When it comes down to it, I think no language has a term for the horse that is beautiful enough to suit that prince of animals: horse, cheval, caballo, certainly not the unfortunate pferd—who came up with that one? At least Icelandic’s hestur has something of the rush of wind in it, and Latin’s equus has a liquid, flowing beauty, if only it weren’t for the word’s recent association with a Daniel Radcliffe play. So, beautiful or not, horse is the term we have, but the thing itself is so much greater.
It’s not just that the horse is the most beautiful creature God put on this earth (me? Biased?)—though I seem to harp on aesthetics more than anything else. What makes the horse’s beauty so unique is that it is that rare kind of beauty that man can touch without spoiling it. There are few things as wonderful as a horse and rider working in tandem, both loving the ride, both supporting and encouraging each other. If dog is man’s best friend (and it’s true that a dog on a bad day is more effusive than a horse on a good day), horse is his only partner, in everything from farming to warfare. That partnership has too often been abused, and it almost always falls short of perfection (have you ever seen a rider take a header when his horse decides he doesn’t feel like taking that jump after all?), but I’m an optimist, and I refuse to be deterred.
I’ve always been a lover of all things with fur. I gravitate toward animals at social gatherings the way some people gravitate toward children or the open bar. But horses, horses are special. Through no fault of my poor parents, who don’t like the creatures themselves but very kindly indulged me, I have been madly obsessed with horses ever since I can remember. Collecting toy horses, drawing horses (I was forbidden in middle school art class from picking horses as the subject for any more projects), taking pictures of horses, reading about horses, watching for horses on every drive through the country. And, of course, when the opportunity presented itself, riding horses.
I must admit I am not a particularly good rider—I have barely enough leg muscle to make myself go, much less a horse, and my balance is questionable at best (as evidenced by my remarkable tendency to slide right off the saddle at the slightest provocation). But what kind of obsessee would I be if I let that stop me? Whenever I’m around “real horse-people”—people who own horses, are in “the business” of horses, grew up in the saddle—I inevitably reveal myself to know very little about horsemanship and to be capable of even less. (Witness last weekend, when I was given multiple sets of instructions on how to lead a lazy horse faster, all of which completely failed in execution. YOU may be able to lead a horse to water, but it remains an open question for me.) But what does that matter to one obsessed? I make myself useful mucking stalls and sweeping aisles—anything to be near to horses, to have the sweet smell of hay and saddle leather around me. I think it’s a very good thing that horses are entirely unimpressed by admirers, because if they were any more impressionable sort of being I think I would prove to be a terrible sycophant.
It’s not just that the horse is the most beautiful creature God put on this earth (me? Biased?)—though I seem to harp on aesthetics more than anything else. What makes the horse’s beauty so unique is that it is that rare kind of beauty that man can touch without spoiling it. There are few things as wonderful as a horse and rider working in tandem, both loving the ride, both supporting and encouraging each other. If dog is man’s best friend (and it’s true that a dog on a bad day is more effusive than a horse on a good day), horse is his only partner, in everything from farming to warfare. That partnership has too often been abused, and it almost always falls short of perfection (have you ever seen a rider take a header when his horse decides he doesn’t feel like taking that jump after all?), but I’m an optimist, and I refuse to be deterred.
I’ve always been a lover of all things with fur. I gravitate toward animals at social gatherings the way some people gravitate toward children or the open bar. But horses, horses are special. Through no fault of my poor parents, who don’t like the creatures themselves but very kindly indulged me, I have been madly obsessed with horses ever since I can remember. Collecting toy horses, drawing horses (I was forbidden in middle school art class from picking horses as the subject for any more projects), taking pictures of horses, reading about horses, watching for horses on every drive through the country. And, of course, when the opportunity presented itself, riding horses.
I must admit I am not a particularly good rider—I have barely enough leg muscle to make myself go, much less a horse, and my balance is questionable at best (as evidenced by my remarkable tendency to slide right off the saddle at the slightest provocation). But what kind of obsessee would I be if I let that stop me? Whenever I’m around “real horse-people”—people who own horses, are in “the business” of horses, grew up in the saddle—I inevitably reveal myself to know very little about horsemanship and to be capable of even less. (Witness last weekend, when I was given multiple sets of instructions on how to lead a lazy horse faster, all of which completely failed in execution. YOU may be able to lead a horse to water, but it remains an open question for me.) But what does that matter to one obsessed? I make myself useful mucking stalls and sweeping aisles—anything to be near to horses, to have the sweet smell of hay and saddle leather around me. I think it’s a very good thing that horses are entirely unimpressed by admirers, because if they were any more impressionable sort of being I think I would prove to be a terrible sycophant.
Now, it’s hard to be romantic about horses when you’re covered in dirt and working with the average old nag you find in most barns—maybe that’s why “real horse-people” tend to make fun of their horses more than they boast about them—and any horse can be just as exasperating and uninspiring for a horse-person as a screaming toddler is to a kid-person. They bite. They kick. They roll in the mud right after their bath. They stretch their necks out and drag their feet so that they amble like cows. They run you into fenceposts when you’re riding. And do they really have to drool so much when they pull their heads out of the water bucket? But then, a magical moment will happen all of a sudden between a horse and his human—he’ll arch his neck and throw his shoulders into his trot like a dancer showing off for the audience, he’ll prick his ears and look just like the most beautiful study Leonardo ever dreamed of, he’ll rest he face against your chest and sigh softly into your shirt. And those are the moments that even down-to-earth “real horse-people” secretly delight in and come back for, again and again.
So I remain unabashedly obsessed, and unabashedly romantic. In fact, when I see movies I’m usually more enamored of the hero’s horse than of the hero—give me Silver and you can keep the Lone Ranger; give me Tornado and…we’ll negotiate about Zorro. When Shadowfax materialized on the screen, unearthly and breathtaking, I sincerely forgot that Gandalf and Legolas were even there. I think it brought tears to my eyes.
It has become a joke with my family and my friends that I turn into a five-year-old whenever I see a horse: whether it’s onscreen or out the window, I have an embarrassing tendency to squeak, “Horse!” and point him out, even if he’s nothing more than a spot in the background. I try very hard to suppress this in professional situations.
Looking over this post, I know I haven’t done justice to my fixation, or indeed to the poetry that is a horse at his best—horse-people will know what I mean without my being able to articulate it, and non-horse-people can just smile and shake their heads. I can’t make someone not already inclined to it catch their breath at the flare of a nostril, or go lightheaded at the sound of hooves on turf, or skip with excitement at the thought of getting to pet the pony at the petting zoo. For a horse-person, no horse is too average to invoke the ideal, and no contact is too trivial to set the heart racing.
So I remain unabashedly obsessed, and unabashedly romantic. In fact, when I see movies I’m usually more enamored of the hero’s horse than of the hero—give me Silver and you can keep the Lone Ranger; give me Tornado and…we’ll negotiate about Zorro. When Shadowfax materialized on the screen, unearthly and breathtaking, I sincerely forgot that Gandalf and Legolas were even there. I think it brought tears to my eyes.
It has become a joke with my family and my friends that I turn into a five-year-old whenever I see a horse: whether it’s onscreen or out the window, I have an embarrassing tendency to squeak, “Horse!” and point him out, even if he’s nothing more than a spot in the background. I try very hard to suppress this in professional situations.
Looking over this post, I know I haven’t done justice to my fixation, or indeed to the poetry that is a horse at his best—horse-people will know what I mean without my being able to articulate it, and non-horse-people can just smile and shake their heads. I can’t make someone not already inclined to it catch their breath at the flare of a nostril, or go lightheaded at the sound of hooves on turf, or skip with excitement at the thought of getting to pet the pony at the petting zoo. For a horse-person, no horse is too average to invoke the ideal, and no contact is too trivial to set the heart racing.
If you don’t believe me, stop by my apartment: it’s plastered with pictures of horses cut from old calendars. They may be the most convenient and economic method of covering bare wall space, but I’ve been known to spend long and happy moments just admiring whichever picture my eye happens to fall upon, no matter how often I’ve seen it. Such is the way of obsession, and long may it live! We should all have such things that set us thinking of beauty and joy in a world that’s got far too little of either.
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