One of the great consequences of our culture’s emotionalizing of animals, I believe, is that we can only deal with them in terms of their being saved and abused, we have no real plan or idea beyond that for how they might live safely and share the world with us how they might not only be saved from abuse, but more importantly, from extinction. Many people in the animal world believe our primary obligation with animals is to segregate them from people, remove them from all the dangers and trials and realities of life. My idea is different, I believe our primary obligation is to keep them in our lives wherever we can and find meaningful roles for them to play – therapy dogs, Seeing Eye Dogs, police horses, search and rescue and bomb-sniffing dogs, border collie geese chasing dogs and yes, carriage horses. Any place they are with us, any work we can find, is precious to them, it is literally life and death.
It is wrenching for so many animal lovers when animals like the carriage horses, who have such work, who have such a place right in the heart of our greatest city, may soon be banished, the millions of people who might have seen, driven past them, ridden with them, may not ever get do so again. In the city where they have lived since the 1600’s, they will exist only in archives and in images stores in museums.
The eco-friendly vintage cart proposed to replace the carriage horses may stand as a poignant symbol for the near total victory of technology, greed and ignorance over the animals who have shared our space through out all of human history. What a horrific trade-off. There are so few real struggles left over the fate of animals in the world, each one is precious, this one is precious. Was there ever a more Biblical choice for a culture than to choose between the carriage horses and the carts?
We need a new language for talking to animals and understanding them. Monday and Tuesday I watched as Maria met King, the spirited former farm horse and veteran carriage horse. I have learned from our donkeys how they communicate so often with their noses, when they lower them, move towards us, nudge or bump us, they are speaking to us, asking for food, attention, to be groomed or brush, or often, to get to work, which they do often desperately need to do. Maria has learned to communicate with our equines in this way, her emotions are close to the surface, they sense her connection with them, they respond to it by touching her, asking her to touch them.
Monday, we met King, and Maria stroked the side of his nose, the top of his head. I saw them talking, my new lens captured this emotion in King, this exchange of emotions, this intimations of a language. When he lowered his head to her, he was saying something we all need to hear.
King has worked all of his 14 years, first as a farm horse, now as a carriage horse. If the carriage horses are banned from New York, King will face several possible fates: one is that as an older horse, he is now 14, he will be sent to slaughter, along with 155,000 other horses in the United States, the other is that the animal rights organizations will succeed in passing legislation requiring that he be sold to a horse rescue farm or preserve, where he will be prohibited from ever working again, will spent his days eating and dropping manure, and will have little or no contact with human beings.
Precious choices, my wish for King is that he stay where he is.
As the horses wait for their drivers and carriages to come out, they stand quietly on the sidewalk, the street filling with busses, commuters and cabs heading into the middle of the city. I can only speak for myself, it lifted my heart to see these animals in mid-town Manhattan, they connected me to the natural world, a major reason I moved to the country almost 15 years ago.
Without animals in our lives, we are broken, a part of our own humanity is missing. Being in New York City for just a few days, I felt disconnected from the natural world, from the animal world. Seeing how gracefully and patiently these large animals, working with human beings for thousands of years, adapted to this environment, as so many of their ancestors did, I did not feel as if I were looking at something unnatural, on the contrary it felt the most natural thing in the world. The horses had as much right to be on the sidewalk as I did, perhaps more. We need a new and wiser concept for understanding animals in our world, something more just and meaningful than banishing them from our midst because they get in our way while we destroy the world.
The scene at the West Side Livery Stables is just mesmerizing, I will be thinking of it for a long time. First, the horses are taken outside where they line up (some of them.) Then somebody steps out and stops traffic. Then the carriage drivers – Christina Hansen in this case – grabs a carriage and pulls it out into the street onto a walkway that ramps down and picks up speed, so the driver makes a sharp right turn on the run and the carriage slows enough on the flat roadway so that she can stop it. Not a place to stumble or have a weak back.
If I were running a New York City school I will take my classes down to the stables and watch this extraordinary meshing of live. One driver waiting for a carriage to come out told me if he did not see these horses on his daily commute into the city from New Jersey he would never see an animal other than a dog or raccoon.
In our world, where most issues are shrouded in perpetual argument and listening has become a lost and failed art, I am fairly obsessed with the idea that I can and must avoid the labels other people put on themselves – or me – and use the mind I have been given to think things through for myself. I tend to dismiss the perpetual arguments of ideologues and listen to me, I suppose this is another lost art. More and more people have given up thinking for themselves or talking to people, they are too busy posting nasty messages on Facebook and listening to cable news.
I once relied on journalists, but they are mostly argument stenographers now, they don’t seem to go anywhere much anymore and find things out.
So I ended up going on this curious and exhilarating journey – part fact-finding, part instinct, part curiosity. I can’t imagine writing authentically any other way. This is why I am doing my own research on the horses, reading my own books, tracking down official statistics, going down to New York to see the stables, and back again to go on the first carriage ride of my life, from stable to the park.
_
I am committed to a life in the natural world, and a life with animals, but I am not a horse person or an outdoorsman or an adventurer of any kind – my grandmother taught me that was the awful fate of gentile men, Jewish boys worked indoors. I tend to steer clear of large animals, the only time I was ever on a horse (I was eight) he ran into a low limb and knocked me unconscious and I went flying off of him and was found babbling hours later, I couldn’t walk for days. My idea of a wild ride is Splash Mountain at Disney World. I always thought of a carriage ride as something honeymooners from Ohio and tourists from Japan and Kansas did, sophisticated city boys like me looked for cafes and indy movies in the city.
So it was with an open mind and trusting if somewhat wary soul that I went to the West Side Livery Stables in Manhattan at 8:30 Tuesday morning. These stables are the oldest in Manhattan, they have recently been restored and re-built inside, they are open to public inspection, one of the most interesting and atmospheric buildings I have seen in New York or anywhere else.
It was a remarkable scene, mesmerizing, wonderful, it could only be in New York City. It was one of the best attractions anywhere, for visitors or resident’s, Manhattan’s version of the Changing Of The Guard at Buckingham Palace. You couldn’t miss the stables, the street was beginning to fill with big horses, these huge animals were standing around talking to one another like cops after a traffic accident had been cleared, all that was missing was cups of coffee. I was quite amazed to see this busy street at rush hour, close by the Lincoln Tunnel, awash in horses, drivers, taxis, trucks, pigeons, busses, carriages, drivers, stable hands, cars and commuters rushing to work on foot. The place was teeming, horses next to cars, carriages next to busses, stable boys next to rushing cabs, it all works every single morning.
I loved the scene, the way the horses and the city seemed to simply exist alongside one another, each aware of the other, making room for each other, moving alongside each other. Some people look at that scene with horror, concluding it proves the horses should not be in New York, but I nearly wept at the power of it – where else in our lives to commuters with their earphone wires dangling duck under the heads of giant horses as they rush to work? This is what animals in our world need so desperately – the chance to brush against us where we live and work.
Was it possible to imagine a horse getting spooked one day and plowing into a cab or car? Sure, it is possible – it has happened once in the past two decades, the horses are much safer than people, 22 have been killed in the city this year alone. It is also possible to imagine my stepping in front of a bus. I don’t believe it is worth living in a world so pure and safe that accidents can never happen, where animals must be hermetically sealed off from human beings, or people from one another. There is no such thing as a no-kill world, not for them, not for us.
The rush hour din – engines roaring, honking horns, airplanes and clouds of pigeons drawn to oats, shouting drivers and stable hands, the sirens, traffic rumbles, rushing and weaving taxis – was pure New York, ferocious energy mixed with ferocious machinery mixed with ferocious humanity, somehow it comes together, at least most of the time. The stable crews working quietly and quietly, oblivious to the noise and movement around them. The carriages came out first, pulled out by the drivers who run them into the street, then the horses were pulled out one by one, tied to bricks and fence posts and then, once again one by one, put into their harnesses. If the horses minded the chaos of New York at rush hour, they have learned how to be the most devious animals in the world.
The people surprised me as well. I was expecting to be challenged and questioned, eyed with suspicion, a big, strange man with a big camera in a place shrouded in controversy and bitter accusation and, according to the new mayor, destined to soon be banished from New York forever.
I’m learning some things about carriage horses and the people around them, to love them you must have a sense of humor to get them or be in this world, it seems almost no one who is after the horses or drivers or wants them gone is into laughter. Right or wrong, there is not much humor on animal rights websites, you can check that out for yourself. There, the world is a grim place, at the West Livery Stables there was an almost palpable energy and focus. There is a lot of humor around the stables, the carriage horse people are serious businessmen and many of them and the drivers are classic New York wise-asses, droll and funny, prone to black humor and a lot of shrugging and wry smiles. They tend towards irony as people often are when being besieged becomes a way of life.
As we waited outside, the drivers told me they often compare insults and chants hurled at them on the street or in the many demonstrations all of them have experienced with one another.
A driver named Dave told me that last week a man and his girlfriend came up to his carriage sitting in a queue at Central Park and started screaming “animal abuser” at him, and he turned to the young man and he yelled “child molester” at him. The man was stunned, his girl friend horrified.
“You have no proof that I am a child molester,” the man protested.
“I have as much proof that you are a child abuser as that I am an animal abuser,” he said. He said the man and his girlfriend left quickly.
I continue to be quite amazed by these supposedly wretched and malnourished creatures. I have not see too many more easygoing or grounded animals in my life than those horses out on the street, I was unnerved by the traffic, I nearly got winged by busses and charging commuters on foot and speeding taxes so often the drivers started shouting at me to put the camera away and get on the sidewalk. The horses were not unnerved, they were well away from the traffic and had no near scrapes, they seemed quite curious, keen and relaxed – ears up, tails swishing very slowly and gently. I will tell you this, I have been around animals a long time, and if this crew is depressed or dispirited or wasting away, I am Ernest Hemingway.
Adaptability is the most remarkable train of domesticated working animals, and it simply does not matter to these horses whether they were standing outside a stable in Manhattan or sitting on a plain in Montana. They are acclimated, they know their routines, where they sleep, eat and what their work is. The work is simple, on flat surfaces and well within the range of a healthy horse. They live where they live, they adapt to their environment if they are well treated, these horses were not showing me they couldn’t adapt to New York, they were showing me that they had. This is a reality anyone can see, the horses are out preparing for work every morning around 9 a.m.
I was soon hopping back and forth among them with my camera, the horses were curious about me, one tried eating my camera strap, another the new lens I had just bought, I was nosed in a familiar way (donkeys do this all the time) for attention. The horses seem quite used to people. All around me carriages were being pulled out, harnesses buckled, horses back into position. I kept switching lenses, it was a photographic feast, I’m sure I was annoying the drivers by sticking a camera in everybody’s face (one driver said I didn’t bother him, people were often screaming “animal abuser” at him from passing cars, I was nothing) and interrupting the scramble to get everybody on the road and buckled in, then on the way to the park and earning money. Nobody knew who I was or seemed to care, I’ve encountered more suspicion on the street in my upstate town.
When I was a reporter I encountered slamming doors, punches and kicks, rage and much suspicion most of the time. It was routine. Out on 38th st., where I was ready to start shouting “Christina Hansen is meeting me, it’s okay for me to be here!,” when they tried to toss me out, nobody asked me a thing, I was just another rube with a camera getting in the way of work. When Christina showed up, she didn’t pay much attention to me either, she had to go get her horse. She told me I could go anywhere, take a photo of anything, the bathroom was around the corner, there was probably no toilet paper. Why, I wondered again, are these people so open and trusting if they are so greedy, abusive and uncaring and if there are starving, beaten, dehydrated, depressed and sore-ridden horses lying around everywhere up in these Dickensian stables pining for the wild?
I paid special attention to the horses as they were being harnessed, they all looked like Red at the pasture gate, excited, ready to go and do things. They had the look of working animals – horses, donkeys, dogs – the world over. None of them were balking or holding back.
I was to spend a fascinating morning with two compelling creatures. I am much drawn to Christina Hansen, the quietly combative carriage driver, lover of carriage horses and spokesperson for an industry almost all of official New York City and a vast consortium of angry animal rights organizations is vowing to wipe from the face of the earth. She is a former academic, a history professor who got sick of the jargon she was writing and researching and abandoned that life for horses, whom she grew to love during her childhood in Kentucky. She is absolutely committed to fighting to keep this way of life – and the horses at the center of it – in New York. Personally, I would not be eager to do battle with her, she is obsessive and seems unflappable.
Christina came to New York recently from Philadelphia, where she first encountered people yelling nasty things to her on the streets – she was a carriage horse rider there also. She lives in a room in Hell’s Kitchen and has devoted every minute of her existence to preserving the carriage horse industry in the city. She is a ferocious advocate for horses and their place in the world, she can tell you every meaningful thing every horse in the world has done for a thousand years. She is hardly a fashion Queen, she dresses plainly and functionally, but she did show up with a sporty new Top Hat she thought might add some atmosphere to carriage rides. It was endearing.
Christina is not warm and funny, she does not drip with charm or charisma, at least until you get to know her a bit. She is all business, locked in on the battle to keep her beloved horses in the modern world.
I can tell you this work is different from the work most people do, it is one of the dwindling bastions of the independent.
My sense of the drivers is that they are fiercely independent and individualistic, they love being around horses, they are tough, they seem confident, fit and hardy. I do not imagine many will be driving those eco-friendly vintage electric cars the mayor and the animal rights people assure us will replace the horses and provide a happy and “win-win” ending to the story of the New York Carriage Horses. (Personally, I would jump in the East River before driving one or riding through Central Park in one.)
People worry about the animals, but I know from living with donkeys that equines don’t mind the cold weather, they dislike being outside except in freezing rain or high wind or snow. If you leave the barn doors open on cold nights most won’t even come inside. I was more worried about the drivers, they are outside all day, lined up waiting for customers, there are no bathrooms around, they bundle up in layers of winter clothes, and none of them gets five weeks of vacation on a farm, unlike the horses.
When they are not riding people around they gather and gossip, everyone says. It’s a great job for people who don’t like bosses looking over their shoulders or being at a desk all day and when Christina is not busy, she is usually on her cell patiently telling reporters that no, the horses are not starved, mistreated, unable to lie down, confined in fire traps, abused or sent off after a year or two to die. She is called a liar many times a day as well as greedy and cruel, some of the animal rights demonstrators chant her name, make fun of her teeth.
Christina’s phone never stops ringing these days. At night, she passes out in her room in Hell’s Kitchen, then gets up early to do battle with the people trying to ban the horses or to go and get her horse and carriage out.
When she came out of the stable, she brought out another character, King, our horse for the day. King had a lot of personality, he loves attention and knows how to get it. Like my donkey Simon, he expects people to fuss over him, and if they don’t, they will get nudged until they rub his nose or scratch his forehead. If they do scratch his forehead, he will close his eyes and purr like a cat. King is 14 years old, he has been a carriage horse for eight years. Christina says he is a mutt, part Morgan Horse, part Percheron, he was an all-purpose farm horse bought for carriage work. Like many of the other carriage horses, he might well be dead if he hadn’t been brought to New York, most of the farm houses end up being sold at auction and sent to slaughter. I am struck by the irony of a horse rescued from slaughter, working for eight good years, only to be banished and saved from the cruel fate of work to face a possible, even likely, return to the slaughterhouse.
King has no issues with working that I could see, pulling a carriage with rubber wheels on flat ground is not much work for a farm horse.
So this was the scene Tuesday morning. this is a preamble, really, I just wanted to set the scene. We just got home this afternoon, I want to think about the ride from the stables to the park – it was not uneventful or what I expected either – and then the ride in the park itself. I have some Frederick Law Olmstead (he designed Central Park) stuff to read, and I want to let some ideas settle a bit. I have a million photos to go through, too. Next I’ll get to the ride itself, my head is spinning from it.
Glad to be back, glad to be writing, eager to share this experience with you and the wider world. I have lots of good stuff to write, and I’m eager to get it out. It seems like a lot of people are checking out the blog these days.
In most places, sidewalks are just sidewalks for people to walk on to get from one place to another. In New York sidewalks are places of great industry and compressed energy, they are littered with vendors and carts selling every imaginable kind of food, this man has rigged up plastic sheets to keep the wind – which blows hard from North to South – out and to keep his Shish Kebab warm. The menu on the side is an art form unto itself, I love the energy and industry of New York, it is a teeming place.
