Horse

Phil Burpee

Phil Burpee

Booming out of the tall timber on a big, dark grey, barrel-chested Appaloosa named Bellboy, whisk tail, zebra mane standing straight up like a four-foot long black straw broom, either-side haunch as big as a boar pig, huge, pumping python neck counter-weighting the lunging strides, jackhammer legs pounding ba da da boom, ba da da boom, ba da da boom, pistons running on a roiling cam of sinew and bone, lunking, bony head rocking into the lope, ears radaring around with every passing tree, nostrils flaring, eyes flashing, and those mighty, bellowing lungs pulling in and snorting out tens of cubic yards of rushing air with every passing whoosh, chasing a renegade gang of lean, half-wild Hereford cows, who can outrun a panicked muley over a quarter mile through snarf and underbrush, moving in that hunkered-down way that they do when they only seem to run from the wrists down, gliding like some weirded-out bovine torpedoes with their teats pretty much skimming the ground, and able to stop and cut like some goddamn demon Steve Nash clone and be heading back the other way in a crazed 180, apparently defying the very fundamental laws of physics. And then the timber opens...........

SodaHead photo

OK - this is a horse that would have a number 11 on a volume dial going up to 10, or maybe a hemi-carbureted supercharger that only kicked in past the red line. So out into the open we break - got those cows moving in the generally right sort of direction - out into a big, flat field about a mile across. Cows are strung out nice and not a white face to be seen, just asses moving fast towards the far timber line  -  sweet. And then I feel it - the big Appy clomps down on the bit - just juiced up enough to slide into that 'fun' mood he sometimes gets. We come out of the timber at about an 18mph lope, and pretty quick the clutch gets popped and we we're right away doing a good, solid 35 em pee aitch. Hmmm... been here before - and I tell you what - he ain't gonna stop or steer  -  I know this guy - yank, holler, threaten, kick, jerk, pound, pull, grab, lean, scream - no good -  nada - ol' Bell's out for a run.

We cross the open in fancy time and plunge into the big firs on the other side. Moving into timber at speed on a hell-bent horse is a semi-religious sort of thing. There's really not much time to think about tomorrow's grocery list, 'cuz the lumber yard is moving by in a heavy-weight blur. Time starts to stretch out like Einstein's gym socks, and the whole gig drops into slo-mo, just like that queasy eternity that occupies the silence when your wheels leave the gravel on that bad Saturday night. And then I look up ahead - all the time in the world now to study things - everything moving in dream-time like the last scene in Hidalgo when they're pounding for the sea.  I see it - a nice, stout, horizontal cross-branch sticking out at about the height of two hand-breadths above the saddle horn. Bellboy's got it pegged. There are a dozen other ways for him to move that would afford his rider the dignity of not having to pass under an eight-inch arm of solid wood fast approaching at about belly-button level, but it is not to be. The big head ducks, and I am flicked off like a piece of spent snot, deposited in the dead-bug position flat on my back on the sun-dappled ground. I hear my last futile "Whooooooaaaaaaa.....!" fading into the forest fastness, and I know, in an instant, that I have been heartily spoofed by a twenty-five year-old quadruped with a penchant for unfettered speed and a terrible weakness for robust, slapstick comedy. I hear a snort and the jangle of shaking tack. I lift up my head and look. Not more than twenty feet away he stands - got that eyebrow-arching look of mild astonishment, staring back at me - "Doing something important down there?" - he postures to ask. I drop my head and admire the clouds above the treetops. He snorts again and straddles for a mighty urination.

Horse. What a ride it's been for us hairless apes and that mighty, prancing running machine. And you might say that that Bellboy shoulda got foxed years before, but the thing was that he was so damn good at all the other stuff you wanted a horse to do that you just had to cut him some slack and forgive him his wee foibles. The nag was a humorist, and there wasn't a damn thing to be done about it. But, man! - could he climb mountains and cut cows and punch through a wall of spruce! Respect must given where it's due. Such a creature is no slave, but an equal partner in enterprise.

Consider this though  -  somewhere on the steppes of Kazakhstan, about five or six thousand years ago, some ancestor of the modern Kazakhs determined that trying to outgun this thundering, swaggering beast just to eat of his flesh was not only astonishingly dangerous in the extreme, but perhaps also a flagrant waste of resources. One day, somewhere, somebody hunkered down and watched and watched and watched. One day, somewhere, the first person walked up with a handful of sweet grains, speaking soothing words. One day, somewhere, the first person climbed on. About three quarters of a second later, one day, somewhere, that first person got piled off like a sac of sorry rocks. And so it began. And then suddenly we were liberated, rushing like the very wind across the landscape in possibly the most beguiling and unlikely symbiotic arrangement yet seen on this hyperactive planet. Humans had stepped off the ground on the first leg of their journey to the stars - and nothing would ever be the same again.

Our journey with the horse has been long and volatile. As recently as the Second World War, the Poles were still deploying mounted cavalry against the German Wehrmacht, sadly believing that honour and dignity still invested human conflict. Horses have carried our imperial proclivities across continents, sweeping with their riders in vast hordes over the trackless reaches of mountain and savannah. They have also dragged around an awful lot of our stuff - on their backs, on travois, on carts, wagons and coaches - and they have hauled ferocious speed demons with flashing steel into the mayhem of battle on skittering chariots, and onwards to glory or oblivion. They have tilled our fields, drawn our water, milled our grain, and pulled our sleighs. When I was a kid growing up in  the 1950s, the milk man came with horse and wagon, parking his big, old dobbin  called Queenie out front as he pulled our bottles out of the ice blocks in the back. She wore a feed bag, and the house sparrows  rummaged around in her poos. I suppose she was pretty bored, but to me, it seemed like she was a creature from a different dimension, unconcerned with the frenetic foolishness of us humans and all our fusses. And she was big - almost beyond comprehension.

We owe the horse a great deal. It is a practical and stalwart animal with a stoic turn of mind that demands very little by way of compensation for all the things we ask of it - or have asked of it over the centuries. It can be a surprisingly good companion, though its mental processes are not at all those of a dog, say - it does not aspire to please, and it will not wheedle or wag. It is aware, responsive, often implacable, yet sometimes capable of the most arresting bouts of fury and boneheadedness. But it has a complex spiritual and corporeal language which can be easily read by those who understand the beast and its multi-layered wants and needs. If it had not been for our opposing thumbs and forefingers, and our wily twining of fibre into rope, not to mention our pointed sticks, the horse would have forever driven us off the plains of our species' infancy and back into the dreary, fearful recesses of the dark and gloomy shadows. We have hitched a ride with this noble animal and consequently risen above what would otherwise be our natural station in this world - mere pedestrians forever craving the bright horizon that always seems to recede faster than we can approach it.

Today we see thousands of horses in mini-ranchette jails all up and down the country. We see them forgotten, discarded, treated like objects, stuck in the limbo of 'possession' by dull-witted cretins for whom the very notion of mightiness is as alien as the imaginations they have long-ago squandered in favour of toys and base diversions. How sad. We have our cars now and blithely forget that it has been the horse who has enabled us in our pursuit of global dominance. We have forgotten our puniness. Our pridefulness is a borrowed commodity. Open the gate and the horse will simply walk out and be a horse. Remove our technological prison and we are instantly lost - once again in craven awe of the thundering hooves. Perhaps we have truly become as Lord Ronald in Stephen Leacock's nonsense novel Gertrude the Governess, who is said to have: -

"....flung himself upon his horse and rode madly off in all directions."

"Whoooooooaaaaaa...........!"

Phil Burpee
January 7, 2012