Swordwhale Walking: Illustration, stories, photojourneys, videos

In 1977, a new movie sensation hit the screen (Star Wars), "The Wild Black Mare" was launched in Baltimore (the first Pride of Baltimore; I would ride her sucessor across the Bay in 2007, roaring on a reach till the cannons were nearly drinking the sea), I had not yet discovered the fantastic world of J.R.R.Tolkien. I was riding a patient half-Arabian gelding named Saraf in 4-H shows, and then in living history events from the Vikings to the Middle Ages.

And in 1977, out in the deserts of southeastern Oregon a black filly was foaled. I drove across the west in 1984 with friends, in a van named Vinnie (as in see my Van Gogh...). We passed near Burns, and the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, but didn't pause to soak in its wealth of birds and other wildlife.

A few months later, my other horse, a grey half-Arabian gelding named Bazraf was killed in a traffic accident. Friends in the Shire of Dawnfield (a group of the Society for Creative Anachronisms) got together and raised funds for me to adopt a mustang, something I'd wanted to do since I was five, watching Fury of Broken Wheel Ranch, Zorro, and reading the Black Stallion books.

When a new shipment came in to our local wild horse distribution center in Lewisberry PA, I went with an image of The Wild Black Mare in my head.

Of course, real horsemen don't pay attention to color; it's conformation that counts. In the wild horse pens, everything else important: training, personality, was the same; non-existent or unknown.

Still, there were enough horses to choose this gorgeous black mare... who immediately bleached to a nice nuclear burnt toast color in the summer sun. She was black twice a year; when she changed from summer to winter coat (heavy as a buffalo's) and from winter to summer. She was level-headed, taught me a great deal about training horses, taught newbies with patience, faced the screaming Viking hordes, walked in her footprints in the snow, got bogged twice (in a local stream, and on a Chesapeake Bay beach)and survived, served as mount for some swordfights, spent a week in a rope corral at the Great Eastern Primitive Rendesvous, and, years later, still glided up to the water trough in the dark looking for mountain lions.

I named her Olori Eldalie, which in the languages J.R.R. Tolkien created for his worlds of Middle Earth means Elven Magic ("Lor" can mean dream, or golden). She was the dream of a five year old horse fanatic fulfilled.