Trudy Saves Humanity

Again

This may surprise you, but there are some places I do not take my horses: The grocery store, Pilates class, the movies.

Though I do wonder what movies they’d enjoy. Trudy is such a strong and grounded character, I’ll bet she’d like Alien. She’d be Ripley, saving humanity from all their nonsense. “Again!”, she’d say, looking into the camera and rolling her eyes as the credits roll.

Ty is such a sensitive soul, so romantic. Maybe a Jane Austen adaptation. “Oh, that Elizabeth Bennett,” he’d say, “so proud”, as he looks soulfully into the lens. And all the girls would swoon.

Except Trudy, of course. No time for that. She has a world to save.

The other day I went to an actual film festival. Completely horse-free. Well, sort of. Since I live in the LA area you’d think I do this all the time, but I don’t. Even though I have a lot of artsy Hollywood friends and acquaintances and two nephews who are filmmakers, I’m not really one of those people. I like seeing films but if it’s a fancy big deal, I get very stressed at the thought of being gawked at and judged for what I’m wearing, or not wearing, or how much I weigh, or how old I look. My fragile self-esteem can’t handle it.

In reality though, most film festivals are not glamorous affairs, and thankfully this one was small and pleasant. I was there to see a screening of “Blue Zeus” about a wild mustang stallion and his band who were forced off of their land by the Bureau of Land Management.

The plight of wild mustangs in the US has been a cause I’ve cared about for some time. They have been brutally removed from their ancestral lands in horrific roundups and in the process, many are killed or injured to the point they must be destroyed. Those who survive that terror are shoved into overcrowded pens in generally deplorable conditions. They can waste away like that, in long-term holding, until they succumb to age, injury, or disease. A few are sold and adopted into actual homes to people who care about them, but many more are sold to monsters and more often than is morally comprehensible, end up in the slaughter pipeline and shipped away to meet horrible ends.

This movie is the true story of how Skydog Sanctuary not only rescued Blue Zeus but searched for and finally found his family, bringing them back together to live free again on the sanctuary’s 9000 acres in Oregon.

The reunion of this family is a happier and more satisfying ending than you’ll find in any Hallmark movie. Such a moving and beautiful film, shot artfully and with such heart. If you ever get the chance to see it, you really should.

So, you might ask yourself, what have wild mustangs done to deserve such treatment? Well, nothing. The problem is, you see, there are a lot of greedy, heartless bastards who want that land for their own use and have deemed the mustangs to be disposable and of little to no value.

No Value.

It makes me want to scream. How can anyone look at these beautiful creatures and not see the soul behind those eyes? Or convince themselves these creatures have no feelings and do not form connections and families or do not feel love? Seeing them and their majesty, how can anyone not care about them being slaughtered? Or, for that matter, how can anyone be arrogant enough to declare any living being to be of no value?

We, like all animals, are only here on this earth for a short period of time. I don’t know if the cosmic whack-a-mole that resulted in life was just a fluke or whether there is really some deeper meaning or purpose. You can give yourself a truly cracking headache wondering about it. But it does seem to me, given the temporary nature of our time here, that we shouldn’t be wasting it being unkind and cruel. Or by being so fixated on money or power or the accumulation of things that we harden ourselves to the suffering we see or, even worse, the suffering we cause.

During the holiday season, it’s so easy to get wrapped up in material things. There are gifts to buy and receive, décor to hang, special meals to make, tips to leave. It’s so much pressure and it feels like there is a price tag on everything.

Yet, my favorite Christmas memories are small experiences. Like arriving at the airport and running into my mother’s arms, both of us in tears. Or the quiet afternoons, taking a nap while your parents favorite classical music plays in the background, feeling completely safe and at peace. And the laughter, invariably at something ridiculous that loses something in the telling but leaves you breathless and knowing you’ll never laugh that way with anyone else ever again. It’s a string of moments, vignettes captured in time, that I wish with all my heart I could have again.

Perhaps this year we can stop stressing about “stuff” and appreciate real life and all that comes with it. Especially love and family. And we can acknowledge that family comes in many forms, whether the one to which we’re born or the one we choose and build. Like Blue Zeus and his band. A family that shares the same bonds that we do. A family that is just as precious as my family and yours.

Because all life is precious. And all life has value.

I mean, if it didn’t, Trudy wouldn’t be working so hard to save us all the time, would she?