Except that horses aren’t clones. They’re individuals. Each has his or her own distinct personality, just like the more interesting members of the human species. A favorite road takes me past several pastures, each with one or more resident horses. They’ve gotten to know me over the years, and they nod or neigh as I pass. And I, in my turn, shout out a few words of greeting. Sometimes, if one or two of the horses are feeling like stretching their legs, they’ll canter along the fence that separates us, easily keeping pace with me. Not that this is very hard to do, and I don’t think they see it as a race. They must know they could easily outdistance me if there were no fences to hamper them. I think they just like keeping me company. Perhaps, like me, they sometimes wish that they, too, could light out for the Territories.

In any case, they seem quite curious about bicycles.

I’ve gotten to know a few of them very well. There are the elderly geldings down the road, a lean, white fellow and a chunkier roan. Ever since early autumn I’ve stopped to fetch ripe wild apples for them from a couple of trees just out of their reach. And they seemed to appreciate the gesture, ambling over to the fence and politely munching on the proffered offerings. Last week, however, I realized there were several apple trees scattered across their pasture, each one heavy with fruit. So it wasn’t hunger that brought the geldings to the fence each time I stopped. It was pure sociability.

Then there are the gelding and mare who frequent an extensive network of interconnected pastures lying across from an alfalfa field, down in the valley. They always follow my progress closely as I grind painfully up the steep hill overlooking their bailiwick, no doubt marveling at my want of horsepower. And last week, for the first time, I found them in a pasture right alongside the road. So I stopped to say hello. The gelding was careful to keep himself between me and his companion, who glanced shyly at me over his back from time to time, but was otherwise content to graze. No such inhibition troubled the gelding, however. He rubbed his long face up and down my shoulder, sampled my salty arm and glove, and gave me a friendly shove. I didn’t see any apple trees nearby, but there were clumps of succulent long grass growing on my side of the fence, just out of his reach, and those seemed to please him every bit as much.

After a bit, he decided to give my camera a closer inspection:

We talked for a while before more pressing matters called him away, and his companion followed after him, leaving me alone once again. So I mounted my bike and rode off toward home. It was like saying goodbye to friends I hadn’t seen in years. Still, I shouldn’t have been surprised by this flood of feeling. When Jonathan Swift was looking for creatures to contrast with the savage and repellent Yahoos (in his satirical novel Gulliver’s Travels), he hit on the Houyhnhnms, horse-like beings whose well ordered, rational society so entranced Swift’s protagonist that he immediately sought out the company of horses on his return to England.

Maybe Swift knew something…

 
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