Mill Swamp Indian Horse Views: And It Pleased God To Place Before Us a Greatte Re...

Mill Swamp Indian Horse Views: And It Pleased God To Place Before Us a Greatte Re...: Having landed upon the shore of the river called by us James, for our beloved King, and called by the Indians, Powhatan, for thier King, c...

Soothing A Savage Beast

When I sing to wild horses in the earliest part of their training one can see them begin to relax. I am not convinced that it is the music that has any direct bearing on the horse. I think that it is more likely that singing reduces the stress signals that I send out. In short the effect is on me but the results show up on the horse.

Rhythmic repetition has a powerful impact on the human mind. It is at the core of the concept of mantra use in meditation. It is the reason that knitting brings peace to so many people. I do not remotely understand the whys and wherefores but the reality of it cannot be denied.

Last night I slept better than I have in many months. Yesterday afternoon I went upstairs to the music room in the Little House, picked up my guitar, tuned it down four entire frets and played two songs. I was alone. I repeated the two songs until I had them like I wanted them. I did not have a watch and there is no clock in the music room. When I got home I realized that I had been playing those two songs for nearly three hours.

Music's impact seems to vary with individuals. Lydia and Emily caused me to have an insight about the role of playing music that, though I have been playing for forty years, had never occurred to me.

As we are preparing to start up the music program with a new round of little riders Emily told me that it was very important to teach the kids some "happy" songs. She further said that most of the ancient songs that I enjoyed made her felel bad when she sang them. The only thing that floored me more than that was the fact that Lydia strongly agreed.

I had never given this issue a great deal of thought. I knew that I divided music into songs with meaning and frivolous ones. I only enjoyed playing songs with meaning and the frivolous ones were just something to be endured because audiences enjoyed having some thrown in.

The girls caused me to realize that every song that I have ever considered to have meaning were songs of tragedy. Love songs that I enjoy focus on couples together for many decades only to be separated by death (e.g. "Gathering Shells By the Seashore") The other type of love song that has meaning are those that involve being driven to suicide by the abandonment of a lover (e.g."I Never Will Marry", "Dear Companion")
For songs of history I find myself drawn to "The Titanic" and "The Cyclone of Rye Cove" (a great song of A.P. Carter's about the tornado that destroyed a public school and killed a dozen people.) For old time gospel songs I like those that seek to give meaning to suffering like "Farther Along" and "Will the Circle Be Unbroken?"

It had never occurred to me before they raised the point, but I cannot think of a single frivolous song that I enjoy. Some I just dislike more than others.

But that was not the biggest surprise for me. I was stunned to hear that performing sad songs made the girls feel bad. I feel so much better after playing or listening to songs with meaning, songs about real suffering. I thought that everyone did.

My feeling is not based on some rational, moral of the story, see things could be worse, etc, kind of reasoning. The feeling is not based on any reasoning rational or irrational. It simply is. Just as getting under a blanket makes one feel warm and standing barefoot in the snow makes one feel cold, listening over and over to "In My Hour of Darkness" makes me feel peaceful.

So, I will teach the little ones some happy songs but I will not change the ones that I listen to or play by myself. I have a handful of things that give me feelings of peace and I am not going to throw any of them away just because it does not work that way for other people.

I See History: Galicenos

Galicenos of Suwannee Horse Ranch, near Live Oak, Florida, is the focal point of an effort to save a beautiful strain of horses that came up out of Mexico about fifty years ago. Check out their web site and if you can do so go check out their beautiful little horses. Just from pictures one can readily see the Colonial Spanish heritage of these horses. The Galicenos are a very rare strain yet odd chance and circumstance lead us to have one when I was very young.

Around 1966 Mrs. Butler moved to our area from the southwest, Arizona perhaps. She was quite the talk of the area. She had an adopted daughter that was in her late teens and that was it as far as family went. She was related to no one here and how she decided to purchase the farm beside my grand parents is a mystery to me. Everything about her was different. I believe that she is the first person with whom I spoke that appeared to have an accent different than the rest of us. She was different in more significant ways.

She was a rancher. None of us ever called ourselves ranchers. We were farmers. She not only was a rancher, she was a sheep rancher. We did not raise sheep. Very few of us even had beef cows. We raised hogs. She had a mare of a breed that no one around here had ever heard of, a Galiceno. When Mrs. Butler moved she left the mare with us.

Daddy quickly trained her to pull what those of us around here called a buggy, but which I later learned was called by the rest of the world, a sulky. She was a bit skittish to to my eye, but she was also the first mare that I had ever handled. (Momma and Daddy rode stallions. This was in the days before America became sissified about stallions.)

I liked her look and I loved the idea that we had a horse of a breed that no one else had ever heard of.

That little search box on the computer showed me the next Galiceno that I would ever see, nearly 45 years later. I love what I saw. The Galicenos that are being preserved and promoted by this non profit bring to mind the lighter built southwestern type of Colonial Spanish Horse, but they also bring to mind the Mongolian horse of today. John Fusco showed some Mongolian riders a Horse of the Americas publication featuring pictures of some Colonial Spanish horses and the Mongolians immediately recognized the similarity between their horses and ours.

If any Mongolian herdsman find themselves near Live Oak, Florida I suspect that they will wonder who stole their horses and brought them to America.

If I live long enough, and if the Galicenos make it long enough, I will add one to my herd and produce a few stunning little Corollicenos.

Genetic Selection by the Horses Themselves

When the opportunity permits, it seems that many horses seek out others similar in type or color to themselves. This is not always the case, but it happens enough to have an effect on the genetics of wild, free roaming horses.

It has been theorized that horses instinctively seek out horses of the color that they associated with warmth and security as foals, the color of their mothers. My light colored males tend to bond with each other as do most of the bays. The Corollas take up with other Corollas within a day of entering my herd. This lead to the logical assumption that they recognized each other from the wild. However, when Shacklefords, who came from an island 175 miles to the south of Corolla, were added to the mix, they bonded just as quickly with them.

In that case it seems that even more so than color and size the common factor was movement, specifically the gaits that made the Banker horses of Corolla and Shackleford different from the other horses in the herd. This is also born out by another unusual pair in our mare herd. My father's Walking Horse is tightly bound with a half Walking horse. They are of completely different colors but both are very spine high, with more pronounced withers than the other mares. Of course, they are the only horses in the herd that have a running walk.

This throws an interesting wrinkle into the idea that wild horses are entirely the result of natural selection. Without a doubt survival of the fittest is the principle force in driving their genetics, but it may also be that a degree of self selection and self imposed genetic isolation may also be part of the story.

To Endure Is To Win

Ecclesiastes, The Letter of James,
A Sermon on the Mount, instrumentals without names
Glues and pastes, warm sunlight, soft rain
Holding things together, giving meaning, soothing pain

Picked softly on the high strings, driving hard on the bass
Steady, even rhythm, a soft and steady pace
A song can be played with meaning yet still have none
Life must have meaning, each day, until that day is done

Horse hair reins and stiff rawhide
Catch 'em, break 'em, mount up, ride.
The world's greed, violence, blood and force
Whipped with a good guitar and a great little horse.