Katherine "Katie" McLoughlin: The stories we hear about how the West was won are all lies. The history of the West was written by the horse. Wherever a settler left his footprint there was a hoof print beside it. Men came further and further west to stake their claim on the great American wilderness. But they encountered a strength that couldn't be tamed - wild horses. Mustangs. The settlers called them parasites that would strip the land and starve their own herds. They couldn't domesticate them so they destroyed them. Isolated and hungry, they were on their way to disappearing from the face of the earth. Sometimes when the light disappears an afterimage remains - just for a second. Mustangs are an afterimage of the West, no better then ghosts, hardly there at all. No one really wants them, not ranchers, not city people - that's their destiny. Let them disappear once and for all, along with all the other misfits, loners, and relics of a wilderness no one cares about anymore. Lucky for us a few mustangs survived, hidden away in the mountains. We need to protect them, for they are the hope of some kind of living memory of what the promise of America used to be - and could be again. I believe there is a force in this world that lives beneath the surface, something primitive and wild that awakens when you need an extra push just to survive, like wildflowers that bloom after fire turns the forest black. Most people are afraid of it, and keep it buried deep inside themselves. But there will always be a few people who have the courage to love what is untamed inside us. One of those men is my father. There was once a time when Americans came West to discover their destiny. Today they seem to move around every which way, restless and unsettled. But I think they're still looking for the same thing - a place where they can be optimistic about the future, a place that helps them to be who they really want to be, where they can feel that this life makes sense, a place where they can feel what I feel when I'm riding Flicka - because when we're riding, all I feel... is free.
