appreciated depicting the wild, liberated heart of the western, post-Victorian woman. She succeeds here, allowing her two subjects to become one, melting together and as a single entity embracing the untamed spirit at the heart of Brigman’s work.

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