Dealing with the Wilds | A Horse Story

By: Mollie Zobel

I walk down the rows between the metal pens. The new spring grass crunches under my feet. My fingers trail along the metal railing, rust flaking off at my touch. Neighs of horses calling to one another ring in the air, the snort of a wary horse, the nicker of a mare calling to her foal, the piercing scream of a stallion. I make my way over to the trade booths, their signs proclaiming, “Wild Horse and Burro Adoption”, and pick up pamphlets on adopting mustangs. I know it’s for their own good. The herds have to be monitored so that they can exist and have enough grazing land. It’s not like they’re being killed! I walk back to the horses, the pamphlets stuffed into my back pockets.

[private]Compared to domestic horses, they are not beautiful. They are small and bony with scraggly manes and tales. Their colors blend together, mainly dark bays and chestnuts with a few paints thrown in for variety. Yet these horses have lived a lifetime of freedom. They have never known the warmth of a blanket or the cold steel of a bit. The rain has bathed them and their hooves have been sharpened by stone. They have survived conditions in which humans would die in a week. No, they’re not traditionally pretty but they have a presence about them. They are truly the wild things. I make my way past a pen of yearlings huddled together, to the stallions.

Most of them are running in their small pens, their screams angry, trying to get back to their herds of mares and foals. One catches my attention and my footsteps slow. I stop and watch. He is a blue roan with black stripes on his legs. His body is all muscle and radiates power. I look closer and see many scars raking across his body, many very old, showing his age and dominance. He is not running like the others but standing very still with his head slightly lowered. It almost appears as if he is dozing. A breeze comes and ruffles his mane, as his forelock lifts I see deeper into his eyes. He is not there. His body stands before me but his spirit gallops over the plains and into the mountains. Sadness sweeps over me as I stand there, watching him. I and others like me have condemned him. He would never be same, having been corralled and broken. What he desired and deserved most, I could not give him, freedom.[/private]