Watch Famous Ponies Swim in Chincoteague Island Tradition | National Geographic

[Music] There's nothing else that I found that makes me as excited as I am to do this. You can't ride roller coasters that give you this feeling. You can't go other places and see anything like this. This is unique to here.

We start on a Saturday. We will go on the south end and round up the Virginia portion of the Shingy ponies. We've got about 70 riders for this event that come from all over the country. We fan out and it's just like the old days of herding cattle. You push through the woods and you're popping whips and hooting and hollering and carrying on.

We round them all up. It takes about 4 and 1/2 to 5 hours. We rest them that night in the crowd. Tuesday we take our veterinarians over; the vets actually call out the ones that are too small to swim and the ones that are too old to swim. We put them in the truck and bring them across by trailer, them and their mothers.

Wednesday is the world famous swim for the rest of the herd. We do it on a slack tide in the morning; the time when the tide is not moving in either direction. It can be high water slack or a low water slack; it doesn't matter. The swim is something different all in itself. We herd everything out of the pen, both herds, the North and the South. We herd everything to the swim site. We hold them; they rest, and at low slack tide, when we get the signal, I mean we start driving everything to the water. It takes about 9 to 11 minutes to swim.

Then we bring them on down Main Street to the crowd at the fairgrounds. The following day is the auction. We will sell the young ones. It gives us money for fire trucks, for ambulances, rescue equipment, and makes sure the ponies survive all winter.

[Music] Long Friday morning, they swim back and they start their life over again for another full year. When this week's over, we back to normal people. We go back to normal life. We have to go back to work, make money, because this does not pay our bills. Unfortunately, if it did, we'd all be happier people. But it's all volunteer to meet up with these horses. Oh, it's great. All my friends now they listen to me, and other people don't listen to me.