Call it serendipity, synchronicity, the Universe listening, or God answering a prayer…I found them..the wild horses of Arizona!
This month is not about a new aspect of freedom, it’s about what I’ve learned from some of my previous posts on creative freedom & adventure and how they impacted my recent trip to Phoenix and Sedona.
After spending four days experiencing stunningly beautiful, mystical Sedona, my friend and I decided to take a lesser, more scenic route back to Phoenix and it did not disappoint. The changes of terrain were as varied as if looking through a kaleidoscope. From arid, rocky vistas that went on for miles, to scrub pine, then the lush evergreen forests of Tonto National Park which then descended into desert & cactus, as far as the eye could…see it was a photographer’s dream! We were about 30 minutes out of our destination when I saw an unexpected signpost, ‘Lower Salt River’!
The home of the wild horses!
This is where synchronicity stepped in. Immediately after the sign was a dirt road with a highway patrol car sitting on it. We turned onto the road and rolling down my window, I asked the officer if he knew where I might find the wild horses. He looked at me rather amused and said, “Well, there are several herds in the area, but they are wild, so they could be anywhere.” I suspect my face fell in disappointment because he smiled, looked at his watch and said, “You know at this time of day, if you go straight down that road about 3 miles and turn left at the Butcher Jones sign, you just might find them at the end of the road.”
Butcher Jones…end of the dirt road…3 miles off the desert highway …insert scary music here!
Of course, we ignored the scary music playing in our brains.
The timing couldn’t have been more perfect!
There they were, a small herd with a couple of young additions, grazing near the river. I leapt out of the car, camera at the ready. Minutes later they cantered down into the Salt River, with me running after them!
Yes, I said running! Remember the post where I wrote that I was telling my knees I’m Only 32ish? Well, I was telling them repeatedly on that day, as I had also been doing in Sedona, when I was determined to climb Bell Rock, but that’s another story!
Needless to say, for me, it was a magical experience to strike that off My Life To Do List. To be honest, though, it wasn’t quite as wild as I’d imagined. I had found the horses and they were wild, but we were in a small park where people were picnicking and swimming!
Still, I knew these wonderful animals had been coming to the park far longer than we humans had and I could envision how it must have been for them, long before mankind had inserted the unnatural barriers they now had to manoeuvre around. Sadly, they are now only as wild as man has allowed them to be, but I pray they live free forever.
When we returned to the highway, our guardian angel in the patrol car was gone, but my thrilled heart was still galloping along to the beat of Arizona’s wild horse hooves!
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