Spanish Mustangs in the Great American West
By John S. Hockensmith
Published by Fine Arts Editions Gallery & Press
146 E. Main, Georgetown, KY 40324
ISBN (9 digit): ISBN: 0-9061-9975
ISBN (13 digit): ISBN: 978-0-8061-9975-7
Price: $49.95
Page Count: 272
June 2009
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Words from the Author-John Stephen Hockensmith
The horse is my muse, and his spirit has led me to this book. In endeavoring to embrace the freedom embodied in wild horses, I found a gift that I will attempt to share in these pages. This work also is a reflective journey back into times when there were few written records. What history exists from these eras has survived mainly through oral or personal accounts, creating an alluring aura surrounding the unknown. Perhaps these horses of the expansive West, descendants of the hardy equine souls who endured the harshness of rough seas and untamed wilderness as they enabled their Spanish masters to colonize the New World, are truly the great American metaphor: running free, galloping headlong into stiff winds on the open plains, living under no laws but those governed by nature. This ideal of unharnessed horses in flight across wild terrain stretching from horizon to horizon is certainly as emblematic of liberty as the bald eagle soaring across vast skies.
John S. Hockensmith
from a note from the Author:
Spanish Mustang in the Great American West
To this beautiful animal, whose personification is freedom, and to whom we as mankind owe so much, we should never say goodbye. We are to fan the embers of your blood, cherish the unspoken wisdom contained in your eyes, share the wind blown from your souls, and forever honor the debt of love and respect due you who are loyal, innocent descendants of Eden. We should never say goodbye
John S. Hockensmith
Spanish Mustang in the Great American West
Most history is just a resuscitation of what has already been written or told, but what I want to accomplish is to angle a mirror that reflects inspiration, hoping it enkindles the flame that allows others to rethink how they feel about our heritage. This book is but an episode in my continuing education—a lesson of reckoning, a lesson in living that is far different than going on a journey from one place to another and reporting what was seen. This is a personal passage that travels through time and across cultures, beginning with Christopher Columbus’s voyages and the return of the horse to the Western Hemisphere. This is an odyssey that transects five centuries in search of freedom, all the way into the Blackfeet Nation of the present day. In order to begin, I will take one step forward and two steps inward.
John S. Hockensmith
note from the Author:
Spanish Mustang in the Great American West
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