Ashley County Now (2025)

09/07/2025

Mussels: The River’s Silent Engineers

By K. Brad Barfield

When you stoop on an Ashley County sandbar and pick up a “black mussel” shell, you’re holding more than just a relic of yesterday’s river. You’re touching a living system—one that has been at work for tens of millions of years. Freshwater mussels are some of the most quietly influential engineers in Arkansas’s rivers, shaping the very water we depend on.

What does a mussel do? The answer lies in its method: filtering. Each mussel, half-buried in sand or mud, opens its shell and siphons river water in through one tube (the incurrent siphon), then expels it through another (the excurrent siphon). While inside, the water is sieved by gills—gills adapted not only for breathing but for straining out plankton, bacteria, algae, and suspended organic particles. What comes out is clearer, cleaner water.

A single adult mussel can filter anywhere from 10 to 20 gallons of water per day. In a healthy river, thousands upon thousands of mussels may carpet a single sandbar, filtering millions of gallons daily. Collectively, they are a living purification system—removing silt, excess nutrients, and even heavy metals or bacteria from the flow. It’s not just “cleaning,” either; this filtration creates zones of clarity where fish can hunt and aquatic plants can photosynthesize.

But their work goes even deeper. Mussels cycle nutrients, making food available to other river life. As they feed, their waste products enrich the sediment, feeding bacteria and micro-invertebrates—the base of the aquatic food web. The shells themselves become habitat: after a mussel dies, its shell may shelter small fish, crayfish, or even the next generation of baby mussels.

Now zoom out to the “mussel bed”—a multi-species community, rooted for centuries in the same spot. Mussels anchor the bottom, slow the current, and even stabilize riverbanks, resisting erosion. In ancient times, a single mussel bed could stretch for miles, home to dozens of species. These beds acted as natural water treatment plants long before towns or levees were built.

How long have they been doing this work? Fossils of the Unionidae family date back more than 60 million years, their basic design nearly unchanged. The same species now found in Bayou Bartholomew and the Saline River are virtual “living fossils,” descendants of a lineage older than the Ouachita Mountains themselves.

So the next time you wade the Saline or Bayou Bartholomew and see those dark shells half-buried in gravel, remember: you’re not just looking at the past, you’re seeing the ancient, ongoing labor of the river’s oldest engineers—creatures whose quiet work supports everything else that lives in these waters.

Sources:
This essay is based on the following works, all of which we found in the Ovid T. Switzer, Jr. Collection, of which we have on loan:
Bayou Bartholomew: A Regional Stream, by Clifton L. Birch (1999, C. Birch Publishing)
Bayou D’Arbonne Swamp: A Naturalist’s Memoir of Place, by Kelby Ouchley (2022, LSU Press)
Arkansas: A Narrative History, by Jeannie M. Whayne, Thomas A. DeBlack, George Sabo III, and Morris S. Arnold (2013, University of Arkansas Press)
The Ashley County Eagle archive
U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and Arkansas Game & Fish Commission reports
Local oral histories and archival material

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09/07/2025

The First Peoples—Animal Spirits of the Caddo and Quapaw

Long before steel traps, before survey lines and logging roads, the bottomlands and ridges of Southeast Arkansas belonged to a different order of living and knowing. Here, in the wet woods and open prairies, the world was not divided cleanly between human and animal, spirit and flesh. For the Caddo and Quapaw—the first peoples to claim this country as home—every life, every river bend, every animal was thick with meaning and connection. To them, the bobcat, the raccoon, the fox, and the bear were more than quarry. They were kin, ancestors, spirits, and keepers of power in a land alive with stories.

Emergence from the Earth: The Caddo Worldview
The Caddo, whose territory ran the valleys of the Red, Ouachita, and Saline, didn’t see themselves as above nature—they saw themselves as born from it. Their creation story speaks of emergence from a world below, where people and animals lived as brothers, climbing together into the light. That kinship, that shared beginning, meant the earth itself was family: ina’, the Mother.

For the Caddo, the division between human and animal was thin, often crossed in ritual and story. Clans traced descent from animals—Bear, Bison, Raccoon. These were not distant symbols but living kin, ancestors who passed down powers and responsibilities. For a Bear Clan member, the bear was a guardian, a teacher, and a blood relation. To hunt such an animal was to enact a sacred, risky exchange. One story told of the bear’s “ten lives”—each time it was killed, it returned stronger, a warning to hunters that every taking comes with a cost.

The Caddo world was animated by animal intelligence. Tricksters, like coyote or rabbit, featured in tales that explained the world’s dangers and blessings. In one, a clever rabbit outwits a hungry wildcat, turning death into survival with wit alone. These stories weren’t just entertainment—they were instruction in how to live: be sharp, be respectful, know your place in the web.

The Quapaw: Downstream People, Kin to the Land
To the east, along the Mississippi and Arkansas rivers, lived the Quapaw—the O-gah-pa, or “Downstream People.” Their world, too, was alive with spirit. All things—stone, tree, animal—carried Wakondah, the sacred force that moves through creation. Their society was organized into clans named for animals, stars, and storms, arranged in two great divisions: Sky People and Earth People. Animal kinship shaped not just belief, but the rules of daily life and ceremony.

Quapaw hunters moved through the woods and wetlands not as conquerors but as partners. Oral histories recall rituals for “Raising Deer” and “Hunting Otter”—ways to honor the animal’s spirit, to ask permission before taking, and to offer thanks in return. The skills of the hunt, the patterns of animal movement, even the crafting of beautiful effigy pots in the shapes of otters and deer—these were all acts of connection, not exploitation.

The calumet, or sacred pipe, was the Quapaw’s means of binding relationships—human to human, and human to animal or spirit. Sharing the pipe was a ritual of kin-making, extending bonds of responsibility even to strangers and the wider natural world.

The Spiritual Economy of the Trapline
When the first French traders appeared—canoes loaded with trade goods, seeking bear oil and beaver pelts—they entered a land where animals had always been more than mere resources. The European logic of profit and market value clashed with an older logic of reciprocity and kinship. For the Caddo and Quapaw, to trap a beaver or skin a bear was to touch something powerful, dangerous, and necessary. Each act required ceremony, story, and sometimes song.

This difference shaped every transaction. Quapaw were not natural beaver trappers and took little interest in European demands at first. But as the fur trade grew, new pressures—and new temptations—entered the picture. The old rules, the clan obligations, the respect for animal spirits: these began to collide with the demands of an outside world hungry for hides, for bear oil, for the profit in pelts.

Even so, fragments of the old understanding survived. The trickster stories, the respect for animal kin, the taboos and rituals around hunting—they endured, woven into the region’s mixed heritage. Today, echoes of those beliefs still ripple in folk tales, in superstitions, and in the reverence for wild places and creatures that has never entirely left this bottomland country.

A World Alive with Kin
To walk the woods of Ashley County is, in some sense, to walk with ghosts. The spirit animals of the first peoples are not gone—they linger in every thicket and hollow, every dawn when the mist rises over the Saline. The bobcat’s silent watch, the raccoon’s clever hands, the fox’s sudden vanish—all these are reminders that the boundary between worlds is thin. If you listen, if you pay respect, you might just catch a glimpse of that older Arkansas: a place where human and animal lived in a web of spirit and survival, each learning from the other how to endure.

Sources
Sources for this essay include:
“The Caddo Indians: Tribes at the Convergence of Empire” by J. D. Wells; oral histories and legends collected by the Works Progress Administration; “Quapaw Women’s Life Histories” by Mary Maude Angel; artifacts and ethnographies from the Arkansas Archeological Survey; and The Shadow Catchers: A History of Wild Carnivores and People in the Saline River Bottoms, compiled and curated by K. Brad Barfield.

09/07/2025

The Ghost in the Mud: DDT and the Chemical Legacy

By K. Brad Barfield

Every place has its ghosts. In Ashley County, some of ours are invisible—but they’re still here, circling in the food chain, riding the backs of bats, hiding in river mud, and flowing through the veins of Bayou Bartholomew.

For years, the story of DDT—an infamous chemical once hailed as a miracle—has haunted southeast Arkansas. It was sprayed across cotton fields and mosquito ditches by the barrelful, meant to kill pests and boost harvests. People trusted it. But the land remembers.

More than fifty years after DDT was banned, the old poison hasn’t disappeared. Recent scientific studies in our own backyard show just how deeply it endures. Researchers found DDT and its breakdown products (DDE and DDD) in every single species they tested along Bayou Bartholomew. The numbers aren’t just traces—they’re some of the highest measured anywhere in the region since before the ban.

How does this happen? DDT doesn’t simply wash away. It’s sticky, binding to the mud at the bottom of slow-moving bayous. In the dark, oxygen-poor muck, it waits. When the bayou shrinks during summer droughts or low water, that old sediment is stirred up again, sending a fresh pulse of toxins back into the water, and then into the food web.

It’s a process called biomagnification: tiny creatures absorb a little DDT, bigger ones eat them and get a bigger dose, and by the time it reaches birds of prey or mammals, the levels are dangerously high. This is the same story that nearly wiped out the bald eagle in America—eggshells too thin, chicks never hatching.

Even our groundwater and wells aren’t immune. In the 1990s, DDE showed up in shallow wells near the bayou, carried down by rain and time. The legacy isn’t abstract; it’s personal. Some local trappers say they’ve seen strange patterns in animal populations—sickly raccoons, fewer fish, odd bird behaviors. Science backs them up: DDT is still here, working its way through the ecosystem, even as most folks have forgotten its name.

The hardest part? This legacy is tied to bigger changes in our climate. As droughts become more frequent and water levels drop, more old mud is disturbed—meaning more DDT gets released. It’s a vicious cycle: yesterday’s decisions meet today’s weather, and the bill comes due in our bayous and bodies.

Every fisherman who’s caught a “funny-looking” fish, every grandparent who remembers crop dusters passing overhead, every child swimming in brown water—these are the people living with the ghost in the mud. The lesson? What we put on the land never really leaves. In Ashley County, the past is never as far away as we think.

Sources:
This essay is based on the following works, all of which we found in the Ovid T. Switzer, Jr. Collection, of which we have on loan:
Arkansas: A Narrative History by Jeannie M. Whayne, Thomas A. DeBlack, George Sabo III, and Morris S. Arnold (2013, University of Arkansas Press)
Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Ashley County, Arkansas (Goodspeed Publishing Company, 1890)
Kelby Ouchley, Bayou D’Arbonne Swamp: A Naturalist’s Memoir of Place (2022, LSU Press)
Clifton L. Birch, Bayou Bartholomew: A Regional Stream (1999, C. Birch Publishing)
The Ashley County Eagle archive

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08/07/2025

Logging with Hooves: Timber Teams and Swamp Trains

By K. Brad Barfield

In the deep woods of Ashley County, long before diesel skidders or pulpwood trucks clawed through the gumbo, the forest was ruled by hooves. Logging mules—broad-shouldered, iron-nerved, and swamp-wise—hauled timber from the bayou bottoms and piney hills with a strength that rivaled steam. These animals weren’t just part of the logging industry—they were the logging industry.

By the late 1800s, when timber companies began eyeing the old-growth forests of South Arkansas, the infrastructure to support mechanized harvests barely existed. Roads were primitive or impassable, especially during rainy months. Trains hadn’t reached most interior tracts. So the task of dragging felled trees—some of them four feet wide and a hundred feet long—fell to mule teams.

Each mule was harnessed with leather and sweat-soaked patience. Teams of two, four, even six would snake logs along skids or drag sleds over root-woven trails to landings by bayous or narrow-gauge tramways. The work was brutal. Logs jammed in the mud or snagged on stumps. Rattlesnakes waited in the shade. Mosquitoes boiled from the swamps in clouds so thick they’d turn a mule’s ears black. But the animals pressed on, often under the direction of a single man with a long line and the calm, commanding voice of experience.

Crossett, still in its infancy around 1900, depended entirely on this kind of labor. Before the rail spurs reached the harvest zones, it was mule-drawn “swamp trains” that fed the Crossett Lumber Company its first raw material. Skilled teamsters—many of them Black laborers from the county—taught their mules how to turn without tipping, to brace when the load shifted, and to rest when the team’s breath got too ragged. A good mule was said to “know the woods better than the man,” and some could find their own way back to camp with a load in tow.

Work camps sprouted like mushrooms along timber tracts. The smell of boiling coffee, fried salt meat, and cut pine filled the humid air. Mules were staked at night with nosebags of oats and rubdowns from worn burlap sacks. Injuries were common—split hooves, twisted harness, lacerations from whipping limbs. There was no veterinarian nearby, so teamsters doubled as healers, applying pine tar, whiskey, or homemade salves to their patient four-legged coworkers.

Even after trains and tractors arrived, mules remained useful in terrain too steep, wet, or dense for machines. They could navigate ravines and ride out flash floods. And unlike steam engines, mules didn’t explode when things went wrong.

To the men who worked them, mules were not sentimental creatures—but they were respected. Stories survive of mules saving lives by refusing to cross a sagging bridge, or dragging an injured logger out of the woods. One old logger told of a mule named “Biscuit” that could find the shortest path to the skid road every time, even blindfolded. Another remembered a team that stopped on their own at the exact spot where a tree fell on a man days earlier, refusing to go further until coaxed by a familiar whistle.

Logging by mule faded in the mid-20th century, but its legacy lives on in place names, family stories, and overgrown tram beds that still lace the forest floor. For decades, the rhythm of log and hoof built Crossett’s future—one muddy pull at a time.

Sources:
This essay is based on historical accounts from Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Ashley County, Arkansas (1890), originally published by The Goodspeed Publishing Company. We found this document in The Ovid T. Switzer, Jr. Papers, of which we have on loan.

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08/07/2025

The Chicken Yard Matriarchs: Women and the Backyard Flock

By K. Brad Barfield

Long before corporate farms packed birds into climate-controlled warehouses, chickens in Ashley County scratched under fig trees, dusted in driveway craters, and gathered at the back steps of houses where women called them by name. These weren’t just livestock—they were kin in their own quirky way. And the ones who managed them best were the women.

The chicken yard was women’s domain. While men might handle the cows or break a mule, the flock belonged to Mama, to Grandma, to Aunt Pearl, or whoever ruled the porch and wore the apron. These women didn’t just feed chickens—they understood them. They could nurse a pecked-over hen back to health with nothing but Epsom salt and determination. They knew which hen was laying and which one was just pretending. They’d swing a broom to chase off a hawk, flick a snake with a rake, and keep a tally of egg count all without breaking stride in a conversation.

Every homestead had its system. Old laying boxes made from peach crates. Nesting straw fluffed just right. Slop buckets emptied at dawn. The water might be hauled in buckets or dipped from a rain barrel. And the call—chook chook chook—was as natural to these women as humming while shelling peas.

Children learned early: don’t mess with the setting hen. Don’t leave the coop door open. Don’t get between Grandma and the rooster unless you wanted to catch some of what he was fixin’ to get. Chickens weren’t pets—but they weren’t entirely separate either. You knew them. They had moods. They had names. Sometimes, they even had funerals.

But mostly, they had purpose.

Eggs meant breakfast, barter, and what folks used to call “egg money”—the little side stash that kept groceries bought and kids in shoes. A good laying flock was a quiet engine of stability. And a woman who knew how to manage her birds had independence, if not in name, then in practice.

The chicken yard was a site of instruction, correction, and community. Stories were told over the wire fence. Gossip floated out with the feed. Grandkids tagged along to gather eggs and learned lessons about life, death, patience, and the cycle of things.

And let’s not pretend it was all romantic. Chickens are nasty little beasts when they want to be. They peck, they p**p, they fight, they escape. They’ll eat anything, including each other. But these women—these chicken yard matriarchs—managed the madness with a broom in one hand, a bucket in the other, and a calm voice that could quiet even the meanest old rooster.

They didn’t do it for fame. They did it because that’s how things worked. And even now, decades later, when you see a faded photo of an old clapboard house with a chicken scratching near the stoop—you know. She’s nearby. Holding it all together with feed, feathers, and fierce, quiet love.

Sources:
This essay is based on historical accounts from Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Ashley County, Arkansas (1890), originally published by The Goodspeed Publishing Company. We found this document in The Ovid T. Switzer, Jr. Papers, of which we have on loan.

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08/07/2025

Prosperity and Pride: The Crossett Mill in Its Prime (1955–1962)

The mid-1950s brought a sense of triumph and momentum to Crossett, Arkansas. When the No. 2 paper machine roared to life in 1955, it did more than transform pulp into food board—it transformed Crossett itself. The mill’s new era, built on science and ambition, brought prosperity that spread far beyond the factory gates, weaving the company and the community together in ways that defined a generation.

In those years, the Crossett mill was the lifeblood of the town. The hum of machinery was the heartbeat of daily life, steady and reliable. Families built their lives around the rhythms of shift work, school, and church. New homes sprang up across Crossett, and the community swelled with workers drawn by steady jobs and the promise of a better life. The $16 million investment in the food board mill wasn’t just a corporate bet—it was a commitment to Crossett’s people.

Much of this story was told in the pages of Forest Echoes, the company’s monthly magazine. What began as a simple safety bulletin in 1939 grew into a glossy publication that chronicled the company’s successes, spotlighted workers and their families, and celebrated everything from school events to technological achievements. In a town where most households had a connection to the mill, Forest Echoes became a mirror of Crossett’s pride and unity.

The magazine’s most recognizable character was “Abel Woodman,” a cartoon lumberjack whose witty illustrations and commentary promoted company initiatives, safety campaigns, and, above all, the unique Crossett spirit. He was more than a mascot—he was a cultural fixture, poking gentle fun at management and workers alike while celebrating their shared identity.

Prosperity brought more than paychecks. In 1957, the Crossett Paper Mills Employees Federal Credit Union was organized in a small office inside the mill, giving workers new access to loans and financial stability. The company’s influence could be felt in every corner of the community, from investment in schools and recreational programs to the sponsorship of civic events. Crossett was a place where a good job at the mill could support a family, send kids to college, and build a life with dignity and hope.

Yet this era was about more than material gain—it was a time of pride and purpose. Workers took ownership of their roles in producing something tangible, knowing that the food board cartons made in Crossett would travel the country, carrying everything from milk to frozen dinners into American homes. The sense of belonging and shared destiny was palpable.

The period between 1955 and 1962 stands as a high-water mark in Crossett’s history—a time when the town and the mill were in perfect sync, growing and thriving together. This prosperity, built on the foundation of innovation and community, would be both a source of strength and a benchmark by which all future changes would be measured.

Sources
This essay is based on historical accounts from The Iron Giant of Ashley County: A 70-Year History of the No. 2 Paper Machine at the Crossett Mill, with context from The Crossett Story: A Century of Timber, Innovation, and Contention in the Forestry Capital of the South. We found these documents in The Ovid T. Switzer, Jr. Papers, of which we have on loan.

08/07/2025

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08/07/2025

From Smokehouse to Freezer: A Revolution in Rural Preservation

For much of South Arkansas history, the taste of winter was the taste of salt and smoke. Before the hum of electric freezers, survival on the family farm depended on transforming perishable meats and garden bounty into foods that could last through lean months. The mid-20th century brought a quiet revolution that changed not just what people ate, but how they lived—and how they gathered.

The Old Ways: Curing, Smoking, and Community
After hog-killing day, the most prized cuts—hams, bacon, and shoulders—were packed in salt, sometimes laced with a bit of sugar or black pepper, then left to cure for weeks. Once fully salted, the meat was washed, seasoned, and hung in a smokehouse, where cool hickory smoke drifted day and night. This process—slow, hands-on, and deeply communal—meant every meal was a reminder of winter’s work and the knowledge passed down through generations.

Vegetables and fruits, too, were dried, canned, or preserved in syrup, often with the help of neighbors or relatives. Canning circles and community smokehouses weren’t just about food—they were about sharing labor, laughter, and the subtle competition of whose ham or beans would turn out best.

Enter the Freezer
By the 1960s, a new sound joined the winter chorus: the steady buzz of the chest freezer. Rural electrification meant families could preserve food in hours instead of weeks. A hog could be butchered, cut, wrapped in white butcher paper, and frozen before lunch the next day. The garden’s bounty could be blanched, packed, and stored with less risk and far less salt.

The impact was profound:

Labor was reduced, freeing up time for off-farm work or leisure.

Flavor and Texture were closer to “fresh,” allowing for year-round pork chops, venison steaks, and blanched garden peas.

Diet became more varied, as families could store a wider range of foods.

A Larder in Transition
This era was not an instant transformation; for many years, the smokehouse and freezer stood side by side. “Papa” might still cure a few hams the old way for flavor or pride, but the majority of pork and venison now went into the icy depths of the freezer. Canning, once a community event, became a private, practical affair—or faded out entirely. The smokehouse became a relic, used less each year, a quiet monument to the labor of generations.

What Was Lost—and What Was Gained
The freezer was a marvel of convenience, security, and efficiency. But with it came subtle losses: the shared work of community preservation, the transfer of specialized craft, the seasonal rituals that made neighbors out of distant kin. The freezer encouraged self-sufficiency, but also a kind of isolation, as the need for communal labor and support quietly ebbed away.

Yet, for families in South Arkansas, the taste of a freezer-thawed pork chop or blanched butter beans in January brought its own kind of comfort—a sign that, even as the world changed, the home table could still be full.

Sources
“Between the Smokehouse and the Freezer: Hunting, Sustenance, and Community in South Arkansas, 1960–1980,” Gemini 2.5 Pro Deep Search, curated by K. Brad Barfield.

Additional local oral histories, family memoirs, and published accounts of Ashley County agricultural and timber life, as curated in the Ovid T. Switzer, Jr. Collection.

08/07/2025

The Family Milk Cow: Morning Chores and Lifelong Butter

By K. Brad Barfield

Long before there were coolers of name-brand milk in Crossett grocery stores, there was the cow. Not just any cow—but your cow. The one tied to the same post every morning, standing patiently in the frost while someone in boots and a flannel shirt reached under her with a metal pail and cold hands. In Ashley County, the milk cow was the first chore of the day and the last goodbye at the barn gate. She wasn’t just livestock—she was household.

Nearly every family that worked land in Bearhouse, Longview, Prairie, or Extra Township kept at least one milk cow. Some had more, but one was plenty for cream, butter, and enough whole milk to raise a family of kids who didn’t know what skim was. Morning milking became a kind of family rhythm, passed down like a biscuit recipe or a patch of okra seed. Some folks learned to milk before they learned to tie their shoes.

If you grew up in places like Fountain Hill, it’s not something you forget. I can still see that cold morning steam rising off the cow’s hide. I can hear the thwap-thwap of milk hitting a tin bucket. You had to be calm and focused. You had to trust her, and she had to trust you. Every cow had her temperament. Some were sweet as honeysuckle. Some would knock the fire out of you with their tail if you moved too slow or too fast.

That milk got strained through cheesecloth, set in the fridge, and ladled off in layers. The cream went into jars for shaking or churning, depending on what you had. There wasn’t a family in Ashley County that didn’t have a butter mold or a favorite jelly glass for scooping. You made what you needed. You shared what you had. If your cow freshened with twins, you might send a jug across the fence line to a neighbor. If she got sick, everyone knew about it within a day.

And the cow didn’t stop at milk. She gave warmth and peace. Kids leaned against her while they learned to count. Dogs curled at her feet. Her tail smacked flies while you sang gospel to keep her calm. If she mooed at dusk, you knew something was wrong. If she stayed quiet, everything was right.

There were a hundred little rituals. Bringing her chopped corn in a coffee can. Rinsing her teats with warm water. Slipping a salt lick into the trough. And that smell—mud, hide, hay, and milk—marked your hands long after the work was done. You could smell it at church under the cologne. You could smell it on your shirt as you folded it at bedtime.

Even people who didn’t own land often kept a milk cow, sometimes tethered in a brush lot or patch of borrowed pasture. You made do. You cared for that cow because she fed you. She gave what no machine could.

Today, most kids don’t know what it means to milk before sunrise. The only udders they see are in cartoon form. But in Ashley County, the memory lives on. In photos. In stories. In the deep, patient hum of people who know what it means to take care of something that takes care of you back.

The family milk cow wasn’t a luxury. She was the backbone of the back porch. The first name on the roll call. The heartbeat behind the butter.

Sources:
This essay is based on historical accounts from Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Ashley County, Arkansas (1890), originally published by The Goodspeed Publishing Company. We found this document in The Ovid T. Switzer, Jr. Papers, of which we have on loan.

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08/07/2025

His Name Was Blue

By K. Brad Barfield

He wasn’t all blue. Not really. He was mostly white—short-haired, thin-coated, bright against the hayfields—but underneath, his skin held that bluish hue, the kind you only see in certain horses and certain memories. Dappled across him were faint patches of gray-blue, like clouds drifting low on a bright day—consistent but unpredictable, like creekwater light.

His name was Blue, and he was mine.

We were kids together, even if one of us was born on four legs. I rode him ba****ck most days—no saddle, no plan, just me flopped across his spine like a sunburnt t-shirt with feet. We’d run across those pastures like we owned the horizon, diving into creeks, winding between trees, galloping hard until we both steamed in the morning air. In the summer, I’d cut his mane once—but only once. I thought I was helping him cool off, but I later realized I’d taken away his fly swatter. After that, I let it grow long. I needed him to fight for himself when I wasn’t around.

His smell—that’s what returns first when I close my eyes. The warm, light scent of sun on skin. Sweetgrass tangled with sweat. Dust rising from hoofsteps. He didn’t have the thick coat of other horses—he wasn’t built for cold. But he was made for me. For boyhood. For ba****ck afternoons. For being leaned on, trusted, run beside.

And then one day, I got a truck.

That’s the part I still can’t make peace with. Not because I grew up—we all do—but because I didn’t say goodbye. I didn’t know to. Nobody told me a horse might miss you. That he’d lift his head at dusk, ears turning toward the road, waiting for a whistle that stopped coming. I didn’t know a horse could feel forgotten.

But now I do. And I miss him.

He was my companion when the only map I had was the edge of our property. He was my brother when I needed quiet. He was the first one who let me lead, even when I didn’t know the way. And when I close my eyes, I don’t see chrome or speed or the road out of town—I see a white horse with a bluish skin and a long mane, galloping across a field we both thought would last forever.

His name was Blue.

Ashley County Now

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