Spirit, Stallion of the Cimmaron Turns 31

Sometimes a song, or a movie helps us remember those in our lives who have passed. KOGO's Veronica Carter talked to a young woman who drove thousands of miles to attend a special celebration for the wild stallion that made the Dreamworks movie "Spirit Stallion of the Cimmaron" famous .

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
For Mother's Day weekend, some San Diegans made the trip
to Santa Barbara County to celebrate the birthday of a
pretty famous horse. The stallion that served as the inspiration
for the two thousand and two animated movie Spirit, celebrated
his thirty first birthday on Saturday.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
Spirit was born to a wild horse heard in eastern Oregon,
then brought to California for this movie, and now lives
at the wild Horse Sanctuary in Lompo called Return to Freedom.
People came from all over to celebrate his birthday, including
many from here to San Diego County. In particular, Rancho
Santa fe.

Speaker 1 (00:35):
Elizabeth Holworth made the trip from Massachusetts just to see
a horse, but it was for a heartwarming reason. Well,
my dad.

Speaker 3 (00:44):
Passed away in the Station Niclup fire when I was
three years old, and Spirit was actually one of the
movies that we used to watch all the time together
because I've learned about him through mostly my family members
obviously and his friends, and they said that this was
the movie that I would not stop watching with him.
So I didn't know that there was a horse based
off of, you know, the series, So I was like,
oh my god, I have to go out here at

(01:06):
some point and I finally like raise enough money over
time after working to like fly out here for a
little week.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
She says she had a feeling that this was going
to be pretty emotional for.

Speaker 3 (01:15):
On the way, I was like listening to the soundtrack
from the movie, like and I like teared up a
little bit while driving because it's just again, it's so
beautiful here, and like this seems like the perfect place
for this horse to be in general. So I was
just like, this feels like being in the movie almost.
So yeah, very a lot of emotions here. It feels
like he's with me. You know.

Speaker 2 (01:31):
I was going to say, what would your dad say
if he knew this is what you were doing?

Speaker 3 (01:36):
Oh my god. I think he'd probably think I'm crazy
just for taking a trip out of here to the horse.
But at the same time, I definitely think that it
would be something he would do. At the same time,
he was really into, like obviously with the event that
he passed out was a rock show, so it's really rebellious,
you know. Like his dad was in the military though,
so it was very different from him. I think he'd
probably get a kick out this. I mean, I think
if he was still here. He'd probably come with me

(01:58):
just for the just for the experience. But yeah, definitely
feeling with you, Anasa, especially when they were doing the ritual,
the healing ritual for first spirit over there was gorgeous.

Speaker 2 (02:07):
I was thinking of him while they were doing it. Yeah,
it was just a beautiful day, beautiful, as she said,
healing ritual for the horse. We saw her, My friend
Cat and I saw her standing at a fence by herself,
looking at another horse that actually looked like Spirits. We
went up and started talking to her and it ended
up to be Spirits son. Yeah, but she started telling

(02:28):
us about this story about you know, how she came
all the way from Massachusetts for the first time ever
to Santa Barbara area just to see this horse because
it was special memory for a dad. It was like
lots of tears were being shed.

Speaker 1 (02:40):
Lots of tears. It's Mother's Day, you know, there are
a lot of people who are celebrating moms who have passed,
and it's just gosh, a lot of connections on that
particular event.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
By the way, the Sanctuaries operated through donations, Okay group
in Rancho Santa Fe organizing meetings to try and come
up with ways to raise funds and keep that sanctuary
going