12/13/2024
There was a place I used to go.
A sanctuary of sorts, where the weight of the world could fall away.
A place far from the noise of human chaos, where I could breathe in the raw harmony of the wild. It was here, amid the towering pines, where I sought peace. But more often than not, it was here that I came to cry.
The great standing pines were like guardians--safe, familiar. Their branches stretched skyward, reaching toward the sun, the light filtering through the canopy felt like a comforting embrace. These trees felt like home.
For years, I slept beneath their sheltering boughs as often as i could. The forest floor soft like a mattress, the stars peeking through the limbs like old friends keeping watch over me. It was a place to recharge, to heal from whatever had haunted me during the week. If there was ever a place I believed magic wandered freely, it was here--among these giants, where the world seemed simpler, purer.
But then, everything changed.
A new giant arrived in the mountains. A metal giant, a "catcher of the sun"--an industrial project that would slowly consume this land. The moment they broke ground, I walked into the boss's trailer, dust and sweat from a day's labor still clinging to me. The wind had tugged at my hair, the rough edges of a life spent in the elements apparent on my skin. I walked in, stood tall, and introduced myself.
"My name is Erin O'Neill," I said, extending my hand. "I'm the horse lady. And we need to talk."
What followed were months of impossible negotiations. It felt like I was chasing ghosts. I was up against a global corporation, pushing for them to do the right thing, to acknowledge the cost of their project--the countless lives it was upending. But every conversation was a dead-end, every promise hollow. I was passed from one department to the next, each person more disinterested than the last, none of them willing to face the consequences of their negligence. They didn't care about the horses. They didn't care about the land. They just wanted to keep things moving forward, keep the damage hidden beneath the surface.
But then one person stood out--someone who was real, someone who saw.
I can't share her name for confidentiality's sake, but she was different. She didn’t speak in corporate jargon, she didn’t make excuses. When she came down to visit, she saw the horses. Really saw them. Not just as animals, not as a hindrance to progress, not just as statistics, but as living, breathing beings with intricate lives, families, histories.
When I showed her the photos of the dead horses--killed by the very project they were pushing forward--she didn’t flinch. She didn’t justify it. She mourned each loss with me, and when we sat together, across the river in a small, family-owned restaurant, she broke down.
"I’m sorry," she said, smoking her first cigarette in years. "We really are the bad guys, aren’t we?"
Her words stuck with me. For the first time, someone in that vast, soulless corporation actually cared. She became a champion for the horses, fighting behind closed doors, doing everything she could to change the course. But as the months dragged on, as the foal season hit hard and the casualties mounted, I could feel the hope slipping away. The company seemed content with their facade, and I was left to deal with the fallout.
Each day, I was on the front lines, watching the construction push forward, relentless and indiscriminate. Mares delivering premature foals because they were being chased through active construction zones. Foals running into equipment, meeting horrific ends. The damage was unimaginable, the death toll rising with every passing day. Broken necks, snapped legs, shattered pelvises--the list went on. And the company just kept moving the goalposts, changing the map daily, while I held on by a thread.
But I stayed. I was there every single day, right alongside the horses, fighting for every life I could save. We did our best, even as the veterinary bills for the survivors pushed us to the brink. And through it all, I had to stay silent, legally bound not to speak out, to tell the world what was happening.
This twisted game of corporate chess dragged on.
And then, it hit its peak.
The One-Eyed John Mule, my favorite and most dear firmilar, met a gruesome fate. He had tried valiantly to escape the construction with his herd but ran into a panel, leaving a massive gash that exposed his spine and pelvis. I was there last thing he saw in this world. A few days later, a young Bachelor c**t suffered a similar fate. And just days after that, a baby foal was smashed into an I-beam, its tiny face exploding in a grotesque moment of violence.
That same week, my handler team came for a progress visit. By this point, I had shut down. I no longer had the energy to care about the project, about the meetings, about the never-ending discussions that ignored the real issue--the lives being destroyed in the name of progress. I was numb, lost in a sea of pain that I couldn’t even allow myself to feel anymore. To feel would mean to crumble, and I couldn’t afford to do that.
As they talked about project phases, hydro-seeding mixes, and upcoming conferences, I stood there, barely holding on, clutching my fourth coffee of the day. I had been up every few hours, feeding and treating the very foals they were taking selfies with, trying to keep them alive and expenses covered.
And then, she mentioned the pines.
I had asked, months and months before, if I could salvage the wood from the trees that were going to be cut down before the clear cutting phase began. I wanted to take as many as I could haul to later build my "forever cabin," a place where, despite the destruction, I could still sleep under those pines each night and remember that place as it was. But now, with everything that had happened, it felt like such a distant, meaningless request.
She said she would check with the department about a timeline, and in that moment, something inside me snapped.
How could they, after everything? After the photos of dead horses, videos of herds being chased by heavy machines, the calls I made for help that went unanswered, the devastation I saw every day? That THEY saw everyday? How could they think that in that moment I would be concerned with some old pine trees?
I looked her in the eyes and said, "Burn them. Burn them all. I don't care anymore."
And I saw it--the moment her hope died.
Weeks passed. I was passed from one handler to another, each team more dismissive than the last. No one was willing to take responsibility for the destruction. No one was willing to do anything other than shuffle me around, offering words with no substance.
A year had passed since that first day I walked into the boss’s trailer. The tragedies--each one--still haunted me. The faces of the lost ones, their ghosts running through my dreams, a never-ending reel in my mind. Now matter how many were able to be saved, the lost will always out weigh any comfort that may come with knowing so many were able to make it out.
Now, as I sit beneath these same pines breathing in the frosted morning light, Phase 2 looms ahead. I can hear the sound of machines pushing over trees in the distance a mile away.
I don't know how long this place of magic will remain, but I’ll take every moment I can here, as long as they stand, beneath their great skeleton-like canopy.
For the first time in a long time, I'm not here to cry over the loss of land or horses.
Today as I sit here, I think of the day I broke the heart strings of the only person in that entire corporate world who had ever shown me respect or actually cared about the horses of Coal Country.
