The Best Travel Writing 2011 - James O'Reilly [105]
Those that survive are hardly the lucky ones. The majority are shipped to Kansas and Oklahoma, where more than 30,000 wild horses and burros languish on private ranches, awaiting rare adoption or common death. Having known no barriers but the sky their whole lives, the animals are reduced to milling in endless circles, enclosed by metal pipes. Family groups, with their carefully sorted hierarchies and politics are separated and remixed. Crowded into the corrals, they fight and panic and call for one another, for the range, for their freedom. They will never gallop to the horizons again. They are the symbols of the once wild American West, reduced to flightless birds in corralled cages.
Upon my return to the high desert, I heard all about the horses. At first my neighbors’ frustrated stories amused me. Oh, to live in a place where the biggest problem is a herd of wild horses! But then I saw what all those hooves were doing to the land and the desert, which had seemed so infinite, suddenly became much smaller. I had wanted to believe there was enough room out here for all of us, horses and dogs and coyotes and hares and people, but the chopped ground and suffering grass seemed to prove me wrong.
One day, out walking the dogs, I was traveling a hoof-chopped path up the mesa south of my house, when I had my first encounter with the herd. I came around a juniper tree and saw the horses ahead on the trail, strung out behind a familiar palomino. They were only a stone’s throw away, alert and agitated. The palomino, their leader, remained steady, searching the air for my scent, watching me intently as the others shifted nervously behind him, ready to bolt. My dogs were fanned out on either side of me, but they remained calm and quiet, waiting to follow my lead. I took one long look at the palomino, raised both hands to him said, “Stay,” and then swiftly cut off the path to the left, heading towards a neighbor’s house not far away.
I knew the Dunns weren’t home yet and that their one-room adobe was still boarded up, awaiting their return from a summer on the east coast, but I was hoping the skittish herd wouldn’t follow me there. I didn’t run, but I hurried, keeping both dogs just ahead of me. As I approached the house, I stole a look back and my heart skipped. The palomino was following me, with the herd close behind. The dogs and I backed up onto the Dunn’s porch, protected by a few square feet of uneven wooden planks and a knee-high adobe wall. There we faced the herd, gathering ten yards away.
As the horses lined up facing me on either side of their leader I counted seventeen. They were noticeably colorful—paints and reds and appaloosas—showy, once valuable horses dumped out in the desert. Their coats were roughening, their ribs just barely showing, beginning to show signs of stress, of winter wear. We all stood and watched each other, the dogs the horses and I and in those moments we were the only creatures on Earth. In that remarkable calm, my nervousness gave way to clarity. I had wanted the horses to belong here. I had wanted them to be wild but seeing them all up close, I had to admit they weren’t. Like the dogs, these animals just wanted somebody to follow, a kind person to lead to them to food, to water, to safety. It broke my heart that I couldn’t help them.
I told the dogs to stay put and walked out slowly towards the herd, talking softly to the horses, holding my hands in front of me, at waist level, palms up, fingers curled slightly to show I had no weapons. A few of them wavered, and began backing away, but the palomino and two others, a paint and a