Horses as My Pen :: Invention Writing Technology Papers

Horses as My Pen When I was told that I had to develop a form of writing using solely nature, my initial reaction was a groan. Despite the fact that nature is abundant where I live--on a farm--is was the middle of winter and my creativity was definitely limited. Additionally, I actually felt lost that I couldn’t use a writing utensil, Dennis Baron was definitely right when he wrote, "We have a way of getting so used to technologies that we come to think of them as natural rather than technological. We assume that pencils are a natural way to write because they are old" (51). Then it hit me, my family has been involved with the use/production/processing of fibers for generations. So my initial idea for this project was to utilize natural wool and dyes or needlepoint of some fashion to create kind of text naturally. As I began formulating more specific ideas for that avenue, I realized that it would be very time consuming and I was unsure of the exact outcome. With sheep in mind, the thought of other barnyard friends danced in my head. I opted to utilize my equines, family and friends. The plan was to align the horses to spell out Hi, although, my first idea was to spell out some random quote, I did not have enough horses to write anything longer than a single word. Just as Twain noted, "Dictating...to a type writer is a new experience for me, writing with horses was new to me" (501). Because I had to take into account my horses’ temperaments, it took some deliberation about who will cooperate next to who and who should be handled by who. At last, a balance was struck and arrangements made to meet on what happened to be a very frigid day. Six of my very dependable helpers showed up and the horses were groomed, we walked them to a field, overlooked by a Harvester Silo. My dad scaled the silo to get an aerial view and we lined up four horses, one pony, two miniature horses and my dog Riley into the Hi formation. Unfortunately, because the weather was brisk, to say the least, the equines were feeling a bit frisky and were not so keen on standing still. This made the process last about 20 minutes, twice as long as I anticipated. Additionally, my mom, who is not a horse person at all, was holding the two mini’s as the i and Riley was antagonizing them, which made the experience slightly stressful since nobody wants to chase down loose horses!