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Ken White
As a Group |
| | | | Saturday, November 18, 2006 | So Im participating in a pastime familiar to most Bay Area residents, sitting still in highway traffic, watching the world around me. Its a weekday afternoon, I am trying to return to my office, and 101 South is at a total halt.
Frankly, in some twisted way, I appreciate such moments of quiet and stillness, assuming no one is using their car horn with expectation that audibly exhibiting their annoyance will magically get the cars moving. I sit quietly, the seat is comfy, and watch a large flock of birds negotiate the sky and the wind above the salt marsh off to the Bay side. They turn and swoop seamlessly, apparently of one thought shared among so many minds; an impressive choreography, lovely in its movement and in its common execution. They are a group enjoying freedom and flight in the sky, while I sit below in a group growing either weary or frustrated by the lack of movement, the lack of freedom. The power of one kind of group, the weakness of another.
When I finally make it back to the office I find an e-mail message from a friend, pointing me to a couple minutes of video from the Netherlands. (http://video.google.nl/videoplay?docid=-4584913278289860160). It chronicles an amazing animal rescue; heres the story.
October 31st, a freak storm leaves well over one hundred horses stranded on a small island created by flooding. The sheer mass of the animals completely fills the small strip of land. Eighteen horses drown, and it is clearly a slow awful death waiting the rest unless something is done. Three days later, a small group of women cross the water, most on horseback, a few others on little boats. The riders coax the first horses from the spit of an island into the water, and then the exodus begins. Orderly, without hesitation, remarkably like sand entering the narrow waist of an hour glass, the hundred horses begin to move; orderly, seamlessly.
Again, a group of animals moving apparently of one thought shared among so many minds. Another impressive choreography, and although in a much more dire setting than the quiet moment watching the birds above the freeway, equally lovely in its movement and equally impressive in its common execution, startlingly so when you consider the size and strength of these animals and the deadly situation in which they found themselves.
The rescue takes long minutes to complete. Riders on horseback in front continue to lead the animals on, rescuers in small boats encourage from behind. But the rescue succeeds because of the trust each animal puts in the one standing beside her. There is no panic, or at least its safe to say that theres no panic evident. You pick the metaphor: models on a runway, soldiers on parade, dancers in a line. All of them work somehow as you watch these animals athletically move to safety, exhibiting once again the power and the beauty of a group.
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