Bordering Processes and Pony Wildness on Assateague Island

This multispecies ethnography investigates how free-roaming ponies and humans participate in the production of “pony wildness” on Assateague Island, a barrier island located off the U.S. mid-Atlantic coast. The bordering practices of ponies intersect with the bordering practices of people to generate a relational conception of pony wildness that incorporates in people-pony relations a desire for intimacy with respect for autonomy, in a multifunctional landscape managed both as wilderness and as a beach tourism destination. This notion of pony wildness includes nonhuman charisma, fluidity, and managing human visitors. We conclude by discussing how the fluidity of pony wildness can help us think more imaginatively about other contexts in which communities of free-roaming nonhuman animals share space with human communities.