Alongside the dramatic views of the Rocky Mountains lies a precarious ecosystem impacted by the pressures of industries such as mining, forestry, ranching, and oil and gas extraction. Alberta’s wild horse herds can be found roaming these Eastern Slopes, existing in a liminal space as both wild animal and the domesticated companion we have shared so much of our history with.

A Road Map for Finding Wild Horses is written as a response to the intersections of human, animal, and land that occur while exploring this landscape as a woman alone. The horses offer a reflection on our relationship with nature, particularly now as we witness the impending effects of a climate crisis. We are reminded of the ways in which opening ourselves up to listening, whether to others or to ourselves, makes us tenderly aware of both beauty and loss.

wild horses ask: why are you a stranger to your body?
i reply, the earth hurts.

Trisia Eddy Woods grew up spending summers on horseback exploring both Alberta and Manitoba. Her artwork has been exhibited both close to home and internationally, and is held in the special collection of the Herron Art Library. A former editor for Red Nettle Press, Trisia's writing has appeared in a variety of literary journals and chapbooks across North America including Contemporary Verse 2, The Garneau Review, and New American Writing. Currently she lives in Edmonton / amiskwaciywâskahikan with her family, which includes an array of four-legged companions. A Roadmap for Finding Wild Horses is her first full-length collection.

Trisia Eddy Woods' profile page

“The hidden world so delicately and carefully and respectfully observed by Trisia Eddy Woods is exactly what the world needs right now. She does not shirk from the brutal aspects of what she sees but allows the reader/viewer to hold their gaze because she presents her subject with remarkable tenderness and patience and care. If her work sometimes hurts to look at it is only because it is both exquisitely beautiful and at exactly the same time so aware of loss.” —Shawna Lemay, author of Everything Affects Everyone and Calm Things

"This beguiling book calls us to enter a realm of patience and tender observation, and rewards us with moments of magic. As we follow the writer on her year-round treks to observe wild horses, we are led towards the sense that our humanness is no longer separate, and to see that an encounter with a quiet doe or a wild stallion offers us a bridge between worlds. The poems glance at the wilderness impacts of forestry and other human activities, but don’t dwell on the damage. Instead, in lines that are precise, spare and yet vivid, Trisia Eddy Woods offers us a hope rooted in deep attentiveness." —Alice Major, Knife on Snow

"With diaristic prose poems, Trisia Eddy Woods draws us deep into the foothills of the Rockies. A Roadmap for Finding Wild Horses is a work of heartfelt witness, of resolute observation. "I watch them hollow out the remainder of the forest," Eddy Woods writes, as her words reach for relationship with the non-human world. " —Sarah Ens, Flyway