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But it was more than just the context of where I’d seen him that let me know that this was no ranch pony.

He looked up as soon as I had stopped the truck and then went back to eating. But as he tore up mouthfuls of dry winter grass, he kept turning his body, angling himself so, it seemed, that he could keep an eye on me as he grazed. I’ve noticed deer and elk doing this, moose, too. They don’t necessarily see the truck — and me — as a threat but they keep their bodies tensed just in case I turn out to be.

This guy decided not to bother waiting to see if I was a threat or not. With one fluid move, he lifted his head from the grass, stood as tall and erect as possible and came high-stepping toward me, ears up, eyes looking straight me, a stem of grass hanging out of the corner of his mouth.

Nope, this was no farmyard pet. This was a horse born in the brush and raised facing the same perils of weather and wolves and cougars as any deer or elk or moose. And he was just as wild as the country he was living in.

The upper reaches of the Red Deer River are magnificent, every bit as rugged and rough as the badlands that define its banks further downstream. Forest reaches down to the riverside and the water cuts its way through banded sandstone. Outcrops of coal show up.

But the landscape changes a bit as you go further west.

Just before the junction with Hwy. 40, the valley opens up. The forest gives way to willow-studded flats and the river broadens out and becomes more twisty as it makes its way along the gravelly valley floor.