She did not know she was ancient. A blue roan mare stands in the Nevada basin with her colt at her flank, her hooves hard as obsidian, her blood carrying fifty million years ofthis continent's memory. She knows the wind. She knows the water. Shedoes not know about the helicopters being fueled at airstrips in Elkoand Winnemucca, or the sixty thousand horses already penned in holdingfacilities across the West.
The Last Free Thing traces the wild horse from the dawn of the Eocenethrough the Comanche empire, from a secretary named Velma Johnston whofollowed a truck dripping blood to a slaughterhouse and spent twenty-sevenyears fighting to protect what she found inside, to the holding pens andpolicy failures that threaten the mustang today. Part natural history, part biography, part investigation, and part loveletter to the American West, this book tells the story of the oldestanimal on the continent and the people who have loved, used, betrayed, and fought to save it.
All author proceeds go toward the creation of a wild horse sanctuary.
She did not know she was ancient. A blue roan mare stands in the Nevada basin with her colt at her flank, her hooves hard as obsidian, her blood carrying fifty million years ofthis continent's memory. She knows the wind. She knows the water. Shedoes not know about the helicopters being fueled at airstrips in Elkoand Winnemucca, or the sixty thousand horses already penned in holdingfacilities across the West.
The Last Free Thing traces the wild horse from the dawn of the Eocenethrough the Comanche empire, from a secretary named Velma Johnston whofollowed a truck dripping blood to a slaughterhouse and spent twenty-sevenyears fighting to protect what she found inside, to the holding pens andpolicy failures that threaten the mustang today. Part natural history, part biography, part investigation, and part loveletter to the American West, this book tells the story of the oldestanimal on the continent and the people who have loved, used, betrayed, and fought to save it.
All author proceeds go toward the creation of a wild horse sanctuary.