I'M in Letterfrack. It's a beautiful evening. There have not been so many of these this summer. Now, though, the sun is brushing the rugged face of the Connemara National Park with an amalgam of gilt and purple and the shadowing that gifted artists like God know so well how to use.

And there is an old gray mare of the Connemara herd which is the main attraction in the park, and she is looking at me with wiser, older eyes than mine. And I am looking at her.

We are at the foot of Diamond Mountain, that sunlight glitteringly revealing in its interaction with a million tiny quartzites how the name was earned. We are not alone.

There are hundreds of tourists scattered through the beauty, some of them being informed by herd manager Cathy Snow-Coyne about the qualities of the world-famed Connemara ponies.

I hear snatches of the briefing, but only with one ear because I'm looking at the old gray mare and she is looking at me.

What I heard was that she is called Knockdoe Walnut and that her sire was a famous stallion called Marble. What I heard was that she is 35 years old this year and that is the equivalent of 105 years for me! Amazing!

What I heard was that she dwelt for a time in the Phoenix Park as part of a herd donated by the Connemara Pony Breeders' Society to the gentle President Childers and dispersed through the other national parks after his death.

What I heard, as the group moved on, was that she has a beautiful tall daughter now down in the park in Killarney, and what I last heard was that Walnut is a true example of the original Connemaras of her generation, a little smaller than her descendants, a little daintier and prettier, with strong bones bred for the mountains.

That's what I heard verbally. But there was more.

Dogs can communicate perfectly in silence through the eyes. So, I discover, in the peace below Diamond Mountain in Letterfrack, can very old gray mares with eyes filled with reflections of the mountains around.

If you stay silent and concentrate and somehow open your instincts like your eyes then the messages come through. Call me mad if you like. I don't mind, it's an arguable frequency.

But I heard things from that old mare who is the oldest element of the gift to the park from the society, a body which I have had many contacts with down the last 30 years.

Somehow the old Walnut knew me. Somehow she knew that, 30 years ago at the Ballinasloe Horse Fair, when times were

hard, and starving Connemaras, like donkeys, worth next to nothing, that I'd seen hardy traveler men with maybe 10 lead ropes in their hands leading the groups of docile Connemaras to the trucks on the edge of the Fairgreen that would take them quietly to the pet food factories.

And that was true back then. And somehow infinitely poignant.

And somehow that old gray mare knew that an official of the society that time, as the resurrection work began, sang the praises of the wiry mountain ponies for me right throughout a Salthill evening.

And told me how suited they were to the mountains of home with their tough pastures. And amazed me by saying that when they went to rich pastures in counties like Meath that they could grow too tall to be legally registered in the official registers as Connemaras.

And how they could lose some of their hereditary toughness and resilience in the softlands. And maybe more.

And how they were the best children's ponies in the whole world. And how the bad days were already over. And they were.

And how they would spread all over the world. And they have, from Clifden of the famous annual show to Canberra, from Aberdeen to Amsterdam, from Derry to Dresden.

And somehow, for the old lady had a sense of humor too, she conveyed to me her regret that the herd donated to the Connemara National Park by the breeders' society does not include a resident stallion! And the mothers of the four foals born lately had to go a-courting outside the park to become matrons.

But, that apart, life was very good indeed at the bottom of Diamond Mountain, and thanks very much for calling to see her. Now away with you.

I left her accordingly in her peace with one last gaze into those wild old eyes that reflected the glory of an August evening on her Bens of home.

A good conversation. Call me cracked if you like.