🌹🎶 Wild Horses

A Lunar New Year Ramble

I’m sitting in the park watching a crow have a wash in the lake with a flurry of flapping and ripples, as droplets of fresh February light bounce off sable wings. The water shimmers as I think of people around the world cleaning house to welcome Lunar New Year and clearing space for spiritual focus over Ramadan. The pounding hooves of the Fire Horse have arrived under a ring of fire solar eclipse as the New Moon in Aquarius slides across the face of the sun.

A Family of Takhi Photo by Tengis Galamez on Unsplash

Truly wild horses have been driven into extinction by human domestication, with only the Mongolian Takhi surviving after a time of recovery in zoos and reintroduction in 1992. It’s a poignant reminder that there is so much in human society that endangers wildlife; yet we also possess the ability to nurture wildness back to life. The whole ecosystem benefits when we do - grazing horse herds, travelling up to 50 miles daily, help prevent wild fires and enhance biodiversity, by spreading plant species.

Image: Sunrise forever on Pixabay

As herds of people embark on chunyun, the largest global migration for Lunar New Year, the earth moves with the song of spring. The motion of galloping horses has always inspired humans, yet by capturing it in rein and bit, constrains the wildness we seek. In Peter Shaffer’s play Equus (1973), Dysart the Psychiatrist reflecting that “a child is born into a world of phenomena all equal in their power to enslave.”

Horses have been saddled with human activity for centuries including transport, racing and warfare. 214 horses died in the UK in 2024 due to horse racing, and 484,000 British horses, were sacrificed in World War I. In War Horse, Michael Morpugo’s character Friedrich, a farrier caring for horses on the front concludes:
“I tell you, my friend, there’s divinity in a horse, and specially in a horse like this. God got it right the day he created them. And to find a horse like this in the middle of this filthy abomination of a war, is for me like finding a butterfly on a dung heap. We don’t belong in the same universe as a creature like this.”

As the celebrations of the Fire Horse’s strength, stamina, speed, tenacity, loyalty and independence spark fireworks across the globe, perhaps we can move towards a world that is kinder to horses and more embracing of the wildness within ourselves.

Happy Lunar New Year of the Fire Horse 🔥🐴🌟 #wildhorses