While I was still arguing, we heard the distant whine of helicopters. I lifted my binoculars and scanned over the miles of seamless sage. At first I saw nothing. Not even the black dots I had seen before. The helicopter echoed, and a sudden change in tone suggested it had veered hard and shot off in another direction. I pulled down the binoculars searching for some clue to focus on—a whirling blade, a flash of light on metal, a sudden dark movement, anything.
Suddenly I spotted them. A distant smudge of golden dust bloomed in the gray brush. Then, cutting in and out of the dawn light, glints from a helicopter rotor. Then it was gone back into the shadows. Then it returned. I thumbed the focus on the binoculars and saw the white bubble of the cockpit. It cut low over the ground, bent forward, tail up, like a patrolling dragonfly. It turned and dove and turned. In the jostling circle of the binoculars, I finally saw dark dots rise out of the sage. First one, then many. Horses! They were galloping across the plain, flat out in a long line, kicking up a mane of sunlit dust! I was thinking in exclamation points! Here they are! Now run!
A BLM HELICOPTER, MADE MINUSCULE BY THE VASTNESS OF THE GREAT BASIN, CHASES WILD HORSES ACROSS THE SAND SPRINGS VALLEY IN NEVADA.
From the rock, the distant chase unfolded, slow and silent. A file of black dots stretched smoothly across the desert like a strand of beads. But up close it must have been terrifying. In my mind, I heard the throb of the helicopter beating down over the sage, the steel scream of the engines, the blast of dust, the horses thundering over hard, chalky earth. Hooves crashing through sage, legs cut by splintered branches.
I lowered my binoculars and saw that the band was still at least two miles away, but the helicopter was tight on them, driving steadily toward our rock spine. I glanced over at my partners on the outcrop, hoping to share my excitement. But the law enforcement agent was scraping at one of his nails with his car key. The public affairs officer sipped from his coffee cup. He was telling the law enforcement agent about how many years he had left until retirement.
This wasn’t their first roundup. The BLM does dozens every year, annually removing about ten thousand horses. The agency doesn’t call what it does “roundups.” It calls them “gathers,” which makes corralling galloping mustangs sound a bit like picking raspberries in the forest. People who oppose roundups—and there are many—call it “stampeding.” They say the practice is needlessly traumatizing and ineffective. They sue every year to try to stop it. But by any name, the roundups go on. Since the 1970s, the BLM has corralled more than three hundred thousand wild horses and removed them from the West. Some of the big roundups last a month or more. The season essentially never stops. I guess after a few dozen gathers you can get kind of jaded and start inspecting your nails, but this was my first. And it was probably the first for these horses, too.
I went back to my binoculars.
The herd was close enough now to really see. I counted thirty-two, backs rippling with muscle, coats shining in the dawn light, stringy manes flapping like banners as they flew over the thorny brush. The BLM usually justifies roundups by saying horse herds have gotten too big and are eating the range down to nothing. It is a common refrain in the agency that there are too many horses and they have to be removed before they starve.
I expected to see bedraggled wraiths in my binoculars. I thought life on such a harsh range with so little feed would leave the horses as craggy as the desert, patchy with scars, ugly from neglect, with dull skin rippled over sharp ribs. But as the lead mare ran, I could see how sleek and glossy black she was. She had full muscles and deep, bright eyes. She looked like something out of a movie. Two horses behind her were dappled gray with long, light manes. They had no ribs or hips jutting from their hides. The group galloped with the grace of a herd you might see in an old Marlboro ad. Some were the color of old bourbon or chocolate. Some were like honey in the light. Others had white blazes. Horse people have names for all these horse colors, but, I should probably admit now, I am not a horse person. I have never owned any horses and only rode a dozen or so times long ago at summer camp. I never read Black Beauty or dreamed of riding away on a stallion. I don’t know anything about conformation or breeding. I could not appreciate a fine, abundant cannon or prominent, capable withers. I wanted to learn about wild horses not because I love horses but because I love wildness. I always have. I love the wise and enduring simplicity of a life unbound. I have climbed hundreds of mountains, sometimes at night in the snow. I’ve explored canyons for days on end. Halfway through college, when I realized that much of what I was learning was of questionable worth, I withdrew for a semester, loaded a backpack, headed west, and walked and floated the length of the Colorado River. To this day, I love the parts of the West that remain untamed. And that is what brought me to Wild Horse Country. Mustangs embody the West that I love. Part of me just wanted to know that wild horses were still out there.
I also came to the roundup because I wanted to know how wildness on such a scale could persist at a time when everything seems increasingly penned in. How so many horses can live free when so much wildlife is threatened or disappearing. And I wanted to know what their existence said about the United States and the future of the West.
The horses galloped nearer. The shining white helicopter seemed to be right on top of them. It dodged left and right, low over the sage like a border collie, kicking up a halo of white dust. The horses thundered toward the outcrop where we stood. Right beside the outcrop, the BLM had set up a large, circular metal corral. The agency is an alphabet soup of acronyms. It calls the places where wild horses are found Herd Management Areas, or HMAs. It calls horse population goals for these areas the Appropriate Management Level, or AML. Before doing a roundup, it has to create an Environmental Impact Statement, EIS. It is common to hear BLM planners talk in a string of letters that makes no sense to outsiders. In a rare instance of clarity, it calls this corral simply, “the trap.” The walls are usually six-foot-high steel fences, arranged in a circle about forty feet across. Plastic netting is strung along the fence so horses can’t see through. A motivated mustang can clear a six-foot fence, and many would jump if they could spot their landing. The circular corral usually has a long V of fence angling out from a gate, like jaws. The walls of the V are called the wings. They are also six feet high, but they are made of feathery burlap strung between metal posts. The design makes the wings look solid to a galloping horse, but they give easily in case of a crash. The burlap is also light and easy to pack up for the drive to the next roundup. It’s a design that’s been used for a century, both by people trying to get rid of mustangs and by those charged with preserving them.
In the Sand Springs Valley, the wings spread out from the corral and around the corner of the outcrop where we stood, then opened wide into the sage, running at least two hundred yards. Now the whine of the helicopter had grown into a loud THWOP—THWOP—THWOP that I could feel against my chest. I put down my binoculars and watched the herd fleeing toward us. They crashed through the sage and jumped rocks. Their manes lashed their necks in the wind from the rotors. A mare stumbled and rolled head-over-tail before almost instantly rising into a run.
A lot of domestic horse lovers dismiss mustangs as ratty mongrels. A Thoroughbred breeder might look through the binoculars in this desert valley and see just stubby legs, short backs, and heads far too big for their necks. They might see horses too small for a respectable rider. Certainly they wouldn’t fetch much of a price at the sale barn. But there is a chasm between what is attractive to breeders and what is attractive to life in the wild. Thousands of years of captive breeding have produced racehorses that run faster than wild horses, pedigreed Arabians with more desired lines, and draft horses with more bulk. But breeding has also brought problems. Today’s domestic horses can struggle with bad teeth, rotten hooves, colic, joint trouble, jaw problems, parasites, and asthma. Many are wracked with anxiety disorders and bite themselves or pace endlessly. Several hallowed bloodlines are more inbred than a medie
val monarchy. All Thoroughbreds today trace their lineage to just three stallions.
Domestic horses demand constant care: hoof trimming, shoeing, tooth filing, immunizations, worm medicine, mineral supplements. The only care wild horses get is natural selection. Parents are not chosen by studbooks but by the blows of competing stallions. The desert prunes any deficiencies. Wild horses may not look like much, but in many ways they are the best horses. The wild has given them no other choice. What emerged are animals that, according to their riders, have unparalleled intelligence, stamina, and overall resilience. Stories of their marathon runs are legend. One man on a mustang made the trailless, eight-hundred-mile ride from Santa Fe to Independence, Missouri, in fourteen days and said he could have done it faster if not for encounters with a blizzard and a group of banditos. To prove his point, the next time he and his mustang did the ride in eight.
Present-day owners of tamed wild horses joke that the animals can get fat eating tumbleweed and never need a vet. They are the choice of many modern riders in hundred-mile endurance races.
There is a well-known story in wild horse lore that was written down by a cavalry colonel in the 1860s on the Texas frontier. A band of Comanche warriors was visiting his fort and some of the officers goaded the braves into betting on a four-hundred-yard race between the two best horses. The soldiers wanted to test their prize Kentucky Thoroughbred, but when they saw a Comanche come to the starting line on a long-haired, spindly legged, “miserable sheep of a pony,” they were so disgusted that they instead brought out their third-best horse. At the sound of a gun, the two took off. The brave swung a “ridiculously heavy” club and hollered madly, driving his pony. The mustang left the third-best cavalry horse in the dust.
The soldiers immediately demanded another race, double or nothing. They brought out their second-best racer. The Comanche on his miserable little mustang won again. Finally the soldiers brought out their prize Thoroughbred. Triple or nothing. At the sound of the gun, both horses took off at a full gallop. They were neck and neck when the Comanche threw away his club and gave a piercing scream. His mustang shot into the lead. About fifty yards from the finish, the Comanche flipped around on his pony so he could face the trailing American and, with “hideous grimaces,” taunted him to catch up as he rode backward across the finish line
The helicopter banked from side to side, pushing the herd toward the rock outcrop, letting not a one escape. Down below, two cowboys in chaps and hats crouched in the brush near the wings of the trap. One held a tame horse by a halter.
“See that one there?” the public affairs officer said to me. “It is called the Judas horse.”
“Why?” I asked.
“You’ll see,” he said.
The herd galloped within fifty yards of the wings, and the cowboy let go of the Judas horse. It bolted straight into the wings of the trap.
“She’s trained to do that,” the public affairs officer said. “And the other horses see her and follow her right in.”
In the end, it seemed too easy. The helicopter brought the herd right up against the steep side of our rocky spine, then flared to scare the horses left into the wide wings of the trap. They saw the Judas horse leading the way and coursed smoothly into it. Maybe the horses saw the burlap walls as the banks of an arroyo that could lead to the way out. Maybe by the time they realized their mistake, it was too late. The cowboys jumped from the sage, hollering and waving their hats. The mustangs surged down the funnel of the wings and squeezed flank by flank into the trap. The chopper flared once more to scare them all the way into the corral and a cowboy ran in and slammed the gate.
Then it was over. The wild was gone. Only captives remained. I felt a deep sadness at the loss. But it wasn’t quite over. In the chaos, a spindly black foal had fallen slightly behind the herd. Just at the mouth of the wings, the helicopter passed over it, chasing the adults. The foal bucked and jagged to the right, missing the wings of the trap. The helicopter could not swing back without losing the other horses now running down the mouth of the trap. The little foal galloped out into the sage with nothing but fenceless desert beyond.
To myself I shouted, “Go!”
But after a hundred meters, the foal’s run slowed to a trot, then it stopped and turned. It could see its mother going into the trap. It watched, unsure what to do. Once the gate slammed closed, the helicopter whizzed off to find the next herd. In the quiet, the foal trotted to the corral and nuzzled the fence, smelling for its mother. I dropped my binoculars in surprise. I have always thought of horses as loners—solitary in a stall or under a rider. And in our world, that is how we tend to keep them. A horse is an individual piece of equipment. Little thought is given to their lives with other horses. But out here the animals band together in families with complex social roles that have evolved over millions of years. They thrive on intimate relationships among mares, foals, and stallions. “The cruelest thing you can do to a horse is keep it by itself,” one longtime wild horse watcher once told me. The words came back to me as I watched the foal pace back and forth along the fence, unwilling to run away, unsure what to do. After a few minutes, one of the cowboys walked slowly up and opened a small gate in the corral. The foal trotted right in.
“Can’t be away from his mama, isn’t that cute?” the public affairs officer said.
Once through the mouth of the trap, the horses swirled in confusion, turning and turning in the circular corral, looking for a way out before they finally came to a stop. I couldn’t see this, because the BLM had put the pink-tape public viewing area in a place where I couldn’t actually view much. But I could hear their hooves clomp, turning in the desert dust. Steam rose over the rocks from their hot, exhausted backs. The echoing shriek of a stallion cut the desert air. Then two more. The clang of a horse against the metal fence rang against the stones. Some were trying to escape. I watched the open desert beyond to see if any would clear the fence, but I saw only sage.
I heard the creak of the cowboys swinging open another gate and the horses cantered into a rear pen that I could mostly see from the pink-tape rectangle. The cowboys waved horsewhips topped with little white flags that I soon realized were actually plastic shopping bags. I looked over at the public affairs officer, who was pouring another cup of coffee, and asked why the bags were used.
“That way they don’t have to whip ’em,” he said. “For a wild horse, a plastic bag is scary enough to do the job.”
The helicopter roared back over our heads and out into the desert for another round. I stayed and watched all day as it made trip after trip. In eight flights, the crew brought in 121 horses from a valley that had looked empty. One horse, trying to escape, rammed the corral fence and broke its neck, and the cowboys shot it. I couldn’t see it, but when we heard the shot and I asked the public affairs officer what it was, he only said, “I’m not sure.” I only found out later. Deaths from injuries in roundups, while not common, are a regular occurrence.
The other horses were sorted in the rear corrals and loaded six or eight at a time into gooseneck trailers. After driving an hour down a slow, twisting dirt track, the trucks reached the highway. I followed them to another corral at the roadside. There the horses were sorted by sex and age. The foal that came back for its mother was separated from her anyway. Those instinctive family bonds the bands had lived with in the wild were broken. I had come to the valley with the idea that roundups were necessary and as humane as possible. I had believed the agency when it said wild horses are overpopulated. I knew above all that the priority should be to protect the long-term health of the desert. But watching the families broken up was wrenching, and it made me wonder what kind of system we had created.
As the sun slid low over the far side of the valley, some of the horses were pushed up a ramp onto a waiting semi-trailer. The truck pulled away with a loud gasp and headed down one of those straight, empty Wild Horse Country highways.
“Where will they go?” I asked the public affairs officer.
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“They go for adoption,” he said.
“And what if no one adopts them?”
“Then they go to holding,” he said. And knowing that my next question would be what “holding” was, he added, “It’s basically pastures. Private ranches where they live out their lives, or at least stay until we figure out what to do with them.”
“It’s nice land, most of it in Oklahoma,” he added. “They live way better there than they do here.”
That day on the range, it became obvious to me that wild horses are like no other animal in America. I don’t mean biologically, although horses have some fascinating adaptations to living in wide-open spaces (including the largest eyes of any land mammal). I mean culturally. And legally. The public imagination gives more meaning and respect to wild horses than to nearly any other wild animals. We have given wild horses their own law. That law has led to a system where we remove horses from the desert with helicopters and load them onto trucks so we can send them a thousand miles to ranches in the Midwest.
The fallout of all this is remarkably strange. When I visited Sand Springs, there were nearly fifty thousand horses in storage. The annual cost of caring for them was $50 million. We’ve spent a billion dollars rounding up horses since 1975. Just caring for the horses now in storage is expected to cost a billion more. If it had the money, the BLM would like to remove another fifty thousand horses, adding another billion in holding costs. But the money has pretty much run out.
Every year the BLM puts more horses in storage. The more horses it has in storage, the less money for other parts of the program. The storage system now eats up 66 percent of the wild horse program’s budget, and it has pushed the program into a state of paralysis. Managers would like to improve grass and water on the land, but they have no money left for it. Managers would like to develop alternative population-control methods that avoid roundups, but they have no money left for it. In short, the BLM can’t get out of its cycle of storing horses because it is too busy storing horses. So the roundups continue.
Wild Horse Country Page 2