This morning, while randomly searching the web, I ran across an obscure headline:

                       ” JUDGE ALLOWS WILD HORSE ROUNDUP IN NEVADA”

Before I could move my mouse to call up the article my mind recalled a memory from a few years back.

Just that quick I was in the high desert. It was a January morning, minutes after dawn. Mother Nature had blessed us overnight with eight inches of fine white powder. It was enough to change the look of the unbroken sea of sage into giant, deformed cotton balls.

Watching closely, there were no tracks in the snow as our pickup wound slowly through the flats. We were somewhere in O’Neil’s Basin, a large irregularly shaped bowl, miles across, surrounded in the distance by low mountains. The sky was cloudless. The sunlight reflecting off the new snow gave the gray of the mountains a forbidding look. In every direction, as far as my eyes could see, there was no visible sign of man. Being from Michigan’s north woods, the terrain seemed about as familiar as the dark side of the moon. I loved it.

Officially we were there to hunt varmints, coyotes, song dogs; they go by many names. While that was true, for me the other reason was to experience something of the remote western country that you miss by flying over or racing along the Interstate. This was our third and final day; that goal had already been met.

Our guide, Gabe, was driving. I was sitting behind him. His job was to keep the rubber side down and the truck rolling, with the snow it would be easy to get stuck and we were a very long way from AAA. My only job was to watch for tracks.

Suddenly, there was something moving, running, something dark I could see it above the giant balls of white.

“There,” I shouted.

Since we were hunting coyotes, that’s what I expected to see. My eyes locked on. I realized what I was seeing before Gabe called back, “Wild horse!”

It was a stallion, black as midnight, running free as the wind. I could just make out the massive muscles of its chest flexing with each stride. Despite the snow, the horse was fast. Its long, untrimmed tail and mane snapping behind like ragged flags.

The stallion turned and headed north toward the mountains.

I’m not sure how long we stared in silence. A minute, two, maybe three, until the horse disappeared down a cut.

“Some of these ranchers shoot those wild horses,” Gabe said.

“Yeah,” I answered trying not to sound sad.

I clicked my mouse and the article popped on screen. The first line put a sour taste in my mouth.

“The Obama Administration said Wednesday it was going forward with a contentious plan to round up about 2,500 wild horses in Nevada.”

I read the article slowly, and then read it again.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m no bleeding heart, softy. I sympathize with the ranchers. The horses compete with their cattle and sheep. I understand the problems caused by over population of one wild species. Here in Michigan, sometimes, our problem is whitetail deer, but that is more easily handled by increasing the bag limit. I understand that with the wild horses something has to be done too.

The article was talking about a roundup in the Calico Mountains area of northwestern Nevada, the general area of my hunt years back.

It told how helicopters would drive the horses into pens. It didn’t speculate on how many will be injured or traumatized. Then they will be trucked east to “long-term holding pens” in Kansas and Oklahoma. Although the horses are put up for adoption, I’ve read in other articles that the adoption process is so complicated and costly that not many take place.

My biggest problem with this deal is that the federal government runs it. When was the last time the government did any job well?

I know something has to be done with the horses, but there must be a better solution. I don’t know what, I wish I did.

I really hate to think that my wild horse might end up spending the rest of his life in a holding pen in Kansas.