More than Pony Patrol

July 13, 2022 4:43 AM

Mickie Meinhardt interviews 6 of Assateague Island's park rangers for The Bitter Southerner Photos by Gunner Hughes. Single link state park, civil servant and wild pony appreciation post.

Assateague lead ranger Chris Gleason-Smuck put it simply: “We protect the resource from the people, the people from the resource, and sometimes people from people.”

"The ponies are big trash pandas. Like bears, but friendly-looking,” laughs park Assistant Manager Meghan Rhode.

posted by the primroses were over (15 comments total)

That was really lovely. Thank you for posting it!
posted by mcduff at 5:44 AM on July 13, 2022 [2 favorites]

One of my earliest memories is camping with my dad and some family friends on Assateague — eating crab, seeing horses, and being bitten by sheesh just a lot of mosquitoes.

I finally went back just a few years ago — summer before Covid, actually. I spent my birthday camping there again with my dad, but this time hauling along Mrs. Gogi and our two girls. We ate crab. We saw the horses. We visited the Chincoteague museum and saw the taxidermied remains of Misty the horse and we all got bit by so very many sheesh mosquitoes.

It remains an amazing place. I love The Bitter Southerner so thanks for sharing this, @primroses!
posted by heyitsgogi at 6:31 AM on July 13, 2022 [7 favorites]

YAY ponies!
Not sure how I feel about taxidermied Misty, though.
posted by Glinn at 7:13 AM on July 13, 2022 [4 favorites]

Oh man, the memories. When I lived in DC, we used to go out there every July 4 with a big group of friends and camp on the huge open group sites. We did this probably 10 years in a row; the group is still going, some 30 years later, and in fact just got back from this year's trip. After the first few years, we started an annual thing where one morning we'd volunteer and the rangers would direct us on places that needed cleanup efforts.

It's just gorgeous there. The author notes he surfs; the waves can hit four or five feet, even in the summer, and we would swim and body-surf all afternoon, or chase Frisbees into the waves. There's literally nothing in sight but sand and water, so it feels like you're a million miles from civilization. Sometimes the nights are clear and the stars everywhere, and sometimes you can watch thunderstorms stack up miles away and roll through, and that can be truly frightening when all you've got is a tent.

Late one night we were all down on the beach, sitting around a bonfire, and suddenly we saw some sort of missile launch down the mainland somewhere and streak into the sky. A lot of folks were partaking of substances; some found it gorgeous, some thought it was the start of WWIII, and all of us really had no clue. The next morning, when the world hadn't ended, we learned that NASA's Wallops Island Flight Facility is about 10 miles SW and had conducted a night launch.

And the ponies. We learned about the ponies and their "trash panda" tendencies (as the ranger put it) pretty quickly, and would stash coolers and food bins under picnic tables, covered with tarps and bungee-corded shut. But every now and then less savvy campers would stake out near us and hijinks would ensue. We came back over the dunes to the campsite one time to see one of the ponies happily ensconced at the other group's picnic table, muzzle deep into a bag of Cheetos.

There are few funnier sights than a surprised horse with orange Cheetos dust all over its snout.

And one evening we were sitting around the campsite when a very young pony, maybe three feet at the shoulder, wandered in and ambled up to us. My friend's four-year-old daughter was standing there, and the pony stretched its muzzle right up to her. We probably should have done something but we were all entranced. The little girl reached out to pet it and for just an instant it was like the Michelangelo "Creation of Adam" painting.

Then Momma Horse whinnied, and the pony broke and trotted off. This was before the days of ubiquitous cameras, so no one captured the moment, but I doubt any of us will ever forget it.

Thanks for the great post, the primroses were over, and for helping me start my day with some great memories.
posted by martin q blank at 7:15 AM on July 13, 2022 [17 favorites]

I'm pretty sure Misty of Chincoteague is the primary reason that I begged my parents to let me go to horse camp when I was about 12 to learn to ride.

As it turns out, I was not good at it. I improved my skills at falling off without hurting myself over the week, but not my riding.

But I still had to read this article, because, OMG, the ponies!
posted by jacquilynne at 7:26 AM on July 13, 2022 [6 favorites]

I still have my somewhat battered Misty and Stormy Breyer horses. I didn't know Assateague had so much happening besides the ponies. I think I assumed it would be tacky and depressing.
posted by emjaybee at 9:15 AM on July 13, 2022 [4 favorites]

Lovely article, lovely ponies. The Bitter Southerner never fails to deliver quality material
posted by tommasz at 10:41 AM on July 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

Thanks for this - I too grew up camping/swimming in Assateague and The Misty of Chincoteague series were some of the first full-length novels my mom read to me as a kid (she still had her childhood copies). Assateague/Chincoteague was also where I finally learned how to ride a bike at the not-so-tender age of seven (or eight?). The large, basically flat expanse of trails turned out to be what I needed to finally take off those training wheels (much easier than hilly Baltimore) - I can still remember how overjoyed I was to finally be able to do what everyone else my age did with such ease.
posted by coffeecat at 11:35 AM on July 13, 2022 [2 favorites]

a trip to Chincoteague was taquito boyfriend's mom's request for her birthday one year & we managed to go when there... were no horses? I still do not understand how this was possible but I remember there being some explanation everyone accepted at the time

we did get the best tacos I have ever had at Pico Taqueria which is now what I talk about when I talk about Horse Beach Island
posted by taquito sunrise at 1:11 PM on July 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

A lovely article, The Bitter Southerner is such a good site, I am subscribing even though I am not a Southerner and not even an American.
I live in a similar area, a sandy peninsula, and I can recognize so much that I can almost smell the pictures in the article. Though the ponies here are tame. This morning very early I went to the beach to bathe my dog (he enjoys swimming but hates being washed, so that is what I do to keep him clean), and on the way we saw a tiny kid roe deer and a viper. And all the birds. I was thinking about how I love the bush behind the dunes. It's a special landscape, not dramatic with mountains and gorges, but intense, with a lot of life making the most of a short summer.
posted by mumimor at 1:38 PM on July 13, 2022 [3 favorites]

Nice article, downplayed the issues the rangers face with visitors these days, though. I've been camping on Assateague since 2014, and I prefer off season because I can't stand the idiots. People put their kids on the ponies backs for photos, and if you warn them, they'll either start shouting at you - "I've been around horses all my life, I know them.." or they ignore you competely. And yet I've seen horses munching grass one moment then kicking each other in a split second. They are dangerous, and unpredictable. One stallion was recently removed from the park (His name is Delegate's Pride, more commonly called Chip) because he was food-aggressive - he learned how to open backpacks, coolers, and rip open tents and screen houses. Because people just won't observe the rules and keep food locked up.

It's a gorgeous place when people are few. There's so much serenity. More than the horses, the article didn't mention the Sika elk that thrive there along with Whitetail Deer (a Boy Scout exhibit from the 1930s I think that they needed to find homes for somewhere, ha ha). Eagles abound; Ospreys everywhere; the bird watching is incredible no matter what time of year. Foxes too!

They could have two dozen Rangers; it would never be enough. I thank them for all their hard work, because they really do work very hard.
posted by annieb at 3:59 PM on July 13, 2022 [7 favorites]

I agree that the off season is the best time on Assateague, but I have to admit that I'm always tempted to go to Chincoteague for the pony swim. Rationally I know it'd be a circus and I'd probably hate it, but you read a few Marguerite Henry novels at a formative age and you get ideas.
posted by the primroses were over at 7:33 PM on July 13, 2022 [2 favorites]

I visited only once, with my parents, travelling from our Eastern Pennsylvania home decades ago. I was obsessed with shell collecting, not ponies, but the place and its ponies made a lifelong impression on me anyway. We probably stayed in Ocean City, Maryland, where we visited a few times.

I'm glad I had a chance to visit, because now that I don't live in the US anymore I'm not sure I'll make it back.
posted by Sheydem-tants at 9:49 AM on July 14, 2022 [1 favorite]

We were stationed at Wallops Island from 1990-1994. I loved it. My parents were bored to death. There was a one screen movie theatre in Downtown Chincoteague where I saw a few films; if you wanted to see anything of note you had to get into the car and drive to Salisbury, where there was a MALL, with an arcade and a Boscov’s where I wandered around for hours and made up stories in my head to pass the time while my parents were shopping for god knows what. I played soccer in Chincoteague and little league baseball in Pocomoke, where I went to school. We lived in the woods in Navy housing (since relocated and rebuilt) near the Ocean Deli (best clam strips ever) and drove to T’s Corner, where I was allowed to rent ONE video game on some weekends. There was a restaurant called Don’s Seafood, and their catchphrase was “If it smells like fish, eat it” which I was not allowed to say in front of company. There used to be a little beach shop with a deli in the back that had pizza burgers, and on a special occasion, my mother would park our Taurus station wagon (my dad drove a Dautsun 280z straight drive, so my mom was relegated to the Ford that she wrecked at least 3 times, including at the aforementioned T’s Corner intersection) in front of the little shop and she would order us a pizza burger and fill the cooler with co-colas (!) and we would sit on the beach and eat our burgers and I was allowed to have a coke. This was a big deal. Then I would swim and boogie board until I was threatened with things you threatened children with in those days so that I would come out.
There was another restaurant down the street called Ray’s Shanty, and I would always get shrimp and oysters (the best oysters) and we’d go to the fish market in Pocomoke and steam crabs at the house.
I climbed that lighthouse when I was in the Girl Scouts and we’d hike all the trails. I think there was a Meatland in Pocomoke, and some other grocery store in Chincoteague, meaning we had to DRIVE to get food.
There was a Pizza Hut, and I had and attended so many birthday parties there, coupled with a party at The Dream Roller Rink, where you could play arcade games and have cheap pizza and they’d mix all the sodas together (a suicide!) in a little paper cup over crushed ice and you sat in sticky booths because you couldn’t take the food to the rink space - or maybe they just told us that because we were rowdy kids. Rumor had it that there was a drive-in adjacent to the rink that showed pornos at night. Scandalous.
Funnily enough, there’s a family in the fancy neighborhood behind mine where I walk my dog, and a few years ago I was chatting with them, telling them that I grew up in bumfuck nowhere on the Atlantic Ocean, and the husband was like “you grow up on the Eastern Shore?” and I said “ya.” Turns out he knew exactly cause we went to school together at Pocomoke Middle School but he was two years ahead of me. And apparently played different age groups in the same little league.
They probably heard me say “woulder” or “house” and I’m not quite Tidewater (even though that’s where I was born), I’m quite a bit Delmarva.
Heard Pocomoke got a Walmart. Fancy.
posted by sara is disenchanted at 8:45 PM on July 14, 2022 [3 favorites]

one of the biggest thrills of my tweens was being able to meet Marguerite Henry twice( because my grandfather had owned the best bookstore on the west coast).

As a grownup, I see that most of her human protagonists are boys.
posted by brujita at 3:25 AM on July 15, 2022 [1 favorite]