Do you give the horse his might?
Do you cloth his neck with a mane?
Do you make him leap like the locust?
His majestic snorting is terrible.
He paws in the valley, and rejoices in his strength;
With shaking and rage he races over the ground,
And he does not stand still at the voice of the trumpet.
—Job 39:19–21, 24
What, if anything, connects the horse cultures of America’s East and West? It’s a bit of an odd question as a way to ride on to a new theme and close this current cowboy blog series. For one, it assumes a “horse culture” exists in the first place. Second, it implies a connection–commonalities between people at opposite ends of the country who own, ride, care for, love, and sometimes suffer from these beasts.
I am no expert on the horse or the equestrian ethos; I can only figuratively lean against the fence with crossed arms resting on the top rail, observing from a distance. I do know, however, that a much older horse tradition exists in the East than on America’s prairies and deserts (and remember, to a born-and-raised High Plains’er, Kentucky is practically the East Coast). Horse jumping, steeplechase, thoroughbred racing, dressage (I don’t even really know what that involves): these events all have deep histories in the Mid-Atlantic and other states.
Drive for an hour or so on Interstate 66, toward the low mountains and into the hills west of Washington D.C., you will find horse country, a place where our friends, a couple we first met many years ago in Las Vegas, have settled. They own a horse property tucked up next to the Shenandoahs, where once, a hundred and sixty years ago, Civil War armies trod. Winding drives, long white fences encircling horse pastures, well-kept homes–this is their milieu. Like many others in the area, they are horse owners, keeping several thoroughbreds (one a former race horse), a mini horse, and a donkey: a regular menagerie equus.
My buddy has relayed to me the realities of horse ownership. These creatures are thousand-pound money-eating machines that will probably need another call to the veterinarian at any moment–maddening, irritating, at times monstrously stupid, at other times wily and intelligent, skittish, curious, awe-inspiring, magnificent. My friend is actually a caretaker. His wife, an accomplished rider, is the real equestrian. A few years ago, she was seriously injured in a riding accident. She recovered, but her story points to the truth that if you are around horses, you will eventually get hurt. It is a tribute to both her courage and the magic of these creatures that recently she has returned to riding, despite the trauma she suffered. Let us set aside the pretense that a life worth living can be had without risk.
So is the uniting factor in “horse culture” one of externalities, a style of hat, clothing, accent, or breed of horse? I think not. This is not to say you won’t see cowboy hats and cowboy boots in Virginia, and likely, even as you read this, there are men and women on horseback somewhere in this state, working cattle. But a more meaningful commonality is based on something else–a love of the animal itself.
A short blog such as this will never capture the nuances of equestrians and their relationship with these beasts, but let us say this: perhaps what unites horse people and horse cultures, no matter their geographic locale, is a deeper understanding and appreciation for these creatures–these are people who share an acknowledgement of raw power, danger, and beauty–an elemental connection between horse and rider, one that I will never quite understand, honestly. In this magnificent creature, we can still celebrate the barely-controlled and sometimes unbounded joy of God’s creation, just as my Northwest Kansas and Virginia friends do, and just as did my Uncle Franklin, in his own unassuming way.
