Friday night, Brian and some friends and I went camping in Livermore near a small lake in the country. We arrived at our site after dark and set about pitching tents and building the fire. As the moon rose, we made hot dogs and s’mores, and sat around our fire until after midnight.

Four of us crowded into the big tent and slept on an air mattress that had a microscopic puncture wound. Crickets and frogs sang me to sleep in the woods. But a few hours later I was awakened by the not-too-distant sound of horses whinnying and grunting somewhere in the dark. They called across to each other anxiously. This was punctuated by high yelping and squealing — coyotes.

I finally woke up again near dawn to the strange voices of little creatures outside, possibly raccoons, and then at daybreak, the birds descended on our site. A crow was perched in the tree ten feet over our tent, letting out staccato barking cries.

I somehow got up, leaving Brian to sleep, and went outside the tent as the sun was coming up from over the hill. I was finally able to see our campsite: a stretch of gravelly dirt and sparse trees set in a dry wooded valley. With my coffee, I walked in the direction of the horses I had heard in the night. Down a steep hill they stood in a barren pasture below us, about eight of them, and one black steer.

The horses came to the fence; a group of three young girls were picking up handfuls of dry yellow grass and feeding it to them. I joined in, knowing that at that age, I would definitely be one of those girls, in love with horses. The animals were mostly geldings, and in pretty good condition, with bright, alert eyes and shiny coats.

I went to each one and showed it my hand, then stroked their huge heavy heads as they crunched away at the grass. Horses like to have their faces rubbed from forelock to nose, with the grain of their hair. I watched their huge brown eyes roll to me. Slapped at their strong necks, noticing that not much dust was raised. Their noses felt like rich velvet. Their ears were soft like teddy bears.

The little girls were so cute, not knowing very much about horses, but eager to make friends with each one. The horses just wanted to eat of course, but accepted all affection. I figured out that they were for hire to be ridden by campers. It made me think of the last time I rode a horse, at a rental place down on Half Moon Bay. The poor mounts there were broken-down, dirty, somewhat ornery and stubborn. These Livermore horses were tall and fit and beautiful.

The children assigned names to each horse on the second day we were there. The dappled grey was Whitney, the painted brown pinto was Charlotte (in spite of being a boy), the bay with a star on his forehead was Spot. The smallest girl refused to hand-feed the horses, instead picking giant bales of straw and shoving them through the barbed wire at their feet.