Hooves, Nature, and Hemingway

It's easy, especially when taking a course entitled 'Animal Humanities', to focus solely on animals. Reading those first selections from The Longhorns by J. Frank Dobie did an excellent job of explaining the role of the longhorn within the grand setting of nature. While it did focus pretty intently on the longhorn itself, I felt that Dobie did an excellent job describing what the setting meant to the longhorn and vice versa. For example, while talking about Sancho on page 296 of the course packet, Dobie says, "Daily when the herd was halted to graze, spreading out like a fan, the steers all eating their way northward, Sancho invariably pointed himself south. In his lazy way he grabbed many a mouthful of grass while the herd was moving. Finally in some brush up on the Llano, after ten days of trailing, he dodged into freedom." Reading this really gave me a sense of the importance that surrounding played to the longhorns, and to Dobie's writing. It adds color and personality. It provides opportunity. It feeds and nourishes. It gives life and death. I know this has very little to do with longhorns at all, but Thomas Hobbes describes life in the 'state-of-nature' as being "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" (Leviathan, Hobbes). Obviously, Hobbes is not talking about cattle, but trying to apply it to Dobie's The Longhorn is fascinating to me. If Sancho was magically given thumbs and the ability to hold a coherent thought, I wonder if he would write about his experiences as being "nasty, brutish, and short". I doubt it. And the funny part is, he/it experienced nature in a much purer and un-manufactured form than most of us will ever experience it.


In addition to Dobie's view on Longhorns, he also was a firm believer that the mustang represented a part of nature (specifically Texas), and the people who occupied it. "Like the longhorn, the mustang has been virtually bred out of existence but mustang horses will always symbolize western frontiers, long trails of longhorn herds, seas of pristine grass, and men riding free in a free land" (The Mustang, 328). Mustangs, to many people even now, have represented the freedom and nobility of nature untainted by industrialization and technology. I could have told that to you even before taking this class for two weeks, and my experience with horses and cattle is extremely limited. That is how well-defined the mustang's role as a natural totem has become over the years. I can't help but think of The Rolling Stones' song Wild Horses right now, for obvious reasons. The song goes through a sort of dirge-esque intro about someone enduring some difficult circumstance, and at the end Mick Jagger (ideally a younger, healthier Mick) promises to go out to ride horses, seemingly throwing off the hardships of everyday life. This is probably one of the most un-insightful and inaccurate lyric analysis you will ever read.


I'll be honest, I was giddy for a solid five minutes when I saw that we would be reading Hemingway selections at the beginning of the semester. He is my favorite author, without a doubt. His novel, The Sun Also Rises is right there at the top of my All-Time Favorite Books list. In it, the main character, Jake, goes to Pamplona for a big week-long bull-fighting festival. He writes about it with such simplicity and authenticity that I found myself intrigued with bull-fighting upon finishing the novel. This really doesn't have much do with horses, mustangs, or bull-fighting, but my favorite part from the Hemingway selection was from page 706 of the course packet. "As in all arts the enjoyment increases with the knowledge of the art, but people will know the first time they go, if they go open-mindedly and only feel those things they actually feel and not the things they think they should feel, whether they will care for the bullfights or not." This applies to so many things nowadays. I know that I, for one, go into all kinds of new experiences with a PREscribed emotion that I plan on feeling, and a reaction that I plan on having. A lot of the times, these emotions and experiences are derived from some sort of message we heard, or book we read. What Hemingway is asking (to be open-minded about new experiences) is almost too idealistic. It is nearly impossible to approach something in a completely neutral manner. I'm rambling, so it's time to wrap this up...