I'm not certain if the horses at Fort Robinson State Park are descended from Army horses, Indian ponies, or ranch stock. I'm not even sure it makes sense to ask the question; it seems likely that they are a mix of all three, that such distinctions may not even be grounded in reality, as those boundaries may have been fluid for individual ancestor horses.
What does seem clear is that this is a fine place to be a horse. Watching the herd in this landscape, I was reminded of two quotes from Dan O'Brien's novel The Contract Surgeon. O'Brien is a man who knows and loves both horses and this country, and Fort Robinson is the primary setting for the book.
The first: "To a horse the Great Plains must seem an endless, luscious banquet, a land of equine dreams that touches his two dearest desires: his need to eat sweet, fresh grass and his passion for unfettered movement." And it is true that the horses here have good grazing and plenty of space.
But the second passage resonates even more strongly, when I consider a life lived completely in the elements...endless sun, wind, rain...sometimes to be endured, sometimes to be reveled in. O'Brien evokes "a climate that renders you powerless, punishes you at will, yet nourishes you by supplying what you need in doses small enough to make you grateful."
A damn fine place to be a horse.
[Photos by Jessa and Mark Farrell-Churchill.]
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