Mimi Plumb's upcoming book, Megalith-still, is a meditation on the
sublime of the wild American landscape. Over the course of several summers, in the late
In the 1990s and early 2000s, Mimi Plumb left her home in San
Francisco to travel to Kings Canyon, a wilderness area where she took communion
with a band of horses. She will come to produce a series of portraits of the
herd, imbued with a deep tenderness and a powerful physical weight.
"Horses sleep lying down, their legs restless, their mouths wrapped around their
blades of grass. Flies are attracted to their moist, flickering eyes.
I'm as close as I can concentrate, examining their faces, their
tails, their hooves and their bellies, bewitched by the sensuality of the horse and the
place. "I am in a meadow at the top of the Sierra Nevada. The channels of the
San Joaquin River weaves through the thick, lush grass. I remove
my shoes and socks, I roll up my pants and wade in
shallow water to where the horses are eating. They
draw a pattern, mysterious to me, around the meadow, eating, drinking
and sleeping. "In the late afternoon, the horses suddenly leave the meadow in one
single file. I chase them through a swamp of thick mud, trees
dead and branches that scratch my arms. They trot and gallop,
moving faster than they have all day. I can't seem to
catch up with them. When I reach the edge of the main bank, I see the
last of the horses advance cautiously into the deep, fast-moving water, and
"float slowly to the other shore." - Mimi Plumb
