This time last year, O’odham Action News reported on a Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community wild mustang that made the journey from the scorching hot desert all the way to the wintry white wilderness of Lapland in northern Finland.

New owners Tinja Myllykangas and Alexander Schwarz named that mustang Nube (“cloud” in Spanish), and when they found out Nube was pregnant, they asked the SRPMIC to come up with a name for the foal once it was born.

After a couple of weeks of responses from Community members, the name Akimel (“river” in O’odham) was chosen to show respect to the Community.

Akimel is now 10 months old and thriving with her mother in temperatures that reach -9 degrees.

“Both Akimel and Nube have very good winter hair,” said Myllykangas. “They look extremely cute in their winter coats. Both have grown up quite a bit. They are both very alive, very curious, and they like to follow us everywhere.”

Myllykangas said that Nube displays inner peace and amazing balance when they go for walks in the forest. With every new situation that Nube comes across, she is relaxed, and Akimel loves to copy her mother.

“It seems like they don’t make any difference between us and other horses; they are our family,” said Myllykangas.  

Plenty of reindeer roam freely in the forest, and the horses are getting used to that as they come and go as they please. The horses let the reindeer eat some of their hay.

“They are perfect little horses,” said Myllykangas.

“We have never seen any horses with such colors. Even the horse registry people are confused because no one knows about these colors, which just keep on changing. Nube is colored differently now than she was one year ago. We are really happy with these horses and we are doing everything to keep them happy too.”