You know the old saying? “Wild horses couldn’t keep me away!” I’m not actually sure what that means. The picture above shows a herd of wild horses. They never tried to keep us away from anything except themselves.

We were never closer to these horses than maybe fifty feet. They ran. None of them charged us and they didn’t even come after me when I walked out amongst them. They would only allow me to get so close and then they prepared to run. When they did that I stopped and withdrew. There was a wild horse roundup taking place that day and we didn’t want to interfere.

Mel and I went horse hunting here in Wyoming last week–with binoculars and camera. It was something we’d been meaning to do for a while because I’ve always wanted to see herds of wild horses and Wyoming has a lot. We drove for quite some time in the two-track areas of the Red Desert of the south-central part of the state. It stormed, we got lost. It was an exhilarating experience!

In the middle of our hunt–in the middle of the storm–Mel saw something I would never have seen, and they were much closer to us than the horses. You’ll have to look closely to see it.

Do you see it? There was a flock of them less than fifteen feet from our car, and yet they blended so well with the sagebrush around them that Mel didn’t see them until one of them moved. Mel thought they were partridges because they looked very much like that bird. I asked around, and locals call these Sage Chickens. I tried to find sage chickens on Bing and all I found were recipes for cooking chicken with sage seasoning. So I looked further and discovered that these are called Greater Sage Grouse. They are as big as chickens, some even as big as wild turkeys, and they are game animals. We weren’t even looking for these and they just popped up from the desert for us to admire. So much wildlife to see in and around the Great Divide Basin–where the water neither runs to the Atlantic Ocean, Pacific Ocean, nor the Gulf of Mexico, but remains in the basin so that wildlife in the Red Desert can stay alive.

You see the two-track here past these horses? This is do-able for our all-wheel drive. These tracks crisscross the Red Desert, and because Wyoming is the least populated state in our country, these pretty much suffice for roads in much of the wilderness. I’m so thankful for them. But this a good section of this track. Other areas are so bad that we often have to turn around and go back the way we came.

I had a friend ask me yesterday if the stallions in these herds didn’t come after me when I walked out toward them. They did not. Two of them did rear up and face-off with one another, but typically the wild horses did what they do best–they ran. And they do it so beautifully.

So the only thing wild horses can keep us away from is themselves. They cannot keep us away from the love of God. Neither can death nor life, angels nor demons, present nor future, height nor depth, nor any power, nor anything else in all creation separate us from the love of God, which is in Jesus Christ.

We saw probably a total of thirty wild horses on this day. I look forward to more evidence of God’s creation in this wild place. We have not been disappointed yet. I’ll let you know when we discover more.