At Blue Star Equiculture Sunday, I took a series of photos of Josie, a 16-year-old volunteer at Blue Star who spent the afternoon saying goodbye to Chyna (above) and Buford. Josie has know these horses for much of her life. A life with animals is, by necessity, marked  by loss and grief. Blue Star is a sanctuary and rescue farm, death is as much a part of life there.

Many of the animals at Blue Star have suffered grievously and live on borrowed time Many make it to a very old age for horses. But death and grief are no strangers to the farm or the people who work there. They know how to nurture, they know how to let go.

Josie, who is shy, has learned how to master these big horses, won a Championship this year at the World Percheron Congress, she had no teacher but Pamela Rickenbach and herself. The big horses have shaped her life and grown with her. Josie is learning a great deal about life at Blue Star, and so does everyone who goes there. These photographs touched me deeply and I wanted to share them with you. Here, Chyna meets Josie’s gaze, and they are speaking to one another, it felt as if they were saying goodbye, but I can’t know that, I was not inside of either of their heads. I could see the connection between them though, it was all over the photograph.

By now Chyna is gone and Josie has begun her own process of healing and moving forward. It is a gift to know this young woman. For me, Blue Star is the answer the way forward, the model for keeping animals in our world, and for keeping them connected with people. Blue Star very much subscribes to the Native-American idea about horses: they are calling to us to learn how to live in harmony or perish together.