There is no other horse in the world that moves through open country like the Mustang. There are none to compare. I have ridden probably, at this point, thousands of horses, and none can compare. Quarter horses may be stronger, Thoroughbreds faster, Arabians lighter… but the Mustang does not gallop over the ground, it gallops in a parallel world.
The Mustangs’ hooves do not pound the ground. The ground rises to meet their stride. They do not stumble in holes, trip on the downhill or have effort in the incline. The Mustang does not move upon the earth, but within it. Part of it, born of it, ready to return to it. They are the drinkers of the wind.
As I rode Arwen through the pasture today, a horse aptly named for a warrior princess, her stride lifted me to another place. She carried me to different worlds. The first world was a world filled with memories. Memories of other Mustangs that carried me, flawlessly across the plains. Memories of those Mustangs, full out on the open ground, and me a passenger on the back of an eagle. Memories of mountains climbed, weather survived, and dangerous places, carried through by a spirit horse. A creature not of this world.
The next world was a world of wild ones. Thousands, more spirit than flesh. Living as ghosts on the red rock plateaus of the dessert. They call to them. They call to their brethren behind fences. They call to the spirit horses who have left this world and they call them back to run with them, and they come. They come by the thousands and the join with the buffalo and the wolves and the bears. And they dance.
The world after that was a world of history. Bull fighters in Spain. War horses of the crusades. Cortez’s conquerors of new worlds. Pawnee war ponies and Lakota buffalo runners. To Comanche, the only known U.S. survivor of the Battle of the Little Big Horn, a tough sorrel Texas Mustang. To the cowboys, to the farmers, to the settlers, to the gold miners. To the undaunted spirit of the pony express horses. To the helicopters and slaughter trucks. The royal blood runs deep.
The last world, is the world of what could be. The future I want to see. The world in which I see me climbing more mountains with a wild horse. The future I see where wild horses cherished and protected. The future my truest, deepest self would pray for.
The way a Mustang moves across the ground is hypnotizing. It is no simple lope through the pasture. When I am on the back of a Mustang I am touching in this life and the next, floating between time and space, flesh and spirit. You cannot possibly know of what I speak until you have too, ridden a Mustang. A drinker of the wind. There are none that can compare. There are none that get you so close to God, so close to spirit, so close to heaven. They live their lives constantly between the two worlds. They are the War horses. The Spirit horses. The Ghost horses. The Teacher horses. Come, if you are brave. Come and let them show you their world.
