I Dreamed of Black Horses

A look at the real horses in my life, especially the Wild Black Mare.

When I was four, I dreamed of the Wild Black Horse.


It was Fury's fault. Fury of Broken Wheel Ranch, a Saturday morning TV western, on our sort of greenish black and white TV with the one channel (NBC, 8). It was about the bond between an orphan boy and a wild black stallion that only he could ride.


Then there was Zorro, the hero riding by night on a thunderblack horse named Tornado.


I can neither remember nor find Robin Hood's horse, but it should have been black; like Zorro, or Batman, he was riding outside the fence to right wrongs.


There was Black Beauty, the Black Stallion ...another "only the boy can ride him" story. Sherlock Holmes always dashing about in hansom cabs surely pulled by black horses.


Somewhere in grade school I read the Jungle Books. Orphan boy, wild things, same story different version.


Wait, why were they ALWAYS boys?


I was the shy kid cowering in the back of the class with my nose in a book. I was an only child and socially clueless.


You have no idea how much I wanted to show up at school with a bear, a pack of wolves, a thirty foot python, and a black leopard. Yeaaaaaaahhhh, that'd take care of the bullies.


Bagheera was Fury and Zorro and Batman and the Black Stallion all rolled up in one. Defender of lost children, keeper of the jungle law, teacher, guide... like those heroes on black horses, he also hunted by night.


I really really really wanted a Black Horse.


What I got was a furry dark bay and white pony named Teddy, somewhat old, slightly lame. Dad and Mom had both grown up on farms pre-WWII. They had plowed with a horse or mule. Mom was quite happy going full force into the 20th century with all its conveniences. Dad wanted a farm and a horse, so he got me a pony. We rehabbed the lameness, probably founder. Ponies are fuel efficient and if put on lush green grass often get foundered or colicked. Founder affects the feet, colic can kill them. Teddy was calm and kid proof and hauled me around on his back, with the cart and sleigh my dad built, and taught my friends and relatives to ride.


Then my dad had the idea to take me to horse shows. We'd get a young pony and train it and...


...the next thing I knew there was The Black Horse, in miniature, in my pasture, staging wild stallion "fights" with Teddy. They'd rear and box and generally look magnificent. The end of the black colt's tail glowed red, like fire, when the light shone through it.


Of course I named him Fury.


Then Dad injured his back and required some rehab, and the pony show dream evaporated. Fury was given to a relative who could train him. I heard later he died of colic.

I went on, to school, to 4-H. Mom stuck me in a 4-H club that was all cooking and sewing and child care. Yuck.


BOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRINNNNNNGGGGG!!!

I staged a Zorro revolt and took on the horse project. "Why do you want to do that, none of your friends are in it?" Mom said.


"They aren't my friends. I have no friends." Technically, I had two. Sort of.


I completed the project with my old, getting ever shorter pony. Then I found a 4-H horse club full of kids and adults who shared a passion for the things I loved. The leadership was great, they were into dressage and three phase eventing and real horsemanship.


And my pony was getting shorter and shorter.


So I did something that was totally outside the fence for me; I started reading newspaper ads for horses and calling total strangers to ask about them.


OMG, "uh, hi.... you have...uh... an ad... for a horse for sale? Can you tell me about it?"


I called a few. Mentioned them to my parents. Or maybe just Dad. I think my mom just wanted me to grow up, get my Mrs. and produce a clean house and lots of grandchildren, none of which was in my agenda.


I finally told my dad about one of the horses for sale. Instead of saying "my my, what a brave and fabulous way to take initiative toward the next step of your life" he grumbled something like "if we go look, then you'll just throw a fit if we don't get it."


I was twelve. We had the space, the resources, and really, a horse was just a bigger pony. Why not.


But I went to bed that night crushed, my little black horse dream shattering like a dropped china model.


I am not a morning person. Never was. Never will be. In fact, if you speak to me before noon, I will send the horse faerie ninjas to paint you puke pink in the middle of the night.


My dad knocked on the bedroom door at the butt crack of dawn and grumbled something like "if you want to see that horse you better get ready."


I may have set some kind of Guinness Record That You Cannot Ever Break...


We drove farther out into the country, through the green dark woods. Then a clearing opened, a brilliant green pasture, with sunlight streaming into it, and right in the middle of the sunbeams was a bright red bay horse.


Now... I wanted a black horse. Or maybe a palomino. Or buckskin. Or grey. Or pinto. Or Appaloosa. Anything but "brown". Of course "brown" is not really a horse color. Seal Brown is sometimes used to describe a particular effect of the Agouti gene on red and black pigment, where the horse appears nearly black but has brown edges, muzzle and undersides. Or non-horsemen use it to describe anything that is not "white" which isn't a thing either, because most of those are really grey, or perlino or cremello or minimally marked pintos or few spot Appys or...


I digress.

I did not want anything in the "brown" spectrum.​​

I am looking at a bright red horse in a green field going "OMG is that the horse?" I don't really like red either, it's not a color in my environment or wardrobe. I like blue.


But...red horse, green field... OMG.


We talked to the nice people about their red horse. He was two, partially trained, or as we said in the day, "green broke". His mom was a half Arabian/Thoroughbred who was nearly black... really a very dark bay or "seal brown". Saraf was blood bay, 3/4 Arabian, and 1/4 thoroughbred. We took him home for a couple hundred bucks. The Nice People helped me continue his training. The 4-H helped me continue his training. Farm neighbors offered advice that was not very useful. I made mistakes. Lots of mistakes. Saraf proved his sainthood and put up with the stupid humans, teaching us sportsmanship, patience, and how to keep the horse between you and the ground. He taught newbies and neighbor kids to ride, he showed, he paraded, he did living history. He learned a cool movie horse stunt: I'd raise my sword and he'd rear magnificently

Other horses came and went around the red horse. Teddy passed on. My cousin kept a sand colored pony named, what else, Sandy, at our place. She was coffee and cream with chocolate milk mane, tail and legs, she had honey eyes and freckled skin. I had no idea what to call that until years later when I discovered we'd had that rarest of wonders, a champagne. A ten dollar blind pony the color of a Disney princess's hair, with a white mane and tail came to live with us. He too taught kids, pulled carts, and played the shrunken warhorse in a medieval faire. A lookalike Belgian was also there, and a friend rode both, finally coming in on the pony claiming an evil wizard had shrunk his warhorse.


I grew out of 4-H, helped the younger kids for awhile. Took a summer in between job and fell in love with a fiery grey pony with one blue eye and one brown... in some places, a sure sign of faerie blood.

About here, I read a book that changed everything: Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. I loved its adventure, its landscapes, its Hero Journey structure, its magic. But mostly, I discovered an archetype that had been lurking in the depths of my being forever: the Elves. They could talk to trees and hear the stones speak and ride horses without saddle or rein. Somewhere in the second book there is a scene where Legolas and Aragorn and Gimli are chasing orcs across the Plains of Rohan and meet the Riders of Rohan. They are given horses to continue their quest. Tolkien rode with the cavalry in the WWI era, and wrote horses beautifully. He describes Aragorn's great warhorse in loving detail, then this...


A smaller and lighter horse, but restive and fiery, was brought to Legolas. Arod was his name. But Legolas asked them to take off saddle and rein. "I need them not," he said, and leaped lightly up, and to their wonder Arod was tame and willing beneath him, moving here and there with but a spoken word: such was the elvish way with all good beasts. Gimli was lifted up behind his friend, and he clung to him, not much more at ease than Same Gamgee in a boat.


I was 150% in love. This was my ideal. This was True Horsemanship. This was The Elvish Way With All Good Beasts. I have since seen many trainers do bridleless riding in exhibitions, my favorite being Elisa Wallace and Hwin, a mustang; grey, smaller, and restive and fiery.


I immediately set out to teach Saraf to do this. He did this, reasonably well, considering my own lack of skill, in an arena or other place where he would not just gallop off into the horizon.


But... the fiery grey pony, with the one blue eye and the one brown.


I rode the grey pony that summer, on wooded trails, dirt roads...


In LOTR, there is a scene in the first book where Aragorn is helping the Hobbits to safety in Rivendell. He has met his friend, Glorfindel the Elf Lord, on the trail. Glorfindel has a cool horse, a pale grey horse, an Elf horse, his name is Asfaloth. He has no bridle, because... Elves. He does however have a saddle, useful because at this moment the Black Riders appear to catch Frodo and haul him and the One Magic Ring to Rule Them All off to the Dark Lord of the Rings.


Black ... Riders... this has been my one beef with Tolkien. All the bad guys are on black horses, the good guys on aged greys... the stuff non-horsemen call white. Gah!


I digress.


Black riders, injured Frodo, Rivendell. Glorfindel tosses Frodo up on Asfaloth, shortens the stirrups up to the saddle skirts and tells him to hang on. He points Asfaloth at Rivendell and says "Noro lim, noro lim!" Which basically means, in Elvish, run like hell.


Asfaloth does, and carries Frodo to safety (without any help from Princess Arwen thank you very much Sir Peter Jackson). Aragorn and Glorfindel hold off the Evil Black Riders of Doom, Elrond tells the river "surf's up" and drowns the riders with pretty white wave horses. More white horses, no good black ones. Bah, humbug.


But back to the fiery grey pony with the one blue eye. Up the dirt road we'd gallop, under the flickering trees, bareback, me leaning forward and whispering in the ear of the Elf horse "noro lim, noro lim!"

The summer job ended. I went off to the rest of my life. Some time later I was riding Saraf on a back road, encountered some young ladies and two horses at a farm... and one of them was the grey pony, Bazraf. I ended up becoming friends, helping them with some horse training. Then one girl wanted to sell Baz ... trading in the four legged "mustang" for one with wheels. I scrounged and came up with the few hundred bucks to buy him. Got him home and he got a leg over a wire fence and cut himself to the bone. 


Vet, rehab, stall time. Maybe never able to ride him again.


He did heal. I did ride. We jumped (I remember one where he stopped and I continued over the jump, to land, holding the reins, facing him in surprise). We did medieval events with the SCA... we were the object of a unicorn hunt with the Shire of Dawnfield. We taught kids to ride.

​I decided to move in with some friends, three hours north, in the woods and hills of Happy Valley PA. The place was new, had a barn but no fence, so we picketed the horses at first, my two and my friends'. In LOTR, there is a scene where Aragorn and Legolas's horses pull up their pickets and run away... perhaps because they saw Saruman... or maybe it was Gandalf the White and Shadowfax.


Our neighbor was target shooting, the horses panicked and pulled up their pickets and ran.


Unfortunately Bazraf ran straight down the center of the highway and met a car.


I was devastated.


I remember finding my SCA sword, a broadsword length and weight piece of balanced rattan wrapped in duct tape, and taking it to the backyard where the telephone pole was. I sometimes used the pole as a practice target. Now I wailed away at it, smashed it, chopped at it, slammed it, tore great splinters out of it with a piece of mere rattan. I spent all the rage and watched a piece of myself sail right over the cliff of despair into the abyss... a little piece hung back. The piece that did not act on the dark thoughts in my grief blasted brain, that fasted in some vague white girl attempt to recreate a Vision Quest. That packed a backpack and a dog and hiked up a cold October mountain in the dark.


I found a tree, a liriodendron, tall, straight. The name sounds like something out of Middle Earth. It's sometimes called tulip poplar and one like it grew outside my barn back home, the barn where Baz stayed. I crawled into my sleeping bag, in a pile of leaves, tied the dog and waited for what?


In the middle of the night the dog began barking. He was a big Golden Retriever cross, a brindle wookiee I named Starbuck because I already had a car named the Millennium Falcon. He had a heart of gold and a tendency to ignore commands to return. He was not in the habit of barking at nothing.


I sat up and contemplated the likelihood of wandering black bears... likely, very likely. 


I stared up the mountain into the dark woods ...


and the woods were gone.


Instead there was a vast dark tunnel straight through the mountain into the north.


I didn't have time to wrap my brain around this, I just saw the two glowing ember shapes, soft red like in a marshmallow fire, far away, small, quadruped, maybe equine, headed west.


I knew which way west was. I had paid attention. I actually did want to find my way home.


The dog barked again, and I was sitting in my sleeping bag as before, staring up at a normal tree studded mountain in the dark.


Starbuck was still barking. Imagining bears, I gathered up my stuff, got his leash and headed back down the dark, rocky, limb lined mountain.


I had a couple more odd dreams, one at least with the same glowing red "spirit guide" animal, like a horse. Oddly like Saraf, who still stood, very much alive, in the barn. I dragged a roommate along to talk to the neighbors, and tell my story. They were sympathetic, and of course, had no idea that a mere target shoot would cause panic, death and destruction.

Life went on.


My friends visited, we had dinner, and then they presented me with a conundrum: a check from the SCA Shire of Dawnfield to adopt a mustang.


This was my childhood dream, but at that moment I did not want a mustang. I did not want any horse, ever again, in my entire existence. It was just too dangerous to love and lose. I couldn't, of course, do anything but force a smile and say thanks.


Winter dragged its feet, then spring and mud season, then the wild horse center back home got in a new shipment. I had to go look. You know.


Just.


Look.


I took the then boyfriend, and we walked into the alley in front of the paddocks. In the first one there was a dark mare hovering at the back, foal by her side. The rest of the pens held the usual assortment of bays and chestnuts and lighter colors made by the cream or grey genes.


And right in front of us a black mare with a foal.


I froze, I stared.


The boyfriend shouted something like "That's it, that's the one!"


I nearly killed him.


This...is...my....child....hood....dream.... SHUT-THE-BLEEP-UP!!!


(He has since apologized and married someone else)(we continue to be friends)(it's all good).


I stared at the black mare. I read her chart. Eight years old. Eight years running wild. A two month old colt. I had envisioned something younger, more trainable. No colt.


I looked at the rest. At the greys and bays and chestnuts and palominos and buckskins, and is that mare at the back really a grulla???


I came back to Fury. To Zorro. To Robin Hood's horse. To Batman and Bagheera and the Black Stallion... er... mare.


A lady, somewhat too loud, with a horde of rowdy kids leaned over the fence..."I like that one..."


I found a voice. "Eh... no... uh... I picked that one already." MINE. Mine mine mine mine mine. To her credit she smiled and went away and looked at others.


I signed the papers and handed over the small fee of $125. Dad came with the stock trailer and they shoved her down the chutes, fighting the whole way, stuffed a halter I'd bought on her head with a dangley cotton lead (they did that with all the mustangs when they left). The colt trotted on behind, we shut the gates and drove back to Happy Valley. We parked the trailer against the gate and tried to shoo her out. She did not shoo. She clung to the alien spaceship instead of leaping into the safe paddock with its hay and feed and water and shelter. 

It took a few more hours. We finally chased her out.

Then began the game of making a connection with a wild thing. She was wary. She watched us, ears radared in on our every movement, then, when any of us crossed her flight radius, she snorted like a cannon shot and fled... thirty feet to the other side of the round pen. the soft cotton rope that had been attached to her halter at the BLM Adopt A Horse Center had mysteriously untied itself from her halter the second day. The halter stayed on. Yeah, Happy Valley elves no doubt. 

I played "here's some hay and grain on it, don't you want it?" Grain is an alien concept to a wild horse, so they recommended putting it on top of the hay so the horse would accidentally eat it and get the idea it was good. She eventually deigned to get close enough to nibble it. She began to come forward for food, to back up when I straightened and made myself tall. She began to lead, to allow grooming. She stopped snorting like a cannon when we approached.


I ran a race with her growing hooves. For eight years in the wild she'd worn them down herself, traveling to water, to grazing, to shelter. Here we had to get her used to a farrier picking up her feet. For six weeks I worked on her feet, and other basic leading and nice horsie stuff. The farrier appeared and she declined to let him touch her overgrown feet. I held them up, crunched up under her belly, while he filed and clipped them.


Nine months of groundwork, of ponying and lungeing and leading and lungeing and ponying... and I got on her while a friend fed her carrots. No storms. No fabulous Black Stallion on the beach with the kid falling off scenes.


We just rode.


We did circles and serpentines and Celtic knotwork. We tried a variety of bits and bridles and she accepted all of the experiments. The colt trained just fine and I found him a new home... only I wish I hadn't. I do not know his fate.


I named her Olori Eldalie, which in Tolkien's Elvish languages means Elven Magic. Lor, her short name, means dream.


She carried kids, make believe knights, faced the screaming Viking hordes, amused a family of Japanese tourists (somewhere in Japan there is a photo of us at a medieval faire), was one of the Four Horsewomen of the Apocalypse (we happened to have a red, white, yellow and black horse at that event). She taught newbies to ride. A couple of my Native American friends met and rode her. I thought, "...there's that stereotypical image I grew up with in all those westerns..." only here was the reality, and the reality of Indigenous People and Wild Mustangs is more complex than our silly shallow stories.


Lor was not Fury or The Black or Tornado or Bagheera. Not even that other great Black Horse image: Toothless of How to Train Your Dragon.


She was more complex than that.


She showed me my dark side, my Shadow, the stuff I didn't like, the stuff that wasn't the Elvish Way With All Good Beasts...and maybe how to rise above it. She taught me about motherhood, and how it could be strong in the face of distant water, sparse food, and four fanged horse eaters. About patience, and how old dreams and wild black horses can't be rushed. How true nobility and dignity rises above stupid human errors.


She illuminated us. I learned about sibling rivalry when two neighbor girls vied for attention and riding time. I saw fearlessness when a kid who'd never ridden before was cantering on her in about ten minutes. I saw glowworms in the dark, and morning smokefire, at The Great Eastern Primitive Rendezvous, and learned something about rope corrals and saddles that don't fit and taking a bath with a lawn chair and a horse trailer and a bucket. On a snowy trail she stepped in her own footprints as we came around a second time; put your foot wrong and you could be lunch. She carried kids on trail rides but still glided up to the water trough at night searching for four fanged horse eaters. She was aware of anything that moved within a mile, standing tall with ears radared in on it until she understood it wasn't a threat. In some lights at night, her eyes flashed red or green.


Mostly though, she taught me how not to OMG my way through life. Instead of going into a ditzy dance like some of my domestic horses, wasting energy worrying about whether the thing on the horizon was Equus Munchus Justawfulus... or whether it was coming this way at all... she showed me how to watch. To be Aware. To Wait.


And then, if it really was a fourfanged horse eater, to kick it in the teeth and run like hell.


Noro lim, Lor, noro lim.