Wild Wild Horses

My husband and I were road tripping on the outskirts of Las Vegas, Nevada. There is such incredible beauty just outside of the neon lights and crowds of the strip. As we began the drive leading out of the Mount Charleston area, on a downhill section of the road, we came across a wide-open expanse of Joshua Trees. We pulled into a small dirt section of the road to explore and started snapping pics to clog up our social media feeds.

As I was crouching to get a close up, I heard rustling behind me. At first, I thought it was my husband but looked up to see him several feet ahead of me. As a New York City girl, I was thinking rattlesnake and was pleasantly surprised to see a wild horse gazing at me with quite the inquisitive eye. Moving slowly, I stood back up, fully expecting this magnificent creature to bolt away. Instead, it bent down to the brush and was nibbling away. I wanted to yell out to my husband but wanted to respect the quietness of the moment. His chestnut mane sparkled in the blazing desert sun. I started to speak in a manner that I would use to speak to a toddler. He came ever so closer and stood perfectly still. I snapped away hoping my smartphone may be smart enough to capture the beauty of the animal. He continued to stand still obliging my need to capture him as best I could. His tail switched back and forth and every sinew and muscle was glowing in the sunshine.

I sat on a rock and was thanking him for his kindness in enduring the heat just so I may have a cool Facebook photo to share. As I continued to speak, he nodded, and I would swear he was understanding each and every word. At one point, the horse kept looking behind him and I was hoping no other curious tourists were discovering our little group. My husband finally showed up, thinking I had been swallowed up by some desert creature. I motioned for him to be quiet and pointed toward my new friend.

Ever the rock and roll fan, he started humming the Stones’ “Wild, Wild Horses…couldn’t drag me away”. To our amazement, our friend sauntered a little closer to stand under some minimal shade protection he found.

After a year of dealing with the losses and stresses of quarantine, it took being near this animal for my spirit to slowly start ebbing back to me. Hearing its rhythmic breathing and metronome-like swishing of his tail, I felt the year of sadness break apart from me. Busting through the trauma, the heartbreak, to remind me that there is still a loveliness to our world. In this moment, there was no COVID, no politics just a wild animal and us. Just 3 specks in the world enjoying a calmness and a lightness that had been dormant for too long.

As I was silently expressing my gratitude for him indulging us, I realized that gratitude was an emotion that had been severely lacking in my emotional life. And it felt like a switch turned on. It had been so easy to feed off the stress of a year in a pandemic. But I did need to express gratitude. That my family did recover from the virus, that we had a roof over our heads and food in the fridge. We did have to deal with tremendous losses around us and I did not realize that I had never found a way through. Scared of the next day, scared of the news, the science, the world.

It took just this time with a wild horse to bring me back to myself and feel a renewed sense of hope that we will get through.

Our friend suddenly turned and off in the distance we could see more horses, including some truly little ones, heading our way. We felt we owed him safety and privacy and began to make our way back to our car. With my final glance back, he nuzzled the smallest horse. Wild, wild horses couldn’t drag me away for sure. Thank you, my friend.