This is the first time I have ever camped in the midst of small groups of "wild" horses, if that is what they are. I haven't seen any of them mooch goodies from campers, as burros will. But the horses let me and my dog get within 50 feet of them. Perhaps there is a spring closer to the mountains where they "water up."
The other day a pretty horse was pawing insistently at the ground. It reminded me of the book, "The Horse, The Wheel, and Language," by David Anthony. I heard of the book from the "HistoryofEnglishPodcast.com". The book said that horses had a great advantage on the Eurasian steppes: they would pound through the snow with their hooves, and find grass in winter. But cows and sheep won't use that trick.
Much of the book takes place in the homeland of Indo-European languages, which is modern Ukraine. (Of course, we mustn't confuse our linguistic ancestors with out biological ancestors.)
When the linguistics and history project was over, the Ukraine war started. I became interested in the Eurasian Steppe, the Silk Road, and the geopolitical balance shifting away from maritime powers to Eurasian land powers. And somehow, the horse pawing at the ground on that day seemed the connecting thread.
Perhaps my interest in these topics gelled because it was the first time I had camped with wild horses in the neighborhood. Recall how Joseph Wood Krutch began his book, "The Desert Year." He was writing about his mid-life career change from a bookish New Yorker to a desert rat, living near Tucson:
"Scenery, as such, never meant much to me...I made the great and obvious discovery which thousands must have made before me. There is all the difference in the world between looking at something and living with it."
I seemed to be living out his opinion. The internet tells us that the horse lived in North America for millions of years, but then died out after the last Ice Age. Before dying out, the horse had moved to Eurasia to embark on a storied history. Then the Spanish re-introduced the horse to North America around 1500 A.D.
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