To save rare ponies, one couple gives up almost everything

Amanda Simpson can’t remember the last time she bought a new bar of soap. Her friends at a local resort give her the half-used bars and small bottles of shampoo left behind by tourists. Sometimes her mother sends her money from England, but with a caveat: Please don’t spend this on hay. Which of course she does, because everything goes to the ponies.

But these are not just any ponies. They’re a rare breed called the Skyrian horse, and they’re endemic to the wind-swept island of Skíros in the Aegean Sea. They’re rumored to be the same horses depicted on the Parthenon frieze, are genetically distinct from the modern domestic horse, and have perhaps