Wild Hearts, Willing Spirits

Wild Hearts, Willing Spirits

February 18, 2009 ~ It's hard to believe it has been almost a year since I started this website. In early September 2008 I was diagnosed with Stage 3b Malignant Melanoma and the next six months were filled with fear and restructuring of my life as I hoped for the best, yet prepared for the worst. I have had several serious surgeries, the last on January 15th, and I am currently recovering as well as can be expected. The most excellent news is that the last surgery found no additional cancer cells, officially making me No Evidence of Disease. For the next several years I will need to have PET/CT scans and a physical exam by an oncology dermatologist every three months and we hope to find no recurrance of cancer. For more information about my personal journey with melanoma, I have been posting regularly to my other blog, Life at Star's Rest. As soon as I feel more healed and spring gets a bit closer, I intend to get back to following around the Wild Boys in their mountain adventures, and to get back to work on the 'From Thinking to Feeling' riding program. My heartfelt thanks to everyone who has sent me kind words of support...Carmon

March 26, 2008

In 2002, we adopted our first BLM mustang and nothing has ever been the same since. Slowly but surely, a lifetime of beliefs about horses fell away as we were adopted in return. One mustang led to two, then three and eventually a small herd of five bachelors began to share their lives with two fascinated humans in the middle of a ponderosa pine forest, on the side of a mountain in northern New Mexico.

An invitation to speak at the 2007 Voice of the Horse Conference about the work we are doing with our wild ones resulted in a publishing inquiry for a book describing our relationship work with formerly wild horses. It seemed like an excellent idea at the time, except that this is an ongoing process and we are learning more every day. Any book written today would probably be rewritten before the year was out.

Instead, we decided to create this website where people can read a book in progress as we explore the world of The Herd and how they relate to their two-legged companions. And how this information just might change the way people see and relate to their own horses forever.

We are now beginning the process of developing this website and hope to have it fully running over the next six months. You can already access the Wild Hearts and Star's Rest blogs using the sidebar links at the left. Along with other public access information that we will be adding soon, we hope to eventually include the following ~

The Wild Hearts, Willing Spirits book as it is written. This will be a dynamic process as we continue to explore and share the lives of four formerly wild horses and one domestic horse. As we teach them about life in the domestic world, they have in turn taught us the foundations of their language and about the cooperative life of the herd. In the end, we learn far more than we teach.

Our goal is to bring the intensely cooperative relationship we share with our formerly wild mustangs to all people and all horses, with the hope of creating greater understanding of the natural way of the horse. The text will be enhanced with video clips of herd interactions along with beautiful photos of our horses in their mountain home. Readers will be encouraged to bring lessons learned home to their own horses, and to share the results on the Wild Hearts Forum. This will be primarily a subscription access portion of the website.

The Wild Hearts Forum will be an interactive message board available to all subscription holders, where we will make every effort to answer questions and where readers can share their own observations and interactions with their horses.

The Lesson Program, From Thinking to Feeling ~ a mind, body and spirit path to riding in unity. ©, is part of an ongoing experiment in teaching riding to adults using a new format and process. Following the exciting success of an experimental Basic Summer Riding School during the summer of 2007, we hope to bring this innovative program to riders and their horses everywhere. Much more will be posted about this program soon.

The Wild Hearts, Willing Spirits blog will follow the daily interactions of The Herd with videos and photos. Begin to understand the difference between wild raised horses and their domestic counterparts and in the process, help us to change the lives of domestic horses into something that allows for community and a life that makes sense to them.

We hope you will continue to return often as we develop this website to explore and share the natural world of the horse and how we can become part of it.