Ann-alog, a Pixel Remix, where Ann Torrence blogs about photographing for a book on U.S. Highway 89, the greatest road trip route in America. Photography tips, locations, trip reports, and real life.

Wild horses in their paddock at Butterfield Canyon

The difference in the horses' demeanor at second day at the Festival of Learning's mustang gentling is striking. They still blast out of the trailer like uncrated Tasmanian devils, but once they are back in their separate training zones, they settled right down. No more crashing into the panels or panicky loping the perimeter. Mostly they just stood calmly and waited. With appropriate direction, I got in the round pen with a gorgeous little buckskin on his second session, walked up to him and scratched his head.

I spent one session yesterday watching Brent work with an absolutely petrified mare in her first gentling session. For twenty minutes she tested every junction in the panel fence, worked herself into a sweat trying to run away from him, which is sort of hard to do in a round pen. Every time she ran away, in just a few seconds, there he was as she came around the circle. After a while, he started giving her direction: first to simply turn away, then to turn back, over and over until it dawned on her that he was controlling her movements. Then she began to relax, accepting him as the lead horse in the pen, and within an hour he had her turning toward him on a vocal command. The next step will be to convert that vocal command into slowing the turn toward him, stopping and facing him. Then he can start to approach her with the halter. It's slow, but I see how it works. The human must be the alpha mare in the herd (even a herd of 2) at all times.

In the evening, after a dozen horses had received their lessons and three new burros had been gentled, we went out to the Salt Lake Wild Horse and Burro Facility where some of the BLM's herd of horses is held for adoption. The manager gave us the full tour of the place, and then took us into a couple of the pens WITH the horses. The mustangs are separated by age and gender. The young males were kind of curious as we walked through their pasture, but the 2 and 3 year old females immediately surged toward us. I watched one of the trainers as the horses surrounded him, and he didn't have enough hands to give all the scratches and pets to everyone who wanted them. I tried to take pictures, but pretty soon I had four horses around me wanting attention. I had to keep reminding myself, these are wild animals. Easily spooked, but they were accepting us on their terms so long as we didn't act like predators. I didn't want to leave them, and they seemed to feel the same way, because about 60 of them followed us down the hill to the gate. If they had decided to rush the gate, it would have been interesting, but the handlers steered them off. We saw a few mares with new foals, having been brought off the range already pregnant, and 15 more burros.

If I had a place to take her, one of those mares who chose me would have gone home with me last night. She's healthy and doing fine in her herd, but she deserves an adopter who can give her a happy, useful life. This is a serious responsibility, and I respect the people who can do it. I also suspect that the reward of a happy mustang is worth the effort.

Wild burro and me (Canon G9, ISO 1600, photographed by a participant with my camera)

I saw some amazing animal-trainer interactions today at the Intermountain WIld Horse and Burro Advisors' Festival of Learning: a wild mustang learning to come to a hand signal, another going from bouncing off the corral walls to a halter in under two hours, and this burro accepting hugs and scratches, a halter, and a clipper treatment in one session. Yes, I am in love, but with another burro, a yearling who rested her head on my shoulder and demanded to stand between two of us to get more attention.

Even when five trainers and about 30 participants were working in separate pens, the arena was quiet, except for the occasional snorting of a horse. Each trainer had a different technique, from making hand motions to communicate to the horse an impression of cacti and granite walls in the landscape, to stroking the animal with a 10' long bamboo pole. Each one got results. The common trait was an absolute certainty of authority in the corral, giving the horse confidence of its place in its new herd. Repeatedly, these wild animals burst out of the trailer into the corrals and then progressed through the fear to a calm and curious acquiesence, until their attention span was exhausted, and they were returned to the stables. Tomorrow the same horses will come back for another session - it will be fascinating to see how much they retain. One of the trainers said the refresher part of the lesson will be very short, because mustangs are very smart. On the range, it's learn fast or die.

These horses and burros are up for adoption this weekend at the Festival in South Jordan. I have no land, corral, shelter, or any of the other items the BLM requires of adopters, and it's not my time to have one of these animals in my life. After today, I can imagine that time will be sooner rather than never.

Tomorrow I take the full photographic arsenal.

Three macro shots of a tulip in my backyard

I have been thinking of digging up all of my spring flowers and replacing them with edibles, even though they are such fun to photograph in the "wild" of my yard. I want to replace them with asparagus and strawberries and even jerusalem artichokes. But the tulips are pretty.

I've got about 200 sq feet of vegetable beds, planted out in potatoes, tomatoes, beans, salads. The main experiment this year is to try Eliot Coleman's strategy for extending the garden into fall and winter, if I can keep it going through the weedy, discouraging period of July.

Tonight we ate weeds, in that I have a few "walking onions" that dropped bulbs last year. I let them go until they grew to be somewhere in between leeks and scallions. I wanted fresh green onions for dinner-we had a fine mess of these alliums, otherwise known as Egyptian or tree onions that needed thinning. We also have random seedings of arugula, borage, and other things I couldn't be bothered to weed last summer after Montana. One year, I actually let everything flower, from lettuce to radishes, just to see what would happen (note to self: do not repeat). Radishes form edible pods that last on the plant much longer than the roots do in the garden. Lettuce will blow like dandelion heads, and come up for years.

This year, I let the tomato seedlings get sunburnt and bought fresh from the garden store; the amaranth experiment may be a total failure; and R is looking at the rhubarb division with great suspicion (quick, send rhubarb salsa recipes, please!). On the other hand, over the years I have counted 20 kinds of native bees in my tiny little plot. And not much comes up before the flower bulbs. So I am undecided on the tulips. But if you are in SLC and want some walking onions, come by with a vessel to carry some away, before I eat them all.

Apropos nothing in the text, just a pretty spot in Wyoming*

R forwarded me this story from MSNBC about the degradation of air quality in rural Wyoming as a result of the rapidly spawning gas industry during the last few years. Nothing we couldn't have predicted.

Since 2003, I've watched how the BLM's "oversight" and the gas industry exploitation have impacted Sublette County, everything from dangerous meth-high equipment drivers on the highway to ripping up miles of virgin landscape to lay pipelines. The industry spokespeople are asking for trust and cooperation to solve these air quality problems. Have they earned that trust? Sublette County should have seen this coming. In fact, the county commissioner called the ex-governor a "whore for the industry" back in 2003. Them's fighting words. I hope the good folks of Sublette County has it in them to fight hard, because the Wind Rivers are some of the last great country left.

Meanwhile, the BLM is reviewing a proposal to allow 4,000 more rigs in the field. The formerly gorgeous winter landscape of the Wind River basin could end up like the Wasatch Front on a bad inversion day, and we'll have only ourselves to blame.

*Granite Creek Falls in the Bridger-Teton National Forest

Balanced Rock sunset

The real problem with the Moab Photo Symposium was that there simply was not enough time to do everything. I told the organizer, Bruce Hucko, that I wanted an "E" ticket to the party since I'd not been before, and even then, I missed out on way too much. I could have happily gone to every workshop, photographed at every sunrise and sunset.

The theme was "Bodies of Work, Bodies at Work" and we saw some fascinating projects- I especially enjoyed learning about Chris Conrad's night photography and ViviAnn Rose's hand-colored nudes. David Hiser, Jeff Foott and Tom Till gave three very different presentations on the life of a world-traveling photographer; Foott's talk illustrated the kinds of photos needed to illustrate an editorial piece, which was deeply interesting as I envision telling the Highway 89 story. It was interesting to hear three old-school film guys talk about their digital experiences, especially Till, who has been enjoying shooting with a DSLR after years of lugging around a 4x5 camera. Rory Tyler showed us petroglyphs he discovered-rarely do I meet someone with such a depth of passion for any topic as Rory has for rock art, not just of the southwest, but world-wide. Steve Traut made us all laugh, and I hope to see his work in Grand Junction sometime. I missed out on Vic Beer's HDR workshop, and I didn't get a chance to talk to Adriel Heisey until Sunday, which was a mistake because we have a lot of territory to discuss. His aerial work is tops. And I'm still pondering Brian Parkin's thoughts on working with galleries and how it applies to my work.

So I didn't get to go on up for any dawn shoots. The first day I was still practicing the first ten minutes of my talk; then I was scouting for my workshop. Not enough time! That's why I've already agreed to go back next year. Hope to see you there.

Tom Kelly has a great write-up on the Moab Photo Symposium too.