My passion for environmental protection and conservation compelled me to pick up a camera in college to cover stories that strengthened the audience’s bond with nature and brought out innate human values. It was easy to infuse the idea that nature heals and to emphasize how we must protect what we love when I was furthering the missions of nonprofits but pitching those concepts in unscripted TV was not popular. In the end, I spent decades directing, producing and shooting docu-reality shows on a wide range of topics and themes that mostly skimmed the surface, but my non-profit and documentary work was what made me most proud. Recently I resolved to return to independent documentary filmmaking and was waiting for the right opportunity. Fortuitously a Facebook friend suggested I explore the John Wayne Smith story.

I was immediately drawn to this man's remarkable journey from addiction and homelessness to sobriety and stewardship. My experience directing A&E’s Intervention led me to understand that untreated trauma is a common root of substance abuse and homelessness and true recovery stories are rare. Homelessness often evokes varying levels of empathy and understanding but we rarely hear the individual stories behind the statistics. John's story aligned with my personal interests in the interconnectedness between nature and mankind, sustainability and horses as healing agents.  

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John Wayne Smith was instantly captivating, a rugged and resilient individual who embodied the frontier spirit yet beneath his exterior lay a soul deeply scarred by past trauma. I saw the chance to capture John’s healing process with wild horses in real time. As a fly on the wall, I could unobtrusively observe through my lens the seasonal rhythms of life on the mesa, the solitude and the lingering demons juxtaposed with the joy brought by the wild horses at John’s door. This approach allowed me to create a deeply immersive film experience for my audience further enhanced by the natural sounds from the mesa. Johns’s routines included a daily guitar jam and the blues tunes he strummed were the perfect lyrical accompaniment for punctuating his highs and lows.  The music also serves to trigger viewer’s nostalgia for the western cowboy.  

 

Ultimately the film pierces the romantic veil of the dominating stoic American rugged individualist frontier philosophy and exposes the universal human struggles for meaning, belonging and sustainable living as part of the natural world.