Alone in wyoming
As I am in the midst of some arctic equestrian shoots in the Pacific Northwest, it is only fitting to share one of my sessions from last winter. I hope you enjoy the tale as much as I enjoy the memory.
It was the dead of December. I had lucked out with the weather considering it was 48 degrees below zero at that time the year prior. But it was still quite cold, iced over, and snowing. We loaded two horses into my host's gooseneck and headed into the mountains. We pulled into the emptied 7D guest ranch after dark, unloaded horses, settled them in with their hay, and got our things into one of the cabins. We couldn't get a fire lit, there was no heat, and it was damn cold. Especially considering we had gained a lot of elevation moving from the Cody valley up into the mountain range. A satellite phone and a firearm were our only other constant companions.
We opted for spiked hot chocolates and an oven pizza to warm us up, toasting goodnight until the next morning. We woke up somewhere around 3 AM to trudge through the snow and still air to prepare the horses. As soon as we were saddled, it was a chore to even get me up there. I was bundled with thick coats, partially strangled and immobilized by a camera bag strapped to my back on top of it all. I had cloth bands wrapped around my head and crushed into into my cowboy hat, anything to make me warmer.
We set off into the dark pines and immediately came upon the river, partially iced over. It was the most terrifying moment of my photography career. Walking on a horse I didn't know with my livelihood strapped to my back as we cracked through the ice layer down into the water, in the pitch black. My co-part was hooping and hollering to spook up any animals and clear them from our path. The ranch was deserted, as it was wintertime and all of the horses had been moved down to the valley. There was a sobering feeling in the air around me, knowing I was completely at the mercy of anything we came across.
We rode for a couple of hours, and my fantasy that all of the grizzlies were hibernating was crushed when my friend showed me what bear scat looked like along the trail. Right as the sun began to rise, we arrived at our destination. I pulled my camera out somehow, and began shooting while she rode her buckskin across the ridge. The sunrise was ethereal. Steam rose from the mountain edges, golden light paling through the steam clouds. As if it could not become more magical, snow began to fall and dust the entire scene. My two friends here looked like a scene out of The Revenant. A lady Leonardo DiCaprio. The moment was interrupted by her buckskin throwing a burst of bucks and crow hops on the mountain ridge above me, near cliffs and steep drops. My horse leapt forward and required a stream of quiet verbal assurances to calm down.
I realized with a sharply increasing sense of impending doom that my horse's bridle had then vacated its face. The moments after I can't completely recall because I believe I had a sort of mental blackout of panic for my camera's life. I couldn't even figure out how to throw myself off with how constricted I was. But I did, got the bridle back on and rigged up, and kept shooting. FROM THE GROUND for a while this time. After the bride came off of my horse and I had bailed was the moment I captured this. Pilot the buckskin had paused in his flight and stood along the edge of a snowy rock ledge, be-speckled by young pines and rock formations. You would never know the pure fear and adrenaline that I had been feeling in this moment.
I completed the session and spent the following hours descending the mountain on the back of my newly trusted equine companion, Valkyrie. It was one of the most beautiful and surreal mornings of my life. But in that one ride, there were some paralyzing moments. Fear is different when you know there is no one to save you. A fun outing could easily go wrong in ways you wouldn’t expect. To this day, I will not shoot from horseback. My camera remains secured and I hold tight to the memories of a winter in Wyoming wilderness.
