A Horse With No Name
And why it is my all-time favorite song.
It’s a rainy bus ride through the pitch-black woods in 2015. There’s not a speck of light in the sky. It’s the “only” time that the bus could drive from York to the far-off distant land of Smyrna, a journey that would take all of ten, maybe fifteen minutes. I’m not sure why the school had me on a bus at 5:30 a.m.
The bus rattled up the hill that overlooked Hickory Grove Elementary School, the only other light source than the bus headlights. It never made sense to me, but the bus would park at the lot, the driver would walk the elementary students into the school, and then she would just disappear for half an hour. I and four other high schoolers sat in the bus lot for thirty minutes before the driver began the high school route, which passed by my house again at 7:00 a.m.
As frustrating as getting up at 5:30 was (especially since the bus would drive past my house again, but refused to stop), that thirty minutes was like a small piece of heaven for me. I didn’t have a phone until I bought one during my senior year of high school. Until then, I “had” a flip phone, if you call one week out of a month having a phone. My parents took away my devices more than they cooked dinner, and they cooked every night. It was for a million reasons, and most of them were bullshit.
I also wasn’t allowed on computers at home, even for school assignments. My parents had a “huge fear” of me talking to strangers on Facebook, who were actually friends I went to school with. They always asked “How do you know it’s them? It can be anyone,” as if the internet is anonymous anymore. It was also a fear of sending nudes, which I, regrettably, had done like almost every teenage boy with a phone, but to keep me almost completely isolated all of high school because of it? Yikes.
So, I didn’t have a phone, or at least, as far as they knew, I didn’t.
I spent my time in high school bumming ancient androids, superannuated Samsungs, and geriatric Google phones, all on their deathbed, in order to stay in touch with friends over the summer or shorter breaks. I’d find any possible way to get the phone connected to the internet, which was barely a step above being isolated. A pigeon would have been faster than what we had. But I made it work. I had to; otherwise, I was in the dark.
So when I sat in the bus lot for thirty minutes, I spent my time using the school’s not-as-slow Wi-Fi to listen to music on the secret phone. New (to me) music, not the sixteen pirated songs on my cheap MP3 player I found in the electronics drawer in the kitchen. At night, I would sneak downstairs, pirating and downloading songs onto the small pink player with the busted screen. I gave that computer so many viruses from sketchy websites, but I had new music almost every night. “Mom’s in IT; she can fix it,” I told myself.
I guess the feeling of solitude is what drew me to the gentle strumming of guitars. The soft voice of Dewey Bunnell as he describes desert scenery on the first part of his journey and scenery I am all too familiar with. The peaceful “la la, la la la” carried me down the rivers on the window, their current bringing me back to a faraway place known as the Mojave and the “far away” time of 2005.
It’s a cloudless ride through the bright desert sun in 2005. There’s not a speck in the sky, other than the occasional airplane as we head off base. It’s a weekend, the only days out of the week I traveled from Edwards AFB to the city. I’m not sure whether it was California City or Lancaster; I just remember walking under the awning of the youth center to his car, sitting in the backseat, and with my forehead pressed against the window, staring into the desert under the 5:30 p.m. sun.
The first part of the journey was looking at all the desert had to offer. The tans and browns of the sand with greenish-brown saltbush and creosote bushes growing from it. It stretched for miles, ending with the dark shape of mountains far off in the distance. Above the car, vultures circled their next meal, and the hawks soared across the cloudless blue sky.
At some point on the drive, we would pass a small fenced-in area where a coyote bit at the fleas residing at the base of his tail. Gnats and flies buzzed around Wylie’s head and face as he crawled underneath an abandoned car, escaping the harsh sun and scorching sands my car protected me from. My forehead was getting hot, but all I wanted to do was watch my journey change from the tans of the desert to the greys of a city.
The hawks and vultures turned into F-35s and Boeing 747s. The sand becomes glass, the rocky mountains to concrete and asphalt. As I start the second part of my journey, the blues of the sky become the blues in the city.
The three members of America, Dewey Bunnell, Dan Peek, and Gerry Beckley, are sons of servicemembers and met each other while they were stationed in the U.K. Beckley stated that being a military brat and being stationed all over has helped the three have a wider scope of inspiration.
Although I loved living in New England (and kind of like South Carolina), I, like Bunnell, still long for the hot dryness of the desert. It’s that longing that inspired A Horse With No Name. The song was born from Bunnell’s experiences driving through Nevada and New Mexico and his experiences in California, where his family was stationed at Vandenberg Air Force Base (now Vandenberg Space Force Base).
Although Vandenberg is a little greener than Edwards, Bunnell talked about the drives and hikes through the desert, the same drives, and scenery I am all too familiar with, having been in cars passing through the Mojave, Death Valley, and walking around the paintball field close to Edwards.
“I had spent a good deal of time poking around in the high desert with my brother when we lived at Vandenberg Air Force Base [in California]. And we’d drive through Arizona and New Mexico. I loved the cactus and the heat,” Bunnell wrote.
The bus bounces, my head cracks against the window, and I am awake again. It’s cold and damp from being pressed against the window that’s been pelted by rain for an hour. The sky is a dark grey, but the world is no longer a black void. I can see the whiteish greens needles of pine trees, the red leaves of maples, and the tall and thin white oaks standing between massive live oaks and shiny-leaved magnolias.
Bushes, vines, grass, and flowers grow just beneath the trees in wild patterns. Sometimes, everything is growing right on top of each other, hiding whatever hides behind the wall of vegetation. Other spots are clear enough to see into the woods, catching glimpses of deer, dogs, and the bright orange vests of hunters walking into or out of the woods. Creeks run under the bridges, and ponds scatter the fields of cattle.
“Orion, you need to turn your music down,” the bus driver tells me like she does every day. This woman hated anyone not from the South. I’m sure of it. I could write endlessly on my bus rides with the dictator driver and her student enforcer, who regularly got away with physical violence. Why she was never fired when her enforcer gave another kid a black eye is beyond me. Why the bus camera footage “didn’t exist” was also beyond me.
Somewhere on the bus, someone is blasting XXXTentacion.
“That’s not me,” I tell her. “I don’t listen to rap.”
“Well, you need to turn yours down,” she says, ending the conversation for a little while as she glares at me through the mirror. She didn’t have the common sense to understand that if I could hear her over my music, the rackety bus, and the other person’s music, then I was not the one blasting the music. A Horse With No Name is vastly different than RIP Roach.
“Turn the music down now!” The driver stares at me. The music still comes from the back of the bus. I sit in the middle.
“It’s not me. I don’t listen to rap. How many times do I have to tell you that?”
“If you don’t, I’m writing you up.”
“Do it. I don’t give a shit. It’s not my music.” If I’m going to get written up, I may as well do something to earn it and use “foul” language.
I had only lived in the South for just under a year. As far as anyone was concerned, I was a stranger, an outsider, and a Yankee. I did not feel welcome in the slightest.
Bunnell wrote the song while in the U.K., far from the desert, under constant rain, and, in his words, of pure boredom.
“I’d spent time in the desert and always loved nature,” Bunnell said, “and being in rainy old England, maybe I mentally gravitated back towards all of that.”
The song isn’t talking about actual rain, or at least I don’t think so. Bunnell stated that the song is a metaphor for using an unnamed vehicle to escape the confusing, frustrating, annoying, tedious, and all other rainy aspects of life and find a peaceful and quiet place. A dry place.
“I just loved the desert. It left a huge mark on me. It still does. There’s that whole concept of being isolated and alone with your thoughts. There’s a feeling of comfort when it’s just you,” said Bunnell.
Bunnell and his brother’s love for nature and the desert, played a role in the writing of the song. He talked about how living with military parents meant a lot of instability and things changing before you know it. His adventures with his brother were his one constant, and it’s where a lot of the imagery for the song came from, specifically the dried riverbed.
“There were a lot of dry gulleys,” Bunnell explained. “But I do remember my brother and I always hiking out to this one spot and down this dry riverbed. Up on the side of the dry walls, sometimes there’d be holes dug in there by animals. I remember we found some owls in one of those holes in the bank of the dry riverbed.”
Nature has a way of laying you down under a peaceful blanket, but the desert wraps you in a warm towel and holds you close to its heart, warming every part of your body with the same love it deserves but never asks for.
We float down the Rio Grande under a cloudless blue sky, taking a break from the four hours of non-stop rowing. Neither Andy nor I speak, other than the occasional “here” as we hand each other water and/or a package of fruit snacks. I sit in the front of the canoe, he in the back. Compared to the group, we were way behind since we’d stopped for a few minutes to explore a small canyon cave before continuing down the river, but we weren’t too concerned with it. They’re on the same river as us; we’d see them eventually.
Andy’s an outdoorsman. Always has been and always will be. He hiked and always talked about hiking the Appalachian Trail just before our freshman year started. So, when a canoe trip down the Rio Grande was offered at the start of the spring semester, it took no convincing to get him to come with. For me, it was an opportunity to go back to the desert as an adult and see if it was everything I’d remembered it was.
I also just really like being on the water.
On our third day on the river, my ears and hands had become a bright red, burning with every touch and movement. I‘d forgotten the need for sunscreen on my hands and ears, the only places exposed to the sun and uncovered by sunscreen. I was reminded of the burns whenever I wasn’t focused on the views, conversing with Andy, or just lost in my thoughts, so it was rare.
I’d lived in South Carolina for five years at that point, and all five years, I was unhappy. I couldn’t stand being somewhere where the schools treated my brother worse than how I was treated, exclusively because he didn’t grow up here and has a learning disability. I couldn’t stand the ignorance of those I spoke to and dealt with. I hated the small-town gossip, the refusal of others to mind their business, and all the drama it caused. I felt like most adults never grew up after high school and kept that childish mentality, hence the gossip and drama.
I hated the façade of kindness, or “hospitality,” I’d heard so much about. The way people would pretend to care, but their facial expressions said they didn’t. The way people would stand and talk, but their body language said, “I want to leave and do not care.” The way so many were nice, but behind closed doors did nothing but talk and make fun of the same people they were “kind” to.
The best way I have seen it put was a conversation about the difference between the west and east coast. I see it the same way for the North and South, though. The South is hospitable to insiders, not outsiders. The people are nice, but not kind. In the North, the people were open to outsiders. I was going to be treated the same no matter where I was from. They were kind but not nice.
I will always take rude kindness over nice meanness and true meanness over pretend kindness. I grew up being told it is not what you say, it is how you say it. It’s what annoys me so much when I’m told “bless your heart” or any other southern euphemism that is used condescendingly (not always though. I know when it’s genuine). I would rather be insulted than talked down to, even if both achieve the same goal. I respect people who are honest and direct infinitely more than I do people who pussyfoot around with their words. Yankees were always direct or “rude.” But rude is better than dishonest.
On that same token, I know people from the South living up North who don’t like the North for the reasons I do like it. And there are Northerners in the South that love the South for the reasons I cannot stand it. It’s all preference and personal experiences, and many of mine have unfortunately been negative.
I was fed up with eighteen years of being in the middle of courtrooms and child support and custody arguments. I was frustrated with my family, who were always at each other’s throats, unable to let go of the past. I was annoyed with college and trying to figure out if it was something I wanted to continue. And I was absolutely done with people telling me to “grow up” and “accept that being an adult sucks.”
I wanted some freedom and escape from the state, the people, and what was to come. The Rio Grande offered that for a week.
The Chihuahuan receives more rain and is way more green than the Mojave, but both have the dark shadows of far-off hills and mountains. They both have vultures that circle the skies and the snakes that hide under rocks. They had that oddly silent but loud buzz to the air, the kind that I didn’t hear in the woods of the East Coast unless the cicadas were out. The sands stretched on, scattered with light-green bushes, brown sticks, and grey stones. And they both receive less and less water as time goes on.
That third day, we came to a section of the river where we had to drag our canoes across.
“The river is a lot lower than it was two years ago,” one of the professors on the trip explained when we stopped for lunch later in the day.
Andy and I jumped from our canoe. I grabbed the rope in front and pulled (instantly being reminded of the sunburns that covered my hands) while he pushed from the back of the boat. We laughed as we struggled to walk across the wet rocks, our feet slipping occasionally as we moved towards the deeper section of the river. I left with a busted toe, he a scrapped knee. Once we made it to deep enough water, we pushed our canoe to shore and helped some of the others get their canoes across the incredibly shallow section of the river.
When everyone was across, we continued down the river, where eventually Andy and I flipped our canoe while going down some rapids. I don’t remember thinking much about the dried sections until recently when sections of the Rio Grande ran dry last year. With climate change on the path it is, surely the river will dry. What will others think, years later, when they see the dried riverbed?
It would be very upsetting if the only existence of the river would be in my memories and imagination.
I relate to the band members of America, especially Bunnell, given everything he has said and how he grew up. His travels themselves, not just the destination and the constant movement of military lifestyle, is clear in all of his songs, but, to me, especially in A Horse With No Name.
“There’s a lot of motion in the song. That’s something I can’t get away from in my songs. I’ve had a lot of travel experiences and those are the things that get branded in your brain. There’s motion, and there’s a progression,” said Bunnell.
The summers I spent in California and Texas ensured that a friend or two would be gone when I returned to Massachusetts. I had no idea they were leaving, and neither did they two months before their move. Before my summer visitation. I wouldn’t trade my travel experiences for the world, but maybe one or two if it meant that a friend didn’t move away.
I’ll let Bunnell speak for me:
“Because of moving around a lot in the military, the one constant my brother and I had was always to go out hiking, going to the woods, to the swamp, the desert, whatever the environment of outdoor life was that we had. Because we didn’t know any other kids. So it was a great sense of solace.”
I spent as much time outside as I could. In the woods on Hanscom AFB or the old trails through Concord. I’d spend summers walking Dad’s dogs with him through the desert brush of California or the plains in Texas. I’d spend my time moving through the fields of pecan trees or the rolling hills of brown grass in a farmer’s field.
When I moved south, I’d walk through the fields of cattle in South Carolina, making sure to keep note of the neighbor’s bull and where he was. I’d wander through the ravines and creeks in the woods of Smyrna. If there weren’t people, I was happy. As I said, most people I interacted with confused, irritated, or otherwise made me feel ill towards them.
I may not be as crazy about the South, but I had never seen stars the way I had before I moved south of the Mason-Dixon line. The only time I remember the night sky looking clearer was when I canoed the Rio Grande, where the sky was so clear you could see the satellites moving across the sky. Although it isn’t that clear, South Carolina has, hands down, been my favorite place to look up at the sky.
I hop off the bus, ignoring the driver telling me about the write-up she’s about to turn in and how I need to wait for an administrator to walk me in. Bless her heart; she can kick rocks.
My feet splash against the wet concrete slabs that make up the sidewalk to the school doors. The rain pours down, making me appear as if I’d just gotten out of a shower instead of off the bus. It soaks my hoodie as I walk down the pathway. The water jumps from the puddles as my feet slap the pavement, soaking the cuffs of my pants, my shoes, and my socks. Before me stands the two-story brick and concrete building known as York Comprehensive High School.
I make my way through the cafeteria, making sure to connect to the school’s Wi-Fi and replay the song that’s traveled in rings around my head. I walk about halfway down the hall to the library before sitting down against the wall next to Kylee and Abby and talking about the bus driver. They were the ones I would usually sit with every morning and at the bus lot after school. After Kylee moved at the end of the year, the group fizzled out, and I was back to not having a group I connected with.
That’s not me saying I didn’t have friends — I most certainly did. I met Kylee a few weeks after I moved to York, right after she moved to town. For the first time in almost a year, I’d made friends with someone who knew what it was like to move and have friends move constantly. Then she moved again, and I was back to square one.
Like I said, people in the South don’t like outsiders. At least, that has been my perception and experience. Growing up around the same people, in the same place, in the same small town with little to no outside forces seems to make people uneasy about letting new people into their group. Something about never leaving their hometown seemed to make them close-minded, believing that the world had nothing to offer them. I remember the grandmother of an ex-girlfriend ridiculing me for wanting to go back to France.
“What’s there that isn’t here?” Gee, probably a different country with a different culture, different foods, different language, and a different view into how people live their lives. But their family never left the Carolinas. They felt that there was no reason to. Ever. At all. “The West has weirdos, the Midwest has tornados, and the North is full of Sherman-supporting assholes,” or so they said.
Something about the town’s line of thinking was off, at least to me. I couldn’t hang with many of the people I went to high school with, nor did I want to. I had friends and made friends easily, but I didn’t have a friend group until college. I think a friend group is more meaningful than one or two friends who are not friends with each other because their groups do not blend or whatever excuse they had of not liking the others.
Moving south was traumatic, I think, and that’s the first time I have said that. Literally, at this moment typing this. It was a culture shock like no other. I expected friendliness, and instead, I was met with ignorance, bigotry, and the unwillingness to open or change. I was told assholes came from up north, but my experiences tell me otherwise. I went from clear skies, to regular snow, to what felt like constant rain.
A Horse With No Name is my all-time favorite song. No matter my mood, whether I am spun up and heated or in the dumps and cold, it always gives a sense of calm. Its desert imagery puts me back in the places I call home, even the snow-covered home.
For four minutes and eight seconds, I’m sent back to the Mojave (and by the end of the song, Greater Boston), and I am at ease with the world. It makes me think of all the car rides through the desert, that long car ride across the country, all the flights to and from each coast, the walks I’d spend my summers going on, and the absolute freedom I felt when I canoed the Rio Grande.
When the song played that rainy morning, I felt like I’d taken that deep breath of hot desert or cold northern air. For the first time in a year, I felt like I was able to breathe.
And in the way the horse is set free by the end of the song, I felt as if my stresses had run off with him at some point in the journey. The issues and problems, the rain, is still there. It just feels more manageable. The song feels as good as going outside does for your mental health and did just as much for me.
As the song wraps and the horse moves on, I do the same, redirecting my attention to the showers.
In the summer of 2006, after three days of riding in a car (much of which is a haze), the Mojave Desert turned into a sea of leaves. I was surrounded by thick green needles of pitch pines and thin white birch trees. Ferns grew on the forest floor while American elms and northern red oaks shaded them. The red hue of the oak’s leaves and yellow of the elm’s flowers blended with the bright green of the ferns and the lighter green leaves of birch, oaks, and sycamore trees, creating a vibrantly colored forest that I haven’t seen since moving away.
Massive boulders stood amongst the trees, and man-made stone walls ran next to the road as we drove through Bedford, nearing Hanscom AFB. I saw flashes of red birds and blips of yellow flowers. There were plants, birds, rocks, and things in shades of color I had never seen.
“That’s a cahd-nal,” the mover said, looking at the same little red bird that sat on the branch of an oak. “Yah seen ah yellow wahblah yet?”
I shook my head. I had no idea what a yellow warbler was.
“They ah supah wicked,” he said. “Can yah say ‘wicked?’”
“Wicked,” I said. The mover smiled a little. California to Massachusetts is a hell of a jump, both geographically and linguistically.
“Okay,” said the second, more understandable and larger one. “When something is cool, yah say ‘it’s supah wicked.’”
I stood quiet for a moment before pointing to the cardinal. “The bird is supah wicked.”
The men exploded into laughter and smiles. I joined them, although I wasn’t sure what was funny at the time. Their boisterous laughter was as contagious as forgetting the letter ‘r.’
“Next we have to make you a Red Sox fan,” said the larger mover. “You like baseball, right?”
I nodded. I didn’t have a team I liked, but I enjoyed baseball.
“Then you like the Red Sox from here on out,” he said with a grin, pretending to knight me. It must have worked since the Red Sox remains my favorite baseball team. My first hour in Massachusetts was way more welcoming than anywhere else I had been. To this day, it’s still one of the better welcomings I’ve received.
Later in the year, there was snow, which I had seen once before in California. But an inch of snow that didn’t stick is far different from six feet that stuck, froze over, and received a fresh layer of snow on top.
The air was as cold as the desert air was hot, and I felt it in every part of my body when I took a deep breath. In the winter, Massachusetts looked similar to the desert. I could see through the leafless trees and the pines that reminded me of the saltbush of the Mojave. The snow stretched through fields like the sands of the desert. But this time, the sky was a sea of gray clouds with white waves.
And for a little while, the horse was set free.
Thank you to The Riff for publishing and to you for reading!
