With current passions rising around the capture of wild mustangs, the resurrection of personal horse love.
The summer before college I worked on an estate in New Hampshire taking care of four children and four horses. I had had a history with both but this was total immersion. Every day cleaning stalls, grooming, saddling up, riding through the woods with all children singing Edelweiss and telling stories. The end of August came and this chapter ended.
Fast forward 7 years, living on a wild lake in Minnesota, next to a horse farm, ditto…minus the children. Every day careening around the lake and though the woods on a black stallion named Blackie….and then daughter number one, Melanie, was born, inheriting her mother’s horse love.
Fast forward 20 years. Melanie’s summer job from college was working as a nanny on a horse ranch in Wyoming. WHAT? A horse ranch? Living in New York, I got in touch with a former client and friend in Charleston, knowing that he had property somewhere ‘over there’ and I inquired. He was so delighted that he booked me a plane ticket to Billings, Montana where he met me, gave me his Land Rover, a cowboy hat, a hand full of Neil Young tapes, pointed his finger and said ‘Just drive.”
I drove across Wyoming to Melanie. We spent days riding together…out into the open…and we joined a round up…horses were moved up to higher country for the summer, when mountain grasses were available, and then brought back down early fall to lower more sheltered pasture before the heavy snow. Incredible. Shared heaven.
Now? I want to drive to Craig, Colorado to the wild mustang refuge. We shall see.