Yesterday afternoon I went to perform for a Hearts and Hooves fundraiser, out in the lovely rolling hills of Neiderwald, Texas.
The event was held at Little America, a miniature horse farm, and we got to walk some of the minis around in crisp, fall sunshine with green grass under our feet (and, on occassion, horse poop!) There was a small, sad turnout, but I sang while io walked Molly, the doxen who helps walk the ponies around Town Lake, and Lance sat on a lawn chair under a shady tree.
One of the ponies that io walked around had an underbite, and it came over to prance in front of me while I sang. It was shaking it’s head to the music. About two feet tall, brown with white mane and braided tail, and these funny little teeth shooting up from the bottom jaw. Sort of like a horsey-grandpa!
There was a break, so we walked over with the owner of the horse farm and saw the yearlings, about sixty of them, in an open field, running as a herd. This is so beautiful to watch, as they lean into one another, running full speed, arching and moving as one body. Tiny little horses, a multitude of blacks and whites and browns and spots…Little paints and appaloosas and paliminos…
There is a scene, the opening scene, in the animated film “Spirit”, that when we saw it in the theatre, I started to cry. I cried because the horses were running, too, but in large, uninterrupted spaces of wild grasses….mountains in the background with no houses or buildings…just open prarie and sky…and the director was wise to let this opening sequence ramble, so that it really hit home for me that all of this is disappearing. No place for wild horses to run, to be free. No wild spaces for mankind to roam and spend days quietly, being one with the planet and all of its unfolding secrets. The rest of the movie was alright, but that scene stuck with me….and, now, here I was, standing, years later, with a herd of ponies, watching them do what they do….run with
all their muscles and might. Except, here, they are fenced in. Here, they are cared for and preened and prodded for sale…sent to Russia and around the world to buyers…for show…they have become pets, they have become domesticated.
One horse was released in a corral to show us his tricks. He ran so fast, almost a blur, around and around. And as he ran, he was kicking his back heels, high high high into the air, over and over, bucking no one, just bucking and kicking for the sheer delight.
Black and white, this little blur. Such power.
The blah-blah is:
I’m working on finding a booking agent. And a publicist. And painting a mural of a rain forest for our school carnival. I already made a probiscis monkey and a swordbilled hummingbird info posters.