DreamCatcher Speaks Up!

Braveheart

December 8th of last year - while many of us were thinking about the holidays - a large group of wild horses were crammed into a forty foot metal transport for a three day journey to Kansas.
The horses had been rounded up a few months earlier from the Twin Peaks area of California. Torn from their families, the horses were branded, sorted by age and gender, exposed to strangles (which is a horrible, sometimes fatal and always highly contagious disease) and kept in areas with no
shelter until the BLM determined who was adoptable, who would go back to the wild and who would disappear into the long-term holding facilities in the Midwest where this group were now headed.

Amongst the terrified, cold and strangles compromised animals bumping along the nation’s highways toward the Midwest, was a grey gelding whose body bore the many badges of fights over mares and territory. His name was Braveheart. In the world he came from he was a king. In the world he was traveling in, he was reduced to a number among countless numbers of wild expatriates; a transport crammed with paupers, bereft of family, land and identity.

For Braveheart, the journey was ironic. For unlike his companions in the cold transport, Braveheart had been slated for sale to a Sacramento area family who were then going to sponsor him to live out his life at our 2000 acre DreamCatcher Wild Horse Sanctuary a few miles from his original Twin Peaks home. He was to live out his life, in relative freedom as an intact stallion.

And it is this irony that made Braveheart's story of immediate significance for we are involved in a historic legal battle with the BLM over, you guessed it, the Twin Peaks roundup and resulting annihilation of important Twin Peaks DNA. The Sacramento family and DreamCatcher wanted to keep Braveheart from being castrated and sent to long-term holding.

Communication with the BLM went on for weeks with Bravehearts sale put off until January 2011 due to the strangles outbreak. In well documented communications, the purchasing party had been led to believe all was well for the sale. But when January rolled around they were horrified to discover Braveheart, without notification to them, had been castrated and shipped to Kansas.

When the Jones’s family demanded an accounting of what happened to Braveheart, the BLM abruptly denied he had even been rounded up. For the Jones’ this was a call to action. For weeks they wrote and emailed up the BLM chain of command, demanding to know where the grey horse had gone and that he be returned so the sale could be finalized.

What the Jones’s did not know, was within a few days of arriving in Kansas, during one of the worst winters in years with blizzards and 23 degree below zero weather, Braveheart’s body - compromised by the long journey - could not hold up. He was dead by December 15^th.

It only took the BLM a little over five months to do what twenty some years in the wild could not do; bring a majestic part of the American west to his knees.

To the Jones family - who had no contact with wild horses before this incident – what happened to this one lone horse was just plain wrong. Now, like a growing number of Americans, they want to see BLM wild horse policies change. After all, the wild horses belong to the American public and live on public lands set aside for them by law. The BLM are only stewards of that which the public deems important enough to be protected. Its time the BLM is held accountable to that stewardship.

Salazar's Manifest Destiny

In a recent documentary about the problems involved with the reintroduction of the nearly extinct Mexican wolf, a rancher was quoted as saying “we don’t want them”.  No science.  No statistics.  No reason or clear argument.  Just “we don’t want them”.

 

That statement is the crux of the whole problem facing animals in the west today and the basis for Ken Salazar’s opinions as to how to manage the dwindling herds of wild horses. The ranching community still believes in the notion of manifest destiny: the right to claim the west for human endeavors.

 

And this is no small notion.  For Salazar, a product of five generations of ranching, the belief that the west belongs to ranchers and by extension cattle, is deep and pervasive.   For over one hundred fifty years the livestock industry, by sweat and blood, has clawed its way across the continent in search of the ever needed forage for hungry cattle and sheep. This neo-exploration was and still is backed by the government through subsidies and ridiculously low grazing fees.

 

And even though the prairies and rangelands had once supported millions of grazing wildlife including buffalo and mustangs, by the beginning of the twentieth century the once lush rangeland west of the Mississippi had been reduced to stubble, with native grasses obliterated and alarming damage done to waterways. 

 

Anything and anyone that threatened this quest for manifest destiny or was seen as competitors for forage, was soon eliminated.  Native Americans were pushed off of ancestral lands and whole species were slaughtered in the name of protecting livestock and grazing.  Wolves, coyotes, eagles, bears, ground squirrels and wild horses all found themselves in the cross-hairs of powerful weapons with the full support of our nation’s leaders. 

 

The American government wanted the west.  The ranchers gave it to them.  And in no small way this has made cattle and all the issues surrounding them, politically untouchable.

 

So it is no surprise that with the appointment of a fifth generation rancher to head the Department of the Interior, the president, who espouses change - but is granting a $26 million dollar increase in budget for Salazar to remove horses - has opened the door to an increase in the agonies that accompany manifest destiny.  Wolves, coyotes, ground squirrels and wild horses are fighting for their very lives. 

 

Wild horses, which have a clear fossil and DNA linage to our continent, are being pushed off of lands set aside for them by congress in unprecedented numbers in the dubious name of saving them from starvation or protecting eco-systems.  Yet observers at roundups continue to see healthy horses being captured, thriving rangeland and most notably, no decrease in the number of cattle allowed to graze the same supposedly sensitive areas.

 

This rush to sweep the wild horses off the rangeland has the full support of Salazar.  And why not?  When he looks at the mustang, he sees them through a hundred and fifty year lens of ranching.  Wild horses are competitors for forage, inhabit areas wanted for mining, the powerfully backed Ruby Pipeline and California Heliostat projects, and do not generate hunting fees.  So Salazar wants them removed.  But not only removed, he wants them transplanted back east……somewhere, on pseudo-sanctuaries, at a cost of $96 million dollars, where he believes people will actually pay to watch once wild horses eat grass all day.

 

His plan, therefore, to move them to areas in the east, is not surprising, nor is his revisionist view of wild horse history.  It is the final chapter in the long saga of claiming the west.  Soon the horses, like the buffalo and the wolf and so many other beings, will be mere shadows of the species they once were.  And our president, and his appointees, can go down in history as those who stole the magnificence of the west from our children.

It's Raining Cats and...............Horses?

Lately, every time I pick up a horse publication, listen to horse or animal talk radio, read blogs and chat room verbal wrestling matches, I hear the same stories over and over:  Horses are being abandoned by the thousands due to a horse market that is bulging at the seams with unwanted horses and no way to deal with the overload since we no longer have slaughter. 

 

Help…its raining horses.

 

Nonsense!

 

During the hay day (no pun intended) of equine slaughter in the late 80’s to early 2001, over 300,000 horses were processed yearly.  There were also only a handful of active equine rescue and sanctuary organizations trying to bring to light what really happens to ole dobbin when he is sent to the local auction. 

 

By the late 90’s not only had Prop 6, the anti-horse slaughter legislation passed in California, but the demand for horsemeat and the number of operating slaughter plants in the US was also declining.   So the number of horses processed went from the mid to high 300,000 to approximately 70,000 which spared, conservatively, three million horses from ending up on a dinner plate in France.

 

So, what, pray tell, happened to the three million horses?  Were they running wild in the streets?  Were they abandoned or turned out on the range with wild horses?  Were they left to rot and starve in someone’s back yard?  Were their bodies piling up in landfills?  The answer is no to all.   What the AVMA, the AAEP and numerous horse registries do not tell you is the fact the three million horses were simply absorbed and the horse market took care of itself. 

 

During that downturn in slaughter of horses no one was running around telling us the sky is falling.  There was no increase in abandoned horses. There was, however, one difference.  The slaughter industry, and by that I mean the whole funnel that shoves horses toward that end, was not trying to reassert itself on US soil.  They were still processing horses, just fewer of them.  Therefore there was no reason to manufacture the mystical urban legend that we now have being reported as fact.

 

And here is another fact the chicken little crowd are not telling you; with the decrease in demand for slaughter horses, the passing of Prop 6 in California and the Cavel plant in Illinois burning down - which eliminated over a third of the processing capability in the U.S. - the number of cases of horse abuse and neglect and theft started to decline.

 

All of this does one thing to the supposition that horse slaughter is driven by the need to dispose of unwanted horses; exposes it for the lie it is.  Slaughter is a market driven business.  When the demand for horsemeat is up, more horses are needed for slaughter.  When it is down, fewer horses are needed.  Slaughter horse buyers are not suedo animal control agents who, as John Holland put it “go around the country like dog catchers gathering ‘unwanted horses’ as a public service. 

 

So, let’s call all this erroneous information what it is….. fabricated manure…..regardless who is producing it.

 

Watch for my next op-ed piece about the term “unwanted horse”.

Howling

I am listening to plaintive howls that fill the clear evening air.  On a normal night the howling would roll across our small valley and be joined by other voices from the ridge as well as our various dog enclosures.  All of it blending into a canine chorus singing some ancient song.

But this night, like the last few nights, the sound is different.  None of the dogs join in, no answering howls from across the valley or along the ridge.  There is just the one voice and I can barely see the backside of our Malamute mix Takaani as she points her muzzle up to the stars and sounds out her requiem for her siblings.

Until recently, Takaani spent her life in close proximity to her brother Juno and sister Siku.  They ate, slept and played together, and followed the ranch truck as we did chores.  They were inseparable.

Like most Malamutes, Takaani, Siku and Juno were large but harmless.  They would run to greet visitors but had no inclinations as watch dogs.  So when they noticed the strangers on our property across the street the three of them trotted over to investigate.  Their innocent curiosity delivered them into the sights of three well armed coyote hunters.  And even though they were seventy to eighty pounds larger than coyotes and had distinctive Malamute face and body markings, Siku and Juno were shot and killed, their bodies left to rot amongst the sage.

This type of wanton heartless killing is not new to me.  Since establishing our wild horse sanctuary in the Northeastern section of California I have been in conflict with the coyote hunting community in my efforts to protect the numerous pairs of coyotes who keep our hay fields clear of ground squirrels. 

I have seen coyotes shot from low flying aircraft, chased by trucks, shot at from main roads out of passing vehicles, and hunted in every way, shape and form one can imagine, their bodies hung on fence lines to thwart other coyotes; a myth that will not go away despite research that proves the practice to be silly and without any preventive value.

This war on coyotes has been going on for more than one hundred years.  In California  alone, more than a half million coyotes have been killed by any means necessary at a cost of thirty million tax dollars.  There are those who believe that coyotes are necessary for a healthy ecological balance.  Others feel the coyote is responsible for the loss of young livestock and even the decline in some game animals.  But biologists, who have long studied coyotes, agree that as a whole coyotes are not that destructive and may even be helpful as rodents make up a large portion of their diet. 

 But despite research and the budding success of non lethal predator control methods, the myths persist and fueled by a surge in predator hunting magazines, there is a new interest in killing coyotes by urban weekend hunters using AR-15 assault rifles equipped with sophisticated scopes. 

 Unlike agricultural interests, who at least believe they are protecting their livelihood, this nouveau urban army has one interest only; to kill.  Even the most cursory search of coyote hunting forums reveals a callus disregard for suffering as hunters brag about lung shots and long blood trails from animals trying to drag themselves to safety.  

 And so, it was into this controversy and burgeoning interest in killing coyotes as sport that our young innocent dogs wandered.  They were oblivious to the arguments, studies, and rationalizations.  They just wanted to say hello.  The irony of their innocence confronting the human propensity for violence was as real as the nauseous waves of grief that rolled through me as I struggled to carry Siku’s heavy, lifeless body up the hill to my truck.

  No matter how I cut it, paint it, excuse it, there was no reason for Juno and Siku to have been killed.    And in this month of April, which is animal cruelty awareness month, perhaps each of us needs to examine why any animal should die like they did; needlessly. 

 As I see Takaani sleeping alone in the living room I remember the pain and sadness of her siblings’ deaths and I want to do what she does, howl into the night sky.

(this op-ed piece will apear in the Lassen County Times April 28 09) There is a $2000 reward for information leading to the arrest of those responsible, on animal cruelty charges.   

LA Times Article Update

Ok Southern California, you have made me a believer.  For never, in my wildest imaginations (and I can have some pretty wild ones) could I have predicted the outpouring of generosity and compassion for myself and the animals here at the sanctuary.   To put it in financial terms, to date you have taken our bank account from a negative $1000 to a whopping $100,000 to the positive, with most of that amount hitting our mail box within 5 days of the article appearing in the Times.  I was literally buried in donations and they are still coming in.

It took me two weeks to enter all the initial data into our financial software and I am still trying to find time to record the donations into our donor management program which then kicks out receipts and thank you letters.  Oh, to have that problem all the time.

And therein lies the real benefit of all this generosity; hope.  Yes, I was able to get hay, pay bills and hire a office helper.  I stocked up on senior feed, scheduled dental work for the old horses and bought seed to plant in our hay fields for a harvest of hay next June.   And it feels good to have a bit of a cushion as we go into winter. 

But beyond the obvious day to day needs we all have up here, what we also needed was a good old fashioned dose of hope.   We, the horses and I, needed to know people care about what happens to us.  And regardless of the economy, geopolitics and all the other uncertainties of our modern world, the same basic things that were important a hundred years ago are important today: kindness, compassion, justice, truth and the simplicity found in the lives of animals.

It is interesting how the simple act of writing a check and attaching an encouraging note can have such a profound effect on the recipients.  In simple terms bellies are full each night and tomorrow is more secure.   But more complex is the effect of one opening an envelop, making note of the donation and then reading the endearing notes from the givers.  One note came from a 91 year old LA resident who said in a world wanting for heroes, she had found one in me. 

So, LA, you made me a believer.  People care.  Hope is alive and well.  Kindness and compassion reign supreme and even the most ordinary person can be someones hero.

Thank you LA.

A White Quiet

Its quiet.   A white quiet.  A stillness shaped by a windless half-moon night and the snow fog that slowly settles down on our mile high valley.   Its 10pm and I am walking the dogs as I prepare the waterlines for a night of sharp cold.  All I hear as I walk is the crunch of my boots in the snow that blankets the ground and the muffled sound of my breathing against the inside of my parka.

The stillness around me is absorbing. I stop in the middle of the dirt road, turn off my flashlight and listen.  There is no noise.  Nothing.  No wind.  No far off howls of hunting coyotes.  No night birds or sounds of horses on the range.  It is completely silent except for the sound of my beating heart. 

It is not often that one can enter a space so devoid of noise.  For most of us some level of sound is always there.  Even in the twilight of sleep there is a far off dog barking, an early morning garbage collection, the faint clicking of changing lights at an intersection, the muffled sound of motors and wheels on pavement on some unseen freeway, a nocturnal cat padding across a rooftop or the deep dream-filled breathing next to us or down the hall.   Wave after wave of sound laps against our ear drums.  An endless ocean of sonant matter. 

Before coming to this North East corner of California noise was a given.  I never knew the profound importance of silence.  How the silence allows the brain, indeed, the soul, to sift and separate the many things learned and experienced each day, pondering its travels, mixing, measuring, distilling everything down to a third element, revelation.   And with revelation one can then journey with wisdom and some level of grace. 

The busy, chaotic, technical world we have created for ourselves makes it hard to get to this third element.  There are just too few places where we can experience true silence.  We cannot pause during the day and let the quiet roll over us.  There is no natural quiet.   

I stand in the cold, listening to the silence, letting it settle over me like the snow fog has settled over our valley until the dogs find me again.  Their happy whines and friendly sparring brings me back to the world of sound.   I walk back to the house.  My boots and breathing keeping me company with their regular cadence against a background of white. 

Living As A Crow Flies

The valley behind the sanctuary is green now.   The same vibrant green one finds in box of basic crayons.  The range-land as far as the eye can see is a flowing carpet of this green, interspersed with the blue-gray hues of the sage.  The range is cradled between volcanic mountains, ridges and bluffs pushed up from the flat eons ago when the earth was trying to decide what its face should look like.

This is open range county, all this green and gray and dark brown slate.  Its hard for most people to grasp the idea or even the reality of open range.  Most people live divided and segmented lives with roads, fences, houses and yards breaking up any idea of what is meant by "as a crow flies".  Nothing can be reached in a straight line.

But out here neither the carpet of green nor a line of sight has segments.  Its all one long free flowing horizon.  A person could start a walk from any place on the sanctuary and just keep walking, uninhibited by walls, barriers or gated communities.  A walk could start at the sanctuary and days later end somewhere in Nevada with only the barest glimpse of other people.

This is what I love about my now green world.  Its vast and unimpeded horizon gives me wings that stretch way out....and out...and out.  Here I am free.  If I stretch out my arms I do not need to say "this is how much space I need", the amount of space some researcher said every human needs.  Out here I stretch out my arms and look down one of them to my finger and beyond, to a space that is 10, 20 miles off in the distance and I say "this is how much space I need". 

This is how much space we all need.  Even if we don't live here.  Even if we only hear about it or see it in a photo or read about it on someones weblog.  We all need to know its out here.  Untouched.  Undeveloped.  Unfenced.  A place that is open and sometimes like the green in a crayon box.

Ode to Little Mouse

Mice.  Most people try to find sanitary, efficient and mostly hands-off ways to get rid of them.  Under normal circumstances I would included myself amongst that group.  But like everything else at the sanctuary, normal is rarely the realm within which we operate.  The sanctuary changes and challenges everything about me, inside and out.  Little mouse was no exception.

I first met Little Mouse in a bag of dog food.  Due to the number of dogs we house at the sanctuary, I keep large bags of dog food.  Once a bag is opened, it is then stored in the pantry.  And no matter how many times I would berate myself, I would invariably forget to tightly close the top of the bag.  This is a situation no mouse can resist.  So one day, after I had dragged the 50 lb bag out of the pantry I reached in with a dog bowl I used as a measure and when I fished it out there on top of the bowl now heaped with dog food sat Little Mouse.

At first I was startled but Little Mouse just sat there calmly looking at me.  And there-in was the challenge.  I could drop the bowl and leave Little Mouse for the dogs to dispatch or I could...what?   I wasn't sure about what I should do.  I just stood there holding the dog bowl and Little Mouse sat on the heaping dog food calm as could be.  Waiting, I presume, for me to make up my mind.  I eventually lowered the dog bowl to the counter and Little Mouse jumped off, ran across the counter then back under the stove, a nice warm home.

I suppose it seemed silly, my letting the mouse go free.  After all, what's a mouse but a nasty disease carrying rodent.  They are small creatures to be squashed, trapped, poisoned.  At least that is the party line.  But in the abstract, which is where most of us go when we causally buy poison or traps in our local hardware centers, it is easy to forget that mice have lives of their own, separate from humans.  And different.  But are they any less important? 

After feeding the dogs I dragged the bag back to the pantry and ...you guessed it...forgot to tightly close the bag.  Next day I again dragged the bag out and reached into it with a dog bowl and once again I fished out dog food and...little mouse. 

This time I was not startled, just a bit mystified.  Why was this mouse getting stuck in the bag and why wasn't it freaking out when I fished it out?  With Little Mouse perched on top of the bowl of dog food I took a good look at him.   Unlike other mice I had seen, this mouse had a bedraggled coat, tattered ears and gray muzzle.  Little Mouse was old!  Who knows how long Little Mouse had lived under the stove.  I know the house had been where it was for seven years, so at least that long.  How long do mice live?  I really had no idea.  But I was not going to be the one to end those years.  So once again I lowered the dog bowl to the counter where Little Mouse made his journey back to the stove.

This adventure with the dog food bag and Little Mouse went on for quite a while until one day Little Mouse did not appear.  I have no idea what happened to my little friend.  But I do know that like many of the adventures I have living up here in this wild section of California, I was changed by the experience.

I had never really looked at a mouse so closely.  Not really.  Nor had I ever thought about what an aged mouse would look like.  I had never really thought about mice at all.  Not their lives.  Not their world.  Not how we change that world with our fears and myths or our need for a sterile environment.  Mice were just...well...in the way and therefore expendable.  But Little Mouse changed that comfortable human justification with his simple need for food and warmth.  I was face to face with the life that is behind the word "mouse".  No longer an abstract, Little Mouse was now a part of my daily routine, a very concrete being.  And unlike humans, without natural malice.  He just wanted the dog food.  By accident or fate, my war with mice had ended.

Up here in hinterland, our other rodent population that humans war against are the prairie dogs.  Farmers and ranchers shoot them, poison them, gas them.  Certain ranches in our area even hold special "rat shoots"  - an interesting use of verbal camouflage - where the public is invited to bring their guns and spend the day dispatching the critters as they peek their heads out of their underground hide outs.  The shoots are held to keep the prairie dogs from consuming the alfalfa fields.

I am considered the crazy hold-out.  I will not let anyone shoot the prairie dogs on our property.  And yes, they do eat a lot of the alfalfa and in fact have decimated our fields.  But, I still can't let the sound of gunfire roll across our acres.  When I left the defense industry I was through with the theory and reality of killing.  I will find other ways to keep them from ruining the alfalfa.  After all, if we can put a man on the moon, take the temperature of mars and explore the rings of Saturn, surely we can find a way to share this planet with the many creatures that inhabit it.   That challenge is my ode to Little Mouse.

"Five sparrows are sold for just two pennies.  But God doesn't forget a one of them".  Luke 12:6

The Meaning of Sanctuary

Lottie has a blown knee, which makes her unrideable, a banged-up and scarred face that douses any romantic thoughts of the beautiful equine, and she requires a special diet and a very understanding and patient farrier.  Because she is physically vulnerable, she cannot live with other horses in a pasture.  Lottie cannot be ridden and she cannot be a pasture companion to another horse.  Lottie just doesn’t make the grade, in any way that would make her useable again.  In her crippled and slow-gaited existence, she represents the epitome of the unusable, unproductive and therefore disposable life form.

     But Lottie is also the reason society needs sanctuaries, places of refuge for non-performers in a performanced-based culture. Lottie and all of the others like her who have been given sanctuary, are mere whispers in a world roaring with words such as performance, competence, viability and productiveness.  Lottie represents the almost forgotten values of other words such as kindness and compassion.  For if performance is indeed more important than kindness, then there is no place in this world for Lottie.  And the hunger that many of us feel, as humans, for a larger and more compassionate place for our children and ourselves will go unfulfilled.

     Lottie takes up so little room and yet because she can no longer perform, she is even denied that space.  And in society's denial of space, a final and ironic use for her is found.  She is sent to the slaughterhouse to endure all of its terrors, so that she can be food for the tables of Europe and Asiaand profit for corporations.

     Lottie and others like her are the only defense for believing in the critical importance of providing  sanctuary for horses in need.  The path to rehabilitate the rideable and useable horse, although important and noble, is too easily lost in the many justifications for performance-based value.  Sanctuary, on the other hand, is one of those words that pick at the collective conscience of society.  It picks at it because Lottie needs sanctuary, not from some great evil out there somewhere, but because she needs it from us, the you and me that make up society.

     Because horses are valued primarily for what they can do, they are in jeopardy from the moment they are born.  But then that should not come as any great surprise, for many of us have learned that our value as individuals is directly linked to whether or not we can perform, produce, or be competent at something. To fall into any other category is to become disenfranchised, a chasm the homeless, disabled, ill and aged often fall into.

     This is why Lottie is important.  She is a gentle but imperfect being, vulnerable in her inability to perform anymore and put before us to ponder her fate. The decisions we make about Lottie, and a thousand like her every day, become measures of who we really are as individuals and as a society.  Our collective character is shaped, not by the decisions we make about the beautiful, powerful or competent, it is shaped by how we treat the weakest and neediest amongst us.

     The sanctuary residents, the whole and the broken, become ambassadors of the promises we make and want to make for a better world.  And as visitors watch Lottie nap in the warm sun or graze on the green grass with her stable mates and friends they are able to see and experience the meaning of sanctuary, for it is painted in the bold colors of Lottie’s enriched existence.  Because there is a place of safety, hope and healing for Lottie, with all of her imperfections, then maybe, just maybe, there is also a place of safety, hope and healing for the rest of us.

Losing Little Blue

I knew Little Blue was going to leave us a full week before he actually did.  Not that he acted sick.  He didn't.  He ate well, drank plenty of water, was up and active.  He had no wounds or sores, no breathing problems and his eyes were clear.  Still, I knew.  It was simple really, he had separated himself from the rest of the herd.  He ate away from them, grazed and slept away from them and went to water long after the rest of the horses had left the tank area.

Every day for a week I looked for Blue in the morning, packing his hay on my back and hiking up and over the ridge behind the house.  It was slow going for the snow was deep in places and I'm certainly not getting any younger.  But I slogged along until I would find him grazing in the back valley all alone. 

To see one of our mustang so alone is startling.  They just don't leave each other like this.  Unless......   And that is how I knew.  Blue was preparing his friends and himself for a journey none of us could take with him.  It was something he would do alone. 

And so each day for a week I looked for Blue.  I fed him in the places where he chose to be alone.  I watched him, sometimes from afar and sometimes close enough to feel his breath on my neck as he curiously smelled my hair before walking off to be on his own again. 

Then one morning when I came over the hill I didn't see him in the valley below.  I put down my hay pack and began to search in earnest.  I found him under a juniper tree, halfway down the ridge, legs curled under his body, nose touching the ground as if asleep.  Blue had taken his journey. 

I knelt down and touched Blues body.  He was already cold.  When I was a director of a sanctuary in an urban area, I would have taken some of his mane, then his body would have been removed by the tallow company, to be disposed of in ways none of us want to think about.  But here, in this remote place, the horses live and die and that living and dying is with me always.  I think its better this way. 

While I ordinarily bury the horses that pass on.  I felt compelled to leave Blue where he lay.  And every few days, I go looking for him.  Instead of bringing him my pack of hay, I bring a few large rocks which I lay on his body.  It will take me a long time, this process of burial.  But there are many ways to say good bye.  This is mine.