Return to Freedom: Gone But Not Forgotten
Return to Freedom’s American Wild Horse Sanctuary is home for the wild horses, wildlife, and other animals who have found refuge here. Their presence creates a transformative quality which touches all who visit. As our cherished friends and teachers move on to greener pastures, we celebrate and honor them and what they taught us.
Freedom was a very young foal when he came to Return to Freedom in 1999 from the Hart Mountain National Wildlife Refuge. The Hart Mountain horses were gathered from the Refuge in 1998 as part of a complete removal of wild horses from that area by the Fish and Wildlife Service. These horses were rounded up on horseback as opposed to helicopter.
The horses are diverse shades of roan, bays, and chestnuts. Hart Mountain is very close to Beatty’s Butte where the famous Kiger Mustangs were discovered. The Kigers display a lot of old world Spanish Barb markings and conformation. Some of the horses captured off Hart Mountain also have strong Spanish Barb characteristics.
Freedom was one of the lucky ones who arrived at the Sanctuary with his family band. Today, Freedom has his own herd group of seven mares and four colts and fillies.
Pictures of Our Beloved Freedom
In 2001 in the Warm Springs area of Oregon, a liver chestnut mare roamed free with her wild herd until a government roundup shattered her world forever.
Chased by helicopter and trapped in catch pens, this mare and her herd were scattered to auction lots around the country. Everything she once knew was ripped away from her in a moment, without warning. The chestnut mare — now called Epic — would spend a year moving from auction lot to auction lot, wondering what this strange new world was and undoubtedly longing for her family and her freedom.
We do not know what happened to the rest of her herd. Maybe some of the young ones were adopted, so people could try their hand at “breaking” a wild horse. But no one wanted this mare and Epic was eventually sent to a long term holding facility and made available for sale to the highest bidder. The highest bidder was a rodeo and Epic would spend the next chapter of her life beaten and broken on a daily basis as bucking stock. When her tired body and diminished spirit made her no longer suitable to entertain the crowds at the rodeo, Epic was sold to a black market horse slaughter farm in Tampa, FL. It would not be long before this mare — once wild and free — would be butchered alive for her meat. At about the same time, Richard Couto was working undercover for Animal Recovery Mission (ARM) on an investigation into illegal horse slaughter farms.
His investigation (warning: content may be disturbing) brought him to the same farm where Epic was awaiting her grisly fate. When Richard arrived on the farm the conditions were shocking. Animals were on fire; pigs were eating horse carcasses and signs of abuse and neglect were rampant. He spotted a chestnut mare with the number 3617 branded on her hip. He knew immediately that it was a BLM brand and that this defeated, sad mare was once one of America’s most cherished symbols of freedom. How could this be her fate? Couto fabricated a story about wanting the mare as a riding horse and was able to purchase the mare from her butchers. Couto not only saved Epic from a horrific fate that day, but he also saved her unborn foal. The mare was pregnant. The fate for unborn foals in these ruthless slaughter farms is to cut them out of the mare and sell their meat like veal (baby calves raised in small crates till they are butchered).
Epic and her foal, named Kudo, lived for the next year at Wild Horse Rescue Center in Tampa. There she was loved, nursed back to health and cared for. Her nightmare was over.
Then, Richard Couto, of ARM, contacted Return to Freedom to go a step further for Epic and her colt: In September 2012, Epic, Kudo and her best friend Miss Mara made the journey across the country to live out their days at the rolling hills of Return to Freedom’s wild horse sanctuary. Here they have joined other herds that lost their wild homes and found a new one at the sanctuary.
On September 14, 2022, the forever cautious and wild mare , Epic, left this world on her terms —-joining Mara who left us a few years ago.
Luckily, her beautiful colt Kudo has integrated well and is surrounded by a herd of friends. He was able to say goodbye and witness her lifeless body, but he has a long life left to live.
Pictures of Our Beloved Epic
“I believe in aging gracefully,” she used to say but didn’t have time to prove it to the end. Her premature passing left us bereft of the chance to watch this magnetic beauty growing old, with the same self-possession and passion with which she lived her life in the tumultuous, fully-exposed, and glorious years of her youth.
As we belonged to the same generation and cultural background, I always recognized in Tatjana Patitz the European flair that made her stand out from the crowd wherever she was. Mastering both sophistication and the elegance of refusal, she embodied authenticity in a sea of artifice and vanity, while remaining an enigma to the industry and audience alike. In a strange yet explicable way, I felt heartbroken by her untimely demise.
Born in Hamburg and raised in Sweden, Tatjana was discovered in 1983, at 17, when she placed third in the finals of an Elite Model Contest in Stockholm. She won a trip to Paris and a limited-time contract, but it took until the late ‘80s for her career to really take off.
It was around this time that she had the magical encounter with German photographer Peter Lindbergh, whose work would be instrumental for her career and for whom she’d model as his beloved muse for the following three decades.
Renowned for his preference for natural beauty and unretouched photos, Peter Lindberg took for Vogue the now-iconic shot of Patitz, together with Estelle Lefébure, Karen Alexander, Rachel Williams, Linda Evangelista, and Christy Turlington, frolicking in their white oxford shirts on the beach in Malibu, in 1988. Lindbergh’s photo “White Shirts: Six Supermodels, Malibu” set in motion the Supermodels era and changed forever the way we see fashion.
Two years later, Lindbergh shot the legendary cover for 1990 British Vogue, showing Tatjana Patitz, Christy Turlington, Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, and Linda Evangelista in the streets of New York, in a black and white photo that became a touchstone of the period’s glamour photography and launched the fabulous five young models as the Supermodels. Lindbergh’s strong aesthetic, and the sense of timelessness inherent to his images, transformed the women he photographed into heroines of their time, personalities who became supermodels, to later be known only by their first names.
About Patitz, Lindbergh wrote in his book, 10 Women, “I admire Tatjana because she always stays herself. She’s very soft, but at the same time she’s very strong and knows how to stand up for what she thinks, and it’s always very enriching to be with her. It’s impossible not to admire her and over the years not to be just a little bit in love with her.”
The British Vogue’s January 1990 supermodels cover inspired George Michael to invite the same cast to appear and lip-sync in his “Freedom ’90” music video. That went down in history like one of Tatjana’s best-known appearances, at the height of the MTV era, and put posters with Fab5 on every teenager’s bedroom wall worldwide. And then, they walked for the Versace fashion show in 1990, which sealed them as stars who transcended the realm of fashion.
Tajana Patitz went on with a flourishing career, becoming known as well for her work on television commercials, which employed her striking beauty for humorous effect. She had a role in a 1988 Levi’s commercial opposite male model Bruce Hulse, which was banned in the UK for the intense sexual chemistry, another one in a 1990 commercial for Stainmaster carpeting, named by Entertainment Weekly one of 1991’s best advertisements, and a few film and television roles in the 1990s, most noteworthy in the crime drama “Rising Sun” (1993), based on a Michael Crichton novel, alongside Sean Connery and Wesley Snipes.
She scored more than 130 covers, according to Elite, and appeared in countless major magazines. She marched for luxury brands such as Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent, Versace, Valentino, Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein, Salvatore Ferragamo, Karl Lagerfeld, Helmut Lang, Donna Karan, Jean Paul Gaultier, and Vivienne Westwood. During her career, Tatjana Patitz had long-standing working relationships with Peter Lindbergh, Herb Ritts, and Patrick Demarchelier, but she worked with other famous photographers, such as Irving Penn, Helmut Newton, Richard Avedon, Annie Leibovitz, Steven Meisel, Sheila Metzner, Wayne Maser, Gilles Bensimon, Francesco Scavullo, Inez and Vinoodh.
But what made Tatjana Patitz so unusual, so different, so singular?
As she told Vogue in a 1988 interview, “people always said that I looked special; that I didn’t look like anyone else. And I was going to make it because of that.”
She was indeed distinct from her peers. When they separated the women from the girls, she stood out for her womanly allure, assumed and knowing, never that of a naive ingenue. A true Germanic beauty – statuesque, edgy, cool, intense, and sinfully seductive, she was a force to be reckoned with and commanded any room she stepped into. The piercing gaze of her dangerously hypnotic blue eyes, which had the perfect combination of fire and ice, gave her the “otherworldly look” widely recognized by the industry.
Photographer Matthew Rolston said of Patitz, in 1990, “There’s a depth, an emotional quality in her that’s truly extraordinary.”
“Her features are a bit off; she’s not a typical, commercial beauty, but when I shoot her, I’m never bored. Her looks have power, strength, intensity,” said celebrated photographer Herb Ritts.
“It’s hard to get a bad picture of Tatjana. She’s very photogenic, which is very rare, and she looks different in every light,” added photographer Patrick Demarchelier.
“Tatjana was always the European symbol of chic, like Romy Schneider-meets-Monica Vitti,” remembered Anna Wintour, global editorial director of Vogue. “She was far less visible than her peers – more mysterious, more grown-up, more unattainable – and that had its own appeal.”
Apart from the other original supermodels, Patitz tried to distance herself from the fashion industry. She decided to make her home not in New York or Paris, but in California, where she moved in 1989, at the height of her fame, so she could be closer to nature and her animals. “I always thought [fashion and modeling] wasn’t what I was into; as that was what I was doing. It didn’t define me”, she said.
A lifelong animal lover, she collaborated for decades with the PETA association and the nonprofit Return to Freedom Wild Horse Conservation. “The horse, to me, represents freedom. My favorite place to see anything in the world is from on top of a horse. I have horses and my passion for horses to thank for staying grounded. I don’t know what I’ve learned from horses, but maybe I’ve learned everything,” she confessed in a video filmed at Return to Freedom Wild Horse by Kurt Iswarienko.
She continued to work in fashion throughout her mature years, but she chose her projects “very selectively,” she told Mercedes-Benz’s 63Magazine in 2016, seeking to “combine my work as a model with my vocation as a protector of nature and animals.”
“Living here and coming back to this place has been like a sigh of relief, in a way,” Tatjana Patitz said in 2009 to The Guardian, discussing the refuge she found in her ranch in the Santa Ynez Valley, California, and roaming the Santa Barbara horse country’s wilderness with her son Jonah, now 19, her “source of happiness.”
Her last appearance was in 2019 when Tatjana Patitz walked the runway at Milan fashion week for Etro’s fall-winter 2019/2020 show.
Behind the public persona, who traveled the world sometimes on 40 flights a month, there was a woman of extraordinary kindness and exquisite emotional depth. Diana Addison Lyle was close to Tatjana and describes her as “a well-read person who found the need to study life and human behavior; always polite, respectful, kind, courteous and gracious; a woman who never had a vain bone in her body. She was an artist who saw fashion as an art form. Everybody in the industry loved her because they saw something special in her – and aspired to attain that specialness.” Says Benjamin Lindbergh, son of the late Peter Lindbergh, “Tatjana will be remembered for her natural kindness, her inner beauty, and her extraordinary intelligence. My father’s work is inextricably linked to her image, a unique combination of understated strength and effortless elegance that inspired him throughout his career.” Peter Lindbergh passed in 2019, and Benjamin Lindbergh is the President of the Peter Lindbergh Foundation.
Peering through tens of her photos to choose for this article, I found myself again mesmerized by the magnetism of her lynx eyes, by their inescapable attraction, and asked myself once more, what was the source of her power? Maybe it was the fact that she “never sold her soul,” as Patitz said in a 2020 interview.
Or maybe it was that she knew the answer to the oldest mystery in the world – of who we are and what we are to each other, to ourselves, to time.
“I hope you’re riding on a horse in endless meadows with that smile on your face and the wind blowing in your hair,” Helena Christensen posted to her Instagram account.
I like to think of her sharing that smile with Peter again, while he captures – as only he knows – the spell of her ethereal grace one last time, not so much with his camera as with the shutter curtains of his heart.
Photo Editing By Dumitru Andrei | Photo Credits: Opening Photo – Courtesy Of FashionModelDirectory.com * Tatjana Patitz, French Vogue, Cafe De Flore, Paris,1985 – Courtesy Of Artnet.com * Tatjana Patitz, Photo By Patrick Demarchelier, 1990 – Courtesy Of Vogue.com * Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, Tatjana Patitz, Christy Turlington & Cindy Crawford, Vogue UK, 1990 | Tatjana Patitz With Son, California, 2012 | Closing Photo By Peter Lindbergh For Vogue Italy,1990 — Courtesy Of Peter Lindbergh, Paris, Gagosian Gallery.
Pictures of Our Beloved Tatjana
On the morning of Oct. 8, 2018, we said goodbye to our beloved friend and ambassador Sutter, the palomino stallion with a heart of pure gold. Sutter was 32 years old.
Sutter has carried the dreams of so many and in sharing his story touched the hearts and minds of thousands of people who now know about the beauty, strength, and nobility of the stallion, the American mustang and their fight to survive.
Sutter was one of our greatest teachers and reminds us that when we extend love, we receive it. Sutter was captured from public lands in the Warm Springs area of Nevada when he was about two years old. He suffered extreme abuse as a young colt when he was adopted to a trainer and was returned to BLM, deemed “dangerous,” and was marked as a horse to be destroyed. Luckily a compassionate horsewoman Robin Collins-Keller witnessed his return and was able to adopt the golden colt that day.
With the right environment and communication, Sutter became a trusting and loving mount. He is a testimony to the forgiving nature of horses. Sutter came to live at Return to Freedom’s Wild Horse Sanctuary in 2002. He is a noble representation of the wild horses from the Great Basin made up of largely of breeds that were used for Cavalry horses bred with larger draft horses that arrived from Europe in the 1800s and helped create the big ranchos of the Great Basin.
In 2016 Sutter was named Horse of the Year by The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals for his work As an ambassador for the dwindling number of horses who deserve our promised protection on public lands.
The following year, Sutter was inducted into the EQUUS Horse Stars Hall of Fame along with four others for their “inspirational and life-changing impact on people.”
Pictures of Our Beloved Sutter
As we approach the holiday I want to share some sad news, but also gratitude.
Mystic, one of our ambassador stallions left this world to run in the next. He was approximately 30 years old. It is painful to know he is no longer here in the hills, but many of us share 16 years of memories with him and for that time we are forever grateful.
Mystic was one of the first stallions to arrive at Return to Freedom in 1999. He was captured during the total removal of 279 horses from the Hart Mountain National Antelope Refuge in Oregon.
RIP, Mystic. I love you so much. You made this dream a reality. We see you. We honor you.
—Neda DeMayo, Founder, Return to Freedom
Pictures of Our Beloved Mystic
It is with heavy hearts that we announce the passing of a beloved Choctaw Mare, Ricochet’s Doll. Born on April 3, 1991, Ricochet lived 30 long and beautiful years. Ricochet was one of the foundation mares from Black Jack Mountain Oklahoma. Ricochet’s Doll was small but strong, and supremely intelligent. She had a shy demeanor and was very attentive to the activity around her, always keeping herself on the periphery. She was especially close with her offspring who all have very sweet temperaments. She would often be found grazing side-by-side or mutual grooming with her daughter Mariah.
The Choctaw horses are Spanish horses that remain from the early colonial efforts of the Spaniards in North America. These horses are important as a genetic resource because they have become rare, and are one of the oldest strains of horses in North America. These horses have been pivotal in the conservation of Colonial Spanish horses in North America.
Our Choctaw Herd will surely miss this unforgettable matriarch.
Rest in Peace, Ricochet. You were so loved. We see you. We honor you.
On August 8, 2018, Diamante said goodbye to this world. He had survived a severe colic earlier in July. Thanks to many of our generous donors, Diamante was able to have surgery right away and seemed to be doing very well. He returned from the clinic and was getting stronger. But early in the morning on August 8, he was down again and in a lot of pain. We rushed him to the clinic and they could not get him comfortable to he went into surgery so we could determine what was happening. Unfortunately, he had a segment of his small intestine that was displaced through a small hole in his abdomen. Known as Epiploic Foramen Entrapment, it is one of the most common forms of internal hernia in horses.
Diamante (DeeDee), touched so many of us with his beauty and grand spirit. We miss him very much.
Diamante was a perfect example of the horses brought over by Padre Kino in the 1600s. With his headquarters, The Mission Delores in Sonora Mexico, Kino was responsible for creating 27 missions in the Southwest. Padre Kino was known as “The Priest on Horseback” and for bringing high-quality livestock over from Spain including horses.
In 1885, Dr. Reuben Wilbur bought a small manada of horses (25 mares and 1 stallion) who lived on his ranch in Southern Arizona until 1990. They were left to roam the Cruce ranch, therefore, being exposed to the process of natural selection. In 1990, his great-granddaughter Eva Cruce, sold the ranch and dispersed the horses with the help of equine geneticist Dr. Cothran, Dr. Sponenberg and the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy.
Many went to Robin Collins, Heritage Discovery Center(HDC). In 2002, HDC reached out to Neda DeMayo for help with the conservation of these horses whose DNA showed they go all the way back to the Caspian horses. A small herd was purchased privately by the DeMayo family and they have served as Ambassadors of the original Spanish Mustangs enriching RTF’s educational programs.
Pictures of Our Beloved Diamante
What Silver King did not know as he fought, defended himself, and was loaded onto a crammed trailer to be hauled from his home range, his freedom and his world, was that there were still caring people determined to protect him and his family. Return to Freedom — and our loyal supporters — will always to do what we can to ”save the pieces”. We are proud and happy to tell you that we eventually reunited Silver King with his mare, Grace—and a few others from his band. In 2017, he was reunited with his family band and released onto our 2,000 acre San Luis Obispo sanctuary. They had been together, happily roaming the hills with more than 60 wild horses and burros ever since.
Pictures of Our Beloved Silver King
We watched them closely and after 5 uncertain days, Jacobi showed signs of improvement and began to walk and run along side his mother. He enjoyed a short but happy life in the Choctaw herd pasture as a healthy and willful young colt. Like his ancestors, who carried the Choctaw and Cherokee people along the Trail of Tears, Jacobi had a strong heart and courageous spirit.
The Hart Mountain Herd began with Mystic, who was captured at the Hart Mountain National Antelope Refuge, Oregon, along with 275 other horses, and came to us with three bachelor stallions in 1999. Nine mares arrived from Hart Mountain about the same time and everyone was soon reintroduced. Herds are established when mares choose their stallions.
When Maggie brought him to live out his senior years at our sanctuary, he quickly became a beloved member of the RTF family of horses. He spent his summers grazing and enjoying the company of his herdmates in our south pasture. His incredible kindness and gentle demeanor with children made him the perfect horse for our youth at risk programs. Many young guests had an unforgettable experience grooming and bathing him, walking him or just stroking his soft muzzle.
In February of 2009, Comanche passed in the comfort of his winter paddock, with his best pal Marilyn at his side.
Sonora died in a fluke lightning storm when Isadora was four years old. After some disorientation, the herd reorganized and Colorada (Ines’s mother) took on the leadership role for the small band.
Wilbur won the heart of everyone who met him, and as he meandered outside our ranch offices and barn area, he easily earned the honorary title of Mayor of RTF.
Wilbur joined Cayuse’s harem band and was the stallion’s “right hand horse” for over a decade. He would gallantly escort mares to the water trough while Cayuse remained behind and holding court with his other mares.
About 4 years ago, Wilbur began to need more special care and feed, and we brought him to the main barn area where he was often seen free-grazing all day, never straying far from his beloved Antonia, a beautiful senior Spanish mustang mare. With only a few teeth left, Antonia needs to eat feed soaked in warm water.
Over the past two years, Wilbur had a few hard days when he needed some help getting up. Once up, though, he always rallied and would trot off to be near his friends. He stood outside the feed room door while our Equine Manager prepared the special feeds. While she pretended not to notice, he’d take a few bites from everyone’s buckets before heading over to eat his own! This little ritual helped him pick up more weight and he really seemed to enjoy the variety of the morning buffet!
Sadly, one recent Monday he just could not get up. We tried everything we could to get our old friend up one more time, but he just no longer had it in him. As heartbreaking as it was for us, Wilbur had a very peaceful send-off, while gazing at Antonia, standing watch over her soulmate from just a few feet away. All of us who loved him were quietly present as our kind vet helped him leave his failing body. He went instantly and easily, but the tears are still in our eyes.
R.I.P., beautiful boy.
Remembering Some of Our Other Friends, Too
