the Hobbit


…raised by Dwarves…


random thoughts on film character design and
archetype


2012.12.15


I was an Elf raised by Dwarves...
and a few Hobbits. I'm the Nature Child, the Magical Child, the one sitting
under trees trying to figure out how to get them to talk. The one who picked up
a bow because Legolas and Robin Hood made it look cool, who learned how to ride
a horse without saddle or rein (my very patient half-Arabian gelding, Saraf,
helped). My family was Pennsylvania "Dutch", read Deutsch... German... stolidly,
  pramatically, sturdily, rooted in the earth, no nonsense German. They
  did not talk to trees, and horses were for pulling plows.



The zygote faerie clearly hit
turbulence when she delivered me.


York County PA was full of
Dwarves and Hobbits, still is; people of English and German descent who like
third breakfasts and comfortable hearths and no adventures. There are a few
wizards wandering about, and one very tall D&D buddy who was definitely a
Dwarf: his hammer, Henry the Convincer, helped him build any number of excellent
things. One of my friends, the one most responsible for me having a small team
of sleddogs, was a Ranger, surely a descendant of Numenoreans who had been
wandering, but not lost... her favorite Siberian Husky was named, of course,
Strider.


I've known Elves and Hobbits and
Dwarves and Wizards... and a few orcs. You all have. They're archetypes. They
are parts of our True Nature, our subconcious design. They are us. When J.R.R.
Tolkien wrote those books, things surfaced from the deep dark depths of the
Collective Unconcious and filled his pages. He didn't have to think with his
Intellectual Professor Brain to write "in a hole in the ground there lived a
Hobbit"... he already knew them. Hobbits were all around: the folk of the quiet
English countryside, the ones who liked second breakfasts and comfortable
hearths and no adventures, thank you! Just like York County PA.



Archetype. Whether the English
countryside, or the American, or somewhere on an island on the far side of the
world, we all recognize them. We recognize them when we meet the characters in
the book. Sometimes, we recognize them when we see an illustration of the
character. Before I had ever read Lord of the Rings, I saw a Judy King-Reniets
  illustration of the characters in the Fellowship of the
Ring.


"Who's the blond guy on the right
with the longbow?" I knew nothing about Legolas, but something the artist had
  captured in the illustration connected with me. I withheld judgment until I'd
  read the story, after all, it might have simply been an illustration of an
  appealing guy with good hair.


Nope. The artist nailed something
about the Elf archetype, something I recognized. I read the books in 1978,
loved the character, and continue to love him. Like my Ranger friend, I named my
favorite Siberian Husky after my archetype: Legolas (hey, has pointy ears, runs
on snow).


When we read a book, we fill in
the spaces the author leaves us with our own experience, our own hearts'
desires. There's the character with his inidividual quirks, the archetype
underlying him... and we fill in the
rest.


When someone does a film, they
have to give the audience a lot more. An actor with a specific face, a set of
clothes that tell us something about the character, movements and facial
twitches that speak volumes. The audience is left with little space to fill in
with their own experience.


How do you portray an archetype
so others recognize it?


I am an artist. I've illustrated
Elves for years. Easy. I get Elves, or at least, some version of them. I've seen
other versions of Elves that nail the archetype well. And some that are just..
well... gee, there's a pretty fashion statement male human. Bleah. There are the
excellent Brothers Hildebrandt (they did some LOTR illos and at least one famous
Star Wars poster) who must BE Dwarves (theirs are great) but have zero
empathy for Elves. There is the awesome Alan Lee (worked on the LOTR films along
with John Howe) whose Elves and Faerie illustrations I have long admired in the
book "Faeries" (done with Brian Froud); his Elves are different from mine, but
he clearly understands something about a good many archetypes, as well as the
natural world. And horse anatomy, and gear (a rare thing among fantasy artists).
I have trouble illustrating Dwarves, even though I've been surrounded by them
all my life. It's hard for me to illustrate those stout, sturdy, hairy little
guys. And Hobbits, despite the fact that I like them a lot, elude me completely.
Other artists, like the aforementioned Hildebrandts, draw them well. As
archetypes, they are the Common Folk, the Mundane, the Comfortable forced out of
their Comfort Zone into a Learning Experience. Tolkien mentions that he made
them small because the folk he based them on are small minded, not in a bad way,
but limited in their views, their experience, and their wish to go beyond their
boundaries. I think they are small because they are the latest incarnation of
The Little People. Faeries and talking bunnies and mice are a staple of
children’s tales… because they are small and vulnerable like children. Kids
listening to a parent read The Hobbit can relate to Bilbo partly because he is
small, unpowerful, like them. And like all good heroes in kids’books, the Little
Guy proves he has more mettle than his warrior companions
  thought.


How do you put all this on a
screen?


Peter Jackson, and WETA have
brought the unfilmable film to the screen. For years we wanted to see LOTR
larger than life... and they did it. I remember hearing about it, and running to
my friend's computer (I had none) and looking up the casting... going straight
to Legolas. If they screwed up the Elves, the whole thing would be blown for me.
The blond guy with the bow was acceptable ("who the bleep is this Orlando Bloom
kid, anyway???") and became much more acceptable, until I reached the point of
Diehard Fandom. PJ and Crew, and Mr. Bloom, had nailed something recognizable
about the Elves, they understood something about the archetype (even if
all the coolness factor of Legolas was not in the film). Hobbits,
Dwarves, Wizards, orcs... even the wargs... they gave us images that plugged
into some deep unconcious "memory", some deep knowledge of elemental truth.
Archetype.


The Elves of the films generally
work well for me, although they tend to be a bit homogenous (not so much
individuality in face and dress), and a bit high-fallutin', ethereal and Vulcan.
Before you flame me, I am a huge Spock fan. And it has occurred to me and at
least one author I'd read, that Vulcans are the same archetype as Elves, in a
science fiction setting. I guess that makes Klingons the
Dwarves...


Enter The Hobbit. A tale of a
bunch of short guys on a mission to take back a lot of gold from a sleeping
dragon. The tale done on a thousand grade school stages. Read aloud to millions
of kids. The backstory to Lord of the Rings. I always preferred LOTR (perhaps
because of that pesky Elf), but was excited to see PJ and Crew do more Tolkien.
I began to see character designs for the Dwarves (who make up most of the cast)
online... in particular, Thorin and Fili and
Kili.


"Those are Dwarves?"



Nay, it did not match the stout,
bearded, and slightly unattractive image in my head. They looked too heroic. Too
handsome. Too... human? Some naysayer online said they looked like Men, as in
humans.


Back up here a minute Kemosabi.
Archetypes are us. They are human.
They are parts of our True Nature.


PJ and Crew were confronted with
the problem of 13 main characters who are Dwarves. The Hobbit is easy, he's the
guy with no beard. How do we tell apart Fili and Kili, Oin, Gloin, Balin,
Dwalin, Bifur, Bofur, Bombur, Ori, Dori, Nori and Thorin Oakenshield? (I did
that from memory, impressed? OK, moving on...).



I have a great illustrated
version of the Hobbit. the illustrator is the excellent Michael Hague. The
Dwarves are hard to tell apart. Buncha' hairy guys in hoods. PJ and crew gave us
some awesomely unique individuals, even if I am still having trouble remembering
which one is Nori and which one is Dori and which one is Nemo. And the film
gives us some new insight into what is a Dwarf in Middle Earth. They have
stepped beyond stereotype while keeping the archetype recognizable. They're
short, they're stout, sturdy, doughty, they have beards, they have done some
interesting things with facial hair and braids (as humans have done throughout
history).


I was startled to see at least
four Dwarves I consider quite attractive (remember, I'm an Elf, even though I
look quite like a Hobbit).


????WTFili????


Archetype... unique
individuals... great freaking design by WETA. 'Nuff
said.


No, wait, not really enough said.



Elves are our Nature
Child/Magical Child/intuitive/creative side. They are somewhat androgenous
(lacking severe sexual dimorphism, like the bearded Dwarves), and neotenous.



We pause to consult wikipedia: Neoteny
also
called juvenilization, is one of the two ways by which pedomorphism can
arise. Pedomorphism is the retention by adults of traits previously seen only in
juveniles. Dogs are
neotenous wolves (all dogs are a subspecies of Wolf). Some dogs are more
neotenous: think Golden Retriever: floppy ears, short muzzle, manic will to
please, all puppy characteristics. Pomeranians exhibit another version: round
heads, short muzzles, big eyes, like wolf puppies. My Siberians are closer to
Wolf: pointy ears, high prey drive, wolflike appearance, but they are still
Dogs, and therefore essentially juvenile
wolves.


Humans themselves are neotenous compared to other primates (some
ridiculous percentage of our DNA matches that of Gorillas, Chimps and Bonobos,
especially Bonobos). We are Domesticated Primates. I remember seeing a picture
of a newborn gorilla and thinking how spookily it resembled a newborn
human.


Dwarves are the Elves' opposites. In Norse myth (from which
Tolkien drew much) there are Dark Elves of the underground (Dwarves) and Light
Elves of the air (well, Elves). In Middle Earth, Dwarves are the miners,
diggers, finders, delvers, makers, the techies, the smiths, the People of the
Earth and Rock. They feel old and stout and like the bones of the Earth itself
when you read the books. The Elves belong to the sea and the trees, and the
Dwarves to Geology. I always thought of them as looking like the kind of middle
aged to old guys I see here in York County: stout, bearded (and often covered in
the grime of whatever project they were working on). I never pictured them young
and handsome.


But at some point, like the gorilla, they would be babies, then
kids, then young Dwarves, then middle aged warrior Dwarves, then old guys. They
would have that neoteny thing going on for a bit, but not forever like Elves.
They would, as young foolish teens, look exactly like Fili and Kili. Then they'd
be Princely, Awesome, Heroic, like Thorin. Or a bit of a character, like Bofur.
And at some point, they'd be appealing old guys like Balin.



I am amazed at the character design for The Hobbit. I love it. I
got the poster because looking at it, you see this great set of
characters, each with their own history, their own story. Guys you'd like
to hang out with for awhile.


Doesn't hurt that from the female perspective, a few of them are
hot.


 
 

20121212:12:01


The Hobbit


You should know that my heart lies with the Elves. That Elf has been the
archetype I related to since someone in my art class said (of my flowy
Galadriel's yard sale shirt), "you look like an elf in that shirt..." to which I
said; "?!?!?!???" So, here I am in love with a company of Dwarves...


In 1977 Star Wars hit the screen, and a fellow fan dumped a pile of reading
material into my hands. "You must read this," she intoned. I stared at the stack
of verbiage and paled. Lo!, in my copious free time, somewhere in the next
millenium. The epic tome was J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.


Somewhat later, I borrowed a tent from a second cousin twice removed, so I could
spend a week on a desert island called Assateague. He told me about this game
they played: D&D. I showed up, rolled up a character, waved the paper at the
DM and said, "What do I make of this?"

"Play an Elf."

"What?" You
mean like Hermie, in Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer?

"Read Lord of the
Rings."


I did, in 1978. Orlando Bloom was yet in diapers. He would later fill the
shoes of the character that most summed up my worldview (leave no footprints),
my value system (talking to trees and riding horses without saddle or rein), and
my internal archetype.


I may look like a Hobbit, and enjoy second and third breakfasts, but my heart
lies with the Elves. So, here I am, enamored of...


...a bunch of Dwarves???







We (fandom, geeks of the world, nerds inc.) had been waiting
all our lives for someone to turn our favorite piece of literature, impossibly,
into a film. We'd sat around, casting our favorite actors into the unlikely Lord
of the Rings film. Unlikely because it was considered unfilmable.


Then Peter Jackson and company proved the naysayers wrong. After we got done
ooooing and aaaahing and picking apart how PJ's film was different from the ones
in our heads, we said...


...he must do the Hobbit. A clever fan did a fake trailer (using bits
from the LOTR films and, I think, Dragonslayer). We contemplated casting and
character design. We blogged, we arted, we fanficked.


We waited for a decade.


　


And at last, here it is. Of course I was there, an hour before the start of
the midnight showing of the first of the three movies in Peter Jackson's Hobbit
trilogy. Trilogy. Yes, trilogy. The challenge with LOTR, (published in 1955) was
to pare the immensity of that Epic down to something that would fit in a film...
or three. The Hobbit, published in 1937, was lighter, not only in tone (as a
kids' book, meant to be read aloud) but in weight and length. By stretching it
into a trilogy matching LOTR, PJ and crew could expand not only the action and
character development, but the rest of the story; the storm clouds gathering on
the horizon which will erupt into the perfect storm of LOTR. When he wrote the
Hobbit, Tolkien had not yet imagined LOTR, but the world of Middle Earth was
being sketched out... in the trenches of WW1 Tolkien was scribbling bits of
ideas on scraps of paper. His son, Christopher, would later publish those
half-finished tales as the Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, and the HoME series
(History of Middle Earth). "There is not complete consistency
between The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, the two most closely related
works, because Tolkien never fully integrated all their traditions into each
other. He commented in 1965, while editing The Hobbit for a third edition, that
he would have preferred to completely rewrite the book because of the style of
its prose."


Peter Jackson, working in reverse, has the chance to do that rewrite.


Film 1, An Unexpected Journey, takes us to the point where the great eagles
have left the company of Dwarves, one Hobbit and Gandalf the Wizard on top of a
pinnacle of rock (how the heck did they get down from there?); from there, they
can see the Lonely Mountain, their destination, in the misty distance; in
between are the wilds of Mirkwood, and Beorn's house, some peeved wood Elves,
and a lot of really big spiders. We know, of course, how it all ends, we've read
it dozens of times. The joy is in seeing the characters move, the details added,
Gollum's subtle (improved CG and the brilliance of Andy Serkis) facial twitches,
soaring eagles the size of jet fighters, the orcish maze of Moria, stone giants
that are chunck of mountain come to rock'em sock'em life, trolls both
frightening and hilarious, The Shire, and some really good fight scenes. The
high frame rate kicks us up to a new level of film clarity. The 3D is worth the
price of admission. There are those who have naysayed this technology, saying it
makes things too clear, too sharp, blowing the illusion of fantasy. Tolkien
himself preferred oral storytelling (in his day, special effects were fairly
primitive stage illusions). To that I snort, go see it.


There are immense beauties here, beauties beyond what I might have imagined
reading the book. Beauties beyond what illustrators could imagine, even the good
ones (let's not mention the hideous Rankin Bass TV film, where the Elves of
Mirkwood looked like orcs). There is the Shire, where we all want to visit, if
not move in, the perfect comfort zone from which Bilbo has to venture forth to
achieve anything. Gandalf, the iconic Wizard, wonderfull imagined by WETA, and
brought to life by the inimitable Ian McKellan. There are mountains and
woodlands and rugged highlands (played well by various parts of New Zealand).
There are wonderfully hideous monsters: trolls and orcs and wargs and the Goblin
King. There is the Rube Goldberg maze of the goblin tunnels; we could see this
as a crazy amusement park ride. There are the eagles, plucking our heroes up,
eagles whose every feather, every movement has been studied and lovingly
recreated in magnificent CG (I've worked with birds of prey, and these are
terrific). There is Rivendell, serene valley of the Elves. Galadriel, the
epitome of elegance and wisdom. There are galloping elven warriors, Elrond on a
magnificent black Friesian. Thranduil, Elvenking of Northern Mirkwood, mounted
on a stag that looks like an Irish Elk (a horse-sized deer with a six foot rack,
now extinct).


And the dwarves. I can reel off their names, it's a sort of mental memory
game I play (I have more trouble with Snow White's seven). Tolkien wrote the
Hobbit as if it was a story being told to kids. You can hear the voice of the
narrator/storyteller. The names of the Dwarves (it is NOT Dwarfs, and he
explains, somewhere, why) come in soundalike sets, clearly an aid to remembering
them: two sets of three, three sets of two. Dori, Nori, Ori... Bifur, Bofur,
Bombur... Balin and Dwalin... Fili and Kili.. Gloin and Oin. And their leader,
Thorin Oakenshield.


Tolkien drew much from Celtic and Norse myth. Thor (Norse thunder god) is, in
Hesse Germany, associated with a sacred oak tree. (Odin's "world tree" is an
ash).


Thorin Oakenshideld. Also Thror's map (the map they use to find the way into
the Lonely Mountain). The Dwarves themselves have a strongly Germanic/Norse
quality, while the Elves feel more Celtic. I always preferred the Elves for
their nature child/magical child qualities.


But these Dwarves rock.


First, the character design is amazing. Someone had a great deal of fun with
hair and beards and makeup and costume. Each is a highly unique individual,
unlike the fairly homogenous Elves seen in Rivendell. Bofur has an inexplicable
hat, a sort of northwoods earflap thing, the flaps looking like wings about to
turn him into the Flying Nun... it works, it's cool, it's memorable, and it
makes him look like a likeable and slightly goofy guy I'd like to hang out with.
Fili and Kili are described in the book as the youngest Dwarves, and here they
are clearly designed to appeal to the younger fans... they are ... well... I'd
never thought of dwarves as hot... until now. Balin is distinctive as the white
haired elder, wizardly, kindly, Santa-ish. Bombur is extremely fat, but don't
let that fool you... he kicks butt in battle as well as anyone. Ori has a unique
face, not the typical human standard of beauty, but somehow appealing, he seems
like a gentle heart who would rather join Bilbo in the Shire for third
breakfast. Nori has braided eyebrows. Bifur, inexplicably, has an orc axe
embedded in his forehead. And of course Gloin is easy to recognize... he looks a
bit like his son (from LOTR) Gimli.


And Thorin is just magnificent.


We stop to consider the fact that there are no humans in this film (except in
the very beginning, when we see an ancient city under attack by Smaug... though
we don't see Smaug, only his devastation). LOTR had two humans in the
Fellowship: Boromir, who dies halfway through, and Aragorn who becomes King. And
he isn't a normal mundane human, he's part Elf. Hobbit has Hobbits and Dwarves
and Elves and trolls and orcs and goblins and one Wizard. No normal mundane
humans.


And yet we identify. We relate. For they are Archetypes. They are us, our
deepest ideas of ourselves. Our dreams, fears, wishes for adventures beyond our
own comfort zones.


I still love the Elves. I can't wait till the lost Dwarves are blundering
around in Mirkwood (my favorite place in Middle Earth) trying to crash the
elves' woodland parties. Can't wait to see Legolas, Thranduil, the warrior girl,
and Bilbo when "the chief of the guard had no keys...".


But for now, Dwarves rule.


　


　


　

Being
a true tale of All Hallow’s Eve: in which a couple of tourists brave the wilds
of a desert island, become saltwater cowboys (for at least a few minutes) and
ride in the last great wild
horse roundup in the east


2012.10.15



The U.S. Mail is a time machine; I know, this
missive is a product of that warp in the space/time conundrum. Tammy sent me
this, when my original had fallen into that mysterious alternate universe where
odd socks and pens and coat hangers go; the true tale of how we once were
saltwater cowboys on Halloween. I can’t remember the exact year; it was long
ago, before Tammy had her own horse, when I had one of the string of beat up
blue trucks that carried me on adventures, before I strapped kayaks to my roof
to go to the islands. I had my own Wild Black Mare then, and an older patient
half-Arabian gelding. It was before I learned to scuba dive, and before I
learned that some Wild Black Mares had clouds of canvas and carried cannons. The
islands have shapeshifted in those years, the Hook has grown, the beach beyond
the parking lot has narrowed, and yet they are the same; wild places of wind and
moving sand and tide, endangered species like piping plovers (there are more
now) and Delmarva Fox Squirrels, vampiric hordes of bloodsucking saltmarsh
insects, migrating birds, and the thunder of uncloven hooves on sand. If you are
between the ages of Disney and young adult apocalyptic sci-fi, you likely have
read the story of the most famous denizen of these islands: Misty of
Chincoteague. Like Frankenstein, and Zorro, and Christopher Lee, she is a
classic, undimmed by time. Her hoofbeats still echo here, and we are following
them…



It had been One of Those Weeks. If I’d been a
comedian or filmmaker, I could have spun it into a great plot for a blockbuster
movie. I was neither, so I called my buddy Tammy and said “Let’s escape to the
islands.”


No, no, not those islands. Not the blue-green
pale-sand palm-fringed reef-ringed places where Johnny Depp left bootprints in
the sand, and sang “I’ve got a jar of dirrrrt!”. Nope. You might pack your
snorkeling gear, and you might get lucky and have ten feet of vis in the
shallows, but, hey, it’s October, and you haven’t bought that wetsuit yet. You’d
better pack some serious sleeping bags, winter coats, sunscreen, five or six
cans of nuclear fission powered bug spray, oh, and throw in the raincoat and the
swimsuit, and might as well bring the snorkel anyway, you never know, it is
October. Halloween to be exact.



We hit the road, driving south out of
Pennsylvania, in a beat up blue ’73 Chevy pickup truck, Beach Boys and Surfin’
USA (I kid you not) blasting on the radio (back when I had a truck with a radio
that worked). This was before the GPS, and I am topographically impaired. I’d
been driving to Chincoteague and Assateague (off the coasts of Maryland and
Virginia) since the truck was new, but that didn’t keep me from getting lost
half a dozen times, conversing like a mariner, in the concrete spaghetti that
had been growing like kudzu. It was 2am when we finally found the Hanna’s guest
house on Chincoteague.


We did not get up at the butt crack of dawn to
watch the sun rise gloriously out of the sea. We cranked the truck and ourselves
into some semblance of life somewhere just before noon, driving out of
Chincoteague to the big barrier island of Assateague. The big island, on a map,
or Google Earth, looks like a long lean dragon, its tail wrapped protectively
around the egg shape of Chincoteague. Both rise just barely out of the sea, and
the salt marsh surrounding them. Chincoteague is home to decoy carvers and gift
shops, art galleries and museums, bed and breakfasts, motels and a few limited
condos. There are places renting kayaks, bikes, scooters, scooter cars, and
those odd things that look like “the buggy with the fringe on top”, only they
are driven by two people pedaling them like bikes, while their, hopefully
lightweight, friends ride in the back. This works fine on a flat island, not so
much in a hilly place like PA. There are the cottages painted in seashell
colors, Payne’s Sea Treasures (an esoteric collection of found objects and
pirate booty), the crape myrtle (in at least six colors), the hibiscus, and the
thirty foot Viking. Bookshops, ice cream, salt water taffy, and the McDonalds at
the End of the Universe (the last thing you see as you leave the island). There
are also the World Famous Saltwater Cowboys. These are guys who have real jobs
the rest of the year (often as real watermen), but in Pony Penning Week, they
saddle up and become cowboys, rounding up the wild pony herds that have ranged
the islands since… since…


The legend says a Spanish galleon wrecked and
ponies spilled out in the storm, taking up residence on the islands. There are
lots of documented shipwrecks on that coast, it eats ships. The sandbars,
shapeshifting under wind and tide, snagged the unwary hull as it passed. Then
the waves broke up the ship. If you were lucky, you didn’t need the Assateague
Lifesaving Station to send out boats to rescue you. If you were really lucky,
you salvaged your stuff before the locals did. Some of those wrecks have
actually been Spanish galleons, and some of those carried horses. Colonists also
turned livestock loose on Assateague; it formed a natural pasture, fenced by the
sea. It also helped the humans avoid certain taxes and other inconveniences.
When they needed their stock (to use or sell) they simply staged a roundup. The
last sheep, and the last Wild Sheep Roundup ended sometime in the
19th century. The Wild
Pony Roundup, being more picturesque, continues today, documented colorfully in
Marguerite Henry’s famous Misty of
Chincoteaguebook. That happens the last Wednesday of
July, and the island lists slightly to port under the weight of the 40,000 or so
tourists (the normal population of the island is about a tenth of that).



This weekend, the islands were full of a
different kind of tourist; Assateague’s National Seashore, Wildlife Refuge, and
State Park (on the Maryland end) were full of migrating shorebirds; willets and
sanderlings and ruddy turnstones and ducks, geese, pelicans, 
blue herons, great egrets, snowy egrets, cattle egrets, hawks,
cormorants, eagles, marshhawks, osprey, warblers, songbirds, owls… We drove over
the causeway and through the woods past the lighthouse, winding past roadside
lagoons filled with fishing egrets, past the high marsh and its tree islands in
the distance. Saw a couple of whitetail deer (there are also sika here), birds,
birds, birds… nary a pony in sight.


That’s odd. Where are the ponies? You can usually
see them out in that part of the marsh, in those woods by that treeline. We
stared, searched; birds birds birds, deer, cowboys, birds, squirrel, birds,
birds…


Wait, cowboys?



I shoved the sputtering camperclad Chevy off the
road onto the berm, lept out and flagged down the two riders. One of my
unfulfilled fantasies was to gallop picturesquely down a beach… any beach, but
this was the one I was familiar with, and these two guys looked like they might
have some local knowledge.


The first rider pointed, “You can ride horses
down the road there, or anywhere the four wheel drives go.” There is a
four-wheel drive trail on part of the beach. The sand-pale buckskin Quarter
horse he was lounging on poked a friendly nose in my direction. “We’re not just
out ridin’, though, we’re on the
roundup.”


What roundup? That happens in July. You know, the
island sinking under the weight of 40,000 tourists. The auction. The World
Famous Swim Across the Channel at Slack Tide. People in trees and kayaks trying
to catch pics of something they’ve only read about.



“We round up the ponies in the spring too, for
shots and vetting and hoof-trimming and such. This roundup’s to catch the foals
we missed in July, get ‘em off the mares before winter.” Winter is not
particularly cold or snowclad here in Virginia’s east coast. A little powdered
sugar snow falls sometimes. The marsh grass and saltmeadow hay stills stands,
but it is lower in nutrition than typical horse fodder, hence the “swelly
bellies” on the ponies (the high salt content has something to do with it too).
A mare still caring for a foal this late in the year is risking her own
survival. The rider pointed up the road to the corral where the ponies are
penned in the July roundup. It looked like the entire Chincoteague Volunteer
Fire Department and every saltwater cowboy within fifty miles, with a stock
trailer and some horses, was parked there. We got some addresses for further
local knowledge (this was before I was I was part of the web) and went on up to
the pen.


A few dozen ponies; faded bays and sunburned
chestnuts, blondish palominos and sandy buckskins, most with the broad white
markings of Tobiano pintos. A variety of conformations; big-headed
straight-shouldered long-backed… a trace of Arabian…a dash of mustang… some
eleven hand Shetland types… some mustangs brought in from the west to replenish
the genetic stock… The original ponies were of Spanish descent, like the
Corollas, Bankers and Shacklefords of the Outer Banks. Or the Marsh Tackies and
Cracker Horses of the coasts farther south. Over the years, other blood has been
added to the civilized free range ponies of Assateague to make them more
salable. Few resemble their Colonial Spanish ancestors. The ponies on the north
end of Assateague (the Maryland part) are part of the park system, treated as
wildlife, and have less outside blood.


We digress for a moment.



Horse Color 101 for the Horse-impaired: Horses
have two color genes: red and black, and stuff that modifies those into a
red/yellow/black/blue/brown/golden/spotted/striped rainbow of weird. Points are
mane, tail and lower legs. Bay is brown with black points. Chestnut is any shade
of light to medium red-brown, and some colors like chocolate and liver, points
same color or lighter than the body. Diluting chestnut gives you palomino,
golden with white mane and tail. Diluting bay gets you buckskin, 
golden with black points. (Dun, which looks exactly like buckskin, and
some champagnes, which look exactly like palomino, are a whole ‘nother set of
genes.)  Diluting those farther
gets you cremello and perlino. “White” horses are usually grey (starts as a
normal horse color, then greys out like humans do as they age), except on
Assateague (greys are rare to non-existent), where white horses are actually
pintos with extremely small amounts of color (like a tiny bit on the head or
tail)… or perlinos or cremellos. Most of the ponies are of the Tobiano pinto
pattern (can be any color, it’s the pattern of white we’re talking about). It
looks nothing like a spotted dog or the cow that gave you your Ben and Jerry’s
Cherry Garcia.


We hung over the fence, contemplating the history
of the island, Spanish shipwrecks, Spanish Colonial horses, and color genetics.
And the fact that buckskins held up better under the beach sun than bays or
chestnuts (epic fade). We tried not to sound too much like tourists. Islands
have a character of their own, they are their own little worlds, insulated and
isolated from the Outside. There’s an iconic tale from New England about a guy
who was born on the ferry coming over to the island, he lived his entire life
there, and died there, and when he was buried, the townsfolk spoke of how
wonderful a person this Outsider was.


We tried not to sound too much like Outsiders,
even though we could never be anything
but.


After awhile, the buckskin mare’s owner moseyed
over and said, “If you think this herd’s nice, wait till you see the ones we
bring in tomorrow! Twice as many… three times as many. You know where the main
wildlife drive is? The one that goes by the goose ponds? There’s a service road
right on the left side of that, by the parking lot at the visitor’s center. Big
cattle gate there, just drive right on through, like you’re with the roundup.
Four, maybe five miles up that road is another corral. You’ll see the trailers,
just come on up.”


Whoot! We had an invitation to a local event from
the locals themselves! We had backstage passes! We were not Just
Tourists!


Sunday morning we woke at the butt crack of dawn,
drove the truck over to Assateague packed with a day’s worth of survival gear.
We found the visitor’s center, the service
road.


And a closed gate. We were not too surprised. It
had probably been closed behind the last Saltwater Cowboy truck hours ago,
before dawn. We pulled out sneakers, backpacks, stuffed them with extra warm
things, binoculars, Peterson’s Filed Guide to Eastern Birds, and several cans of
Deep Woods Off. We set bravely off into the
bush.


I had back packed on Assateague before, walking
five miles of sand with a fifty pound backpack is not a stroll on the boardwalk.
You’ll make about one mile an hour. Our packs were a little lighter this time… a
little. We were not faster.


The road cut through the center of the island,
longways. A very very long ways. On one side were the piney woods, with their
fox squirrels and deer and greenbriar and mosquitoes. On the other side was the
interdune area, the shrub zone, the occasional pond, and lots of mosquitoes.
Canada geese flew in formation, snow geese swept back and forth to water, there
were herons, umpteen kinds of gulls, terns, various sandpipers, brown pelicans
rowed overhead, looking like a line of pterodactyls. There were fox tracks in
the sand, the distant sound of a fox barking. The sun rose higher. The wind
slacked off. It began to feel like the familiar Assateague, the one from summer
beaches. The one where a beach umbrella and some cool waves are welcome. We
transferred the warm stuff from our backs to our packs. We counted birds, birds,
birds. Hauled out the binoculars and the field guide and identified an unusual
horned grebe. Birds birds birds, most migrating on the Atlantic Flyway. Most
using Assateague as an important roadside stop on their way to their winter
homes. We saw no ponies, they weren’t allowed in this part of the Refuge anyway,
they’d be farther north, near the corral. We paused, searching the horizon for
the glint of sun on metal, for the sight of the cowboys’ horse trailers.



Nothing. Nada.
Zilch.


Our feet began to complain. It occurred to me I
should have brought more water. A lot more water. I began to feel like Beau
Geste. Like those cartoons of people crawling across the desert. Wait, it is a
desert; it just happens to have an ocean on one side and a salt marsh on the
other.


Still no
  ponies.


Somewhere about the middle of the day, we came to
a barbed wire fence straight out of the Old West. We followed it, and it flowed,
prickly and straight, right up the center of the island. I knew there was a
fence at the state line between Maryland and where we were: Virginia. It was put
in somewhere after the Storm of ’62, when the island became a series of parks
and National Seashores, and the Chincoteague Fire Company’s herd was separated
from the herd on the Maryland side of the border.



What? Were we there? Had we missed the corral?
The state line was a very long way from the visitor’s center where we had
started. (I’ve hiked that too… really really looooooong way). We trudged
farther, following the fence. It probably had something to do with the ponies,
with fencing them in or out of a certain part of the island, so if we went far
enough we’d find them. Or we could go back and be complete
Frankenweenies.


Trudge trudge trudge. Wishing I had four legs.
Wishing I had some Gatorade. Wishing we’d meet those cowboys
now.


Then an alien sight in the beiges and sands and
faded greens of the Assateague bush; glint of sunlight on metal far off in the
dunes! I dove into my pack for Essential Survival Gear Item #2: binoculars. YES!
It was sun bouncing off horse trailers and trucks. Civilization! Hallelujah!
We’re saved!


We slogged up through the sand
and…


…nobody home. Nary a sweat-stained mud-brown
Quarter Horse. Nary a rubber-booted coveralled baseball-hatted Saltwater Cowboy.
I raised the binoculars again and scanned the horizon like Captain Kirk looking
for Klingons. Our fence went on up the island for a few hundred yards, then it
met another line of wire angling off towards the beach (to our right). There was
a big fat aluminum stock gate in the middle of that fence, and just beyond,
another kind of fence: a high wooden one. Inside, something seethed, mostly
hidden by candleberry and wax myrtle. We limped over to see the hundreds of
ponies they must have rounded up by now (they’re actually limited to keeping
about 150 on the island).


Half a dozen ponies dozed on their feet, snoozing
in the midday sun.


One lone Saltwater Cowboy was guarding
them.


“So… where’s the rest?” I
asked.


The man waved at the vast expanse of dune and
shrub zone. “Out there.”


A brief time check revealed that it was not
actually three days later… it only felt that way. We’d hiked four or five miles
over sand and got up at 6am. It was still morning, and the roundup was still
underway. We hung on the wooden fence, and considered the conformation and
probable lineage of the ponies before us, a sort of scraggly lot, like refugees
from a pirate film. We plied the guard with questions. We sounded a lot like
tourists. He replied to all this in the typically loquacious manner of
islanders, “Yep. Nope. Maybe.”


The sun rose higher, and began to walk down the
other side of the hot sky. We wondered if maybe we hadn’t seen enough ponies for
one trip, and should hike back and make use of the rest of our short weekend. We
wavered. We hesitated. We’d come a long way for something special, and we felt
like we’d found some of it, but…


We waited a bit more. Then a disturbance in the
force…or the forest… or the dunes on the fuzzy horizon. I squinted through the
binoculars. Down the long stretch of interdune sand and shrubbery came a bunch
of ponies, not precisely a thundering herd. In all my years of island
exploration, I’d never seen a Chincoteague Pony thunder anywhere. An energy
conserving, fly-swishing walk was what they mostly mustered. These were moving
at a brisk trot, ears radared in on the corral and its occupants, no pursuers in
sight. They came on, were deflected a bit eastward by the fence at the edge of
the Refuge. The guard opened the gate, and they trotted in.



Gradually, one by one, every half hour or so,
other small bands showed up. They came over the dunes, from the beach, or
sweeping down from the north and into the corral as if they knew where to go. As
the corral filled up with little bands (of stallions and their mares), the
number of stallions increased, and so did their tensions. There were no
screaming lunges and flying hooves, just a few lowered, snaky heads and baring
of teeth and scuttling out of the way.


We finally posted a guard at the gate to keep the
corralled ponies from running out as the new ones ran
in.


Me.


Whoot! Here I was, a horseman since I was a kid.
I’d read all those books, Marguerite Henry’s Misty of Chincoteague, the big
Album of Horses (where I first saw Wesley Dennis’ beautiful illustration of
Misty and read her story). I’d come here as a high-schooler with family and
friends, the last year Misty herself was still alive. I’d sketched her daughter
Stormy from life. I’d come back with a backpack and a tent. I’d come later with
a kayak and dive gear. This was a place out of a faerie tale, and I was
participating in the tale! I was helping with the
roundup!


Sort of.


I took the job seriously. Almost as seriously as
the little mare who used more moves than a champion cutting horse trying to get
past me. She didn’t. I wasn’t so lucky with the black and white pony who came
trotting up out of the dunes with a nice big herd of mares. She put the brakes
on right outside the corral, stared at us, and decided that’s as far as she was
going to go. With our Saltwater Cowboy back on guard, Tammy and I tried to
head’em off at the pass. The pinto flagged her tail and ditzed off into the
shrubbery. We circled around again, this time cutting off some of her herd. They
knew who the Leader was, ducked around us and galloped off into the brush
laughing. They soon came back and stood there, just out of range. Tammy had done
her marathon for the day and posted herself by the corral. I circled around
again, charging through shrubbery and loose sand and discovering what October on
Assateague really means.


It means everything has gone to seed, and all the
seeds have little sticky pokey things on them. Soon my sweatpants were covered
in little needly pointy things of enough sizes, shapes and varieties to keep a
field biologist occupied for months.


On the next round, I tried horse language; lower
something resembling a horse’s head (like your pack) and swing it back and forth
like a herd stallion snaking his head to drive his herd. They didn’t like my
accent and ducked around me, plunging off into the deepest darkest reaches of
the candleberry bush. Eventually the cowboy got tired of chuckling at the crazed
tourist and called me back to the corral. Those horses would come around
eventually if the darned tourists didn’t scare them
off.


I began to extract some of the sticky-pokies from
my pants. There were still plenty left when a vague moving blur appeared on the
horizon. I grabbed the binoculars (still around Tammy’s neck); there was a
heat-wavery line across the far dunes, snow geese…a flattish shrub-speckled
swath of interdune area… salt flats… an occasional patch of standing water… and
a blob of dark and white motion.


The moving blur resolved itself into ponies, a
horde of ponies and riders strung out in a line from bay to beach behind
them.


Then off to the left, the bayside, a cloud of
dust and nearer thunder. Around a bend in the stone road came a bright red
pickup, stake-bodied and coolered, with Chincoteague Fire Department emblazoned
on the side. Two photographers, like something out of a National Geographic
Special, clung to the roof, snapping frantically away with lenses the size of
NASA scopes. In front of them ran the ponies, a herd straight out of an old
western, galloping in a kaleidoscopic mob of bay and pinto and chestnut and
buckskin. Dust from the stone road followed them like a jet
trail.


The truck ground to a halt in front of the
corral, cowboys leapt off and began herding ponies. Outside ponies ran in,
inside ponies ran out, then they were chased in and some more ran out… then a
whole bunch ran out. Then down the island came the rest of the herd with the
riders behind them. Now there were ponies coming from everywhere, through the
candleberry and wax myrtle shrub, over the dunes from the beach, down the barbed
wire line at the edge of the Refuge. They poured into the corner created by the
two converging fencelines, and the riders tightened the knot around them like
fishermen closing a seine net.


One outrider paused at the edge of a pond on the
far side of the seething mass of ponies, framed against the candleberry and
myrtle. A big man who looked like he’d hauled nets most of his fifty or so
years, coveralled and baseball hatted on a big bulldog Quarter Horse who looked
like he’d been carved out of Sinepuxent Bay mud. Well-worn western saddle,
breastplate with the western style carvings lathered and mudded into obscurity,
frosting of salt-sweat on the horse’s shoulders. The saddle carried a drover’s
bullwhip for popping at ponies. There were assorted ropes and tie-downs around
the horse’s neck. Saddlebags and an extra jacket tied behind, a plain practical
blanket under the saddle. The horse stood with his ears radared in on the
proceedings in the corral, the man lounged as if he was in his easy chair with a
remote in his hands.


A thin line of riders continued to straggle in
from the north; a few typical mud-chestnut Quarter Horses, a lean leggy black
Thoroughbred type, two lean wiry dirt-colored Arabians. All sweaty and blown,
but their movement and eyes said they wouldn’t mind doing it again tomorrow. I
scanned over them with the binoculars, then zoomed back to the Black. He danced
down the road, jigging sideways, neck arched, practically breathing fire.



He was the Black Horse. Not the white horse of
the Lone Ranger or White Knight. Not the golden horse of Roy Rogers or the Sun
Hero. The Black carries the One Who Rides by Night; Zorro, Robin Hood, Batman
(if he had a horse), Han Solo… maybe Darth Vader. The Black Horse was the star
of my favorite childhood tales; Fury of Broken Wheel Ranch, the Black Stallion.
The privateers, defending our freedom in the War of 1812, had wicked swift and
agile schooners the British called “wild horses” (they basically thought we were
nuts sailing those things). Their hulls were usually black. And in Irish myth, a
trickster/shapeshifter called a pooka most often takes the form of a black
horse. The man on the Black was blue-jeaned and plaid-shirted, but he should
have been wearing a cape and a sword.


The ponies milled into the corral, jostling,
baring the occasional tooth to establish their place in the pecking order, then
they buried their faces in the thick dry grass in the corral. Tammy and I went
back to fence hanging, studying the ponies. This lot looked pretty much like the
one from yesterday, only there were more; more colors, more sizes, more shapes.
Most were in that large pony/small horse range, 13 or 14 hands (a hand is four
inches). They were hardy, solid and healthy, if a bit thin from their wild diet.
Most would be fine mounts. Many would be right at home in a showring.



The gate was closed, the cowponies parked, the
beer cans popped. The photographers wandered back and forth trying not to look
like they were taking pictures. The locals traded jokes and comments about this
year’s late foal crop. There were only half a dozen late foals, but that was
half a dozen mares who would be fine this winter. And, a good time was had by
all.


Presently the buckskin mare’s human came up to
see how the tourists were doing. He handed me the reins to his horse. “Here,
hold this would’ja?” I took this as a compliment, mere tourists don’t hold your
horse. A couple minutes later he came back within shouting range, “Hey, why
don’t you take her for a spin!”


I stared for a moment doing a great impersonation
of a large-mouthed bass. I was on Assateague and someone had just handed me a
horse.


WHOOT!


“Oh, what’s her
name?”


“Buck, ‘cause that’s what she does.” He gave me a
wicked little cowboy grin.


Oh yeah, cowboy humor. Hah hah. That means she’s
dead quiet. Or it’s trick or treat with the tourists. I climbed up, started down
the road. Buck was rather like a large couch that moved. She had that pleasant,
pragmatic pickup truck quality that Quarter Horses often have. It’s a working
breed, the original cowpony, and most of them have some sense. Her human shouted
something after me about staying on the road, so we didn’t fall into a swamp or
something. Some of the backwaters of Assateague are noted for, if not actual
quicksand, gooey, silted, detritus filled guts that are the next best thing to
it.


I got a hundred yards or so, and remembered
Tammy. Fooey.


I turned around and went back. “Um,” I waved
vaguely at Tammy, still aground. Someone handed her a horse. “Here, you can
ride, right?” She’s been riding with me since she was a medium sized kid. She’d
made her Dad stop at my house once, because she’d seen horses there and wanted
to learn about them. She stuck around and became a buddy, and a pretty good
horseman.


Well, at least on my nice patient Anglo-Arab
gelding.


The horse she had been handed was the Black
One.


“Now, “ the Black Horse Rider was saying, “be
careful, he has a light mouth.” Light, like airborne. And the curb bit on his
bridle had shanks the length of a nice trout. The curb works by leverage, so a
twitch of your finger on the reins translates to a heave-ho from Arnold
Schwarzeneger in his mouth. The bit was meant to be used one handed, on well
trained horses, buy people who basically thought about the direction they wanted
to go.


Tammy put a foot in the stirrup, touched the
saddle and the Black Horse spun around. He scuttled sideways, threw his head
skyward, hopped up and down a couple times, threw his head up and down some
more, dithered sideways the other way, like a crab escaping a hot pot. He did a
turn on the forehand and one on the rear, moonwalked and blew sideways like a
schooner in a high wind.


“Ah… ahhhhh…Teanna…
TEANNAWHATDOIDO?”


I’d ridden a few more years than her, about
thirty… on my own horses. On ones I’d trained, worked with, knew every twitch
and expression of. Ones I could take the bridle off of and still expect them to
behave. Getting on strange horses, especially ones that are trying to become
airborne, still fills me with trepidation. I had worked with some horses other
than my own, been a working student, taken lessons from a cowboy on the fine art
of hanging onto a barrel racing horse screaming around a turn at warp eleven,
leaning like a privateer in a ripping good
wind.


I was six hours from home with no medical
insurance, no helmet, in sweat pants and sneakers (never, ever ride in
sneakers), with a botanical collection of stickly pricklies up and down my legs,
and every cowboy within fifty miles
watching.


“Um. Let’s trade horses.” I
said.


The Black was 16.2 if he was an inch. My horses
were 14.2. That’s eight inches shorter at the withers. His rider must have been
6’3” and the stirrups hadn’t been changed in fifty years. I tried to change
them, the Black doing a square dance around me. I gave up after the tenth
dosey-doe. I hauled myself up, managing to land with the Black more or less
under me. I remembered the “light mouth” admonition, and let him dance instead
of trying to whoa him, which would have sent him skyward.



Now the botanical collection in my sweats made
itself apparent. I thought I had removed them, but they are persistent little
migrants, and had left the important pointy bits in my pants.



Yeah, OK, cattle look spooked in the lower forty,
let’s ride.


I got about fifty yards before I decided I would
have another go at the stirrups from hell. I bailed out in one piece, and while
the Black danced an Irish jig around me, I heaved, hauled, poked and conversed
like a mariner. The ancient stirrup leathers finally gave way, and I shortened
them as far as they would go. The test is to put your hand on the saddle, and
the stirrup should fit under your armpit. The Black was so tall I couldn’t reach
the saddle seat… and anyway, he was still doing circles at warp eleven. I hoped
I’d guessed right about the length.


That, of course, put the stirrups just out of
reach of my left foot, which needed to go in that stirrup so I could swing
myself up. I hopped, and the Black jigged, and somehow I found the stirrup and
landed in the saddle.


Off into the sunset.
Yee-hah!


(Don’t make me look bad in front of all these
watermen.)


That’s the thing about the Black Horse; he is
what he is. He is a Force of Nature. He is pure wild energy. He is the storm and
the wave and you either know how to ride that or you
don’t.


Or you get
  lucky.


We eased into the jigging trot he’d shown me
coming down the road earlier. There was no sign of immediate revolt, just coiled
energy suggesting he could maybe finish the Iditarod today. Maybe round up a
couple hundred more ponies. Maybe do the entire Pony Express route all by
himself. We jigged down the road to the north and the pricklies in my pants
rubbed themselves into obscurity. The wind came up from the sea, the gulls
wheeled and wailed overhead, a shining bay lay to the left, and beyond it all of
North America, the sun beginning to sail down the sky over it. I could probably
stay on, even if the Black took off. Even if I didn’t, the ground was all sand
and shrubbery. I let up on the reins, twitched a leg muscle, asking for a
canter. The Black leapt like an arrow from the bow, like a manic impala, all
long leggity strides that went up as much as forward. Buck fallumphed along
behind us in an easy rocking chair canter, Tammy yelling over the wind what a
great time she was having.


I kept one hand on the saddle horn, trying to
remember how I’d ridden those crazy barrel
  horses.


Good horsemen do not look at the ground. They
look out between their horses’ ears. Rider who look at ground likely to end up
there. I peeled my eyes off the sand and bush blurring by and saw snow geese.
Gulls, pelicans. Little things flew out of the bush. The bay gleamed like silver
to the west. Beach dunes rose on the east, castle walls protecting Assateague
from the devouring sea.  We flew
like birds on the wind. We were Heroes out to save the world from Impending
Doom. We were cowboys on the Last Roundup. The loose sand we’d been trudging
through all weekend had no more power over us. We were Horsed, we sailed over it
as easily as an osprey.


We would have eventually come to the fence at the
end of Virginia. Or run out of island altogether. We turned back before then,
reluctantly, before the locals sent out a posse in search of their
horses.


We ambled back. And right in the middle of our
road was a band of wild horses. I thought of all the tourist signs that say
things like “Do NOT feed or pet the wild horses, they kick and bite.” This is
mainly for the benefit of the horse-impaired, who tend to do stupid things like
put their three year old on top of an untrained wild stallion because he
happened to be mugging them for cookies. Still… bunch of wild ponies, and us
needing to go right through them. Would they choose to have a toothy discussion
with our horses? Would they kick as we passed? (My half-Arabian tended to kick
other horses who got too close, and once hit me instead).



“Sure. No problem.” Yeah, the herd leader would
probably have a discussion with the Black over right of way, or take off with
the Black following at warp eleven.


We rode through. They flowed aside like a bow
wave before a schooner, a hundred ponies swirling around us like a vast school
of tropical fish. The white patches of the pintos blurred the distinction
between one pony and the next. They thundered, even on sand a hundred ponies can
thunder, off toward the beach. The Black danced sideways, wanting to follow. The
ponies poured around again, back through the brush, to stand in front of the
corral. Some of the mares had foals in there and weren’t ready to leave. A
couple of the islanders noticed Tammy and I were the only ones still horsed and
yelled to us to “chase those ponies outta’ there!” There was some chuckling and
rib-poking at this, I think it’s called having fun with the
tourists.


We turned our horses and in our best tacky
western movie style yee-hahhed out across the interdune area. We swept back and
forth across the rear of the herd, ramming into wild pony rumps, diving and
dodging. The Black breathed fire again. The ponies dived into the shrubbery,
into the candleberry and wax myrtle; a green, thigh high sea with no bottom I
could see. We dived in after them, brush scraping at my knees, grabbing at my
stirrups. I gave the Black his head, pulled my toes in out of the brush. The
Black charged after the ponies with glee, his feet finding solid ground where my
eyes couldn’t see. Like a privateer roaring on a reach, cutting the waves, he
leaped up hidden sand swells, dived down into the troughs between them, splashed
through a shallow marsh, leapt up the bank on the other side, nearly
airborne.


Too soon the ponies were gone, over the dunes and
into the marsh and woods. Back to being wild things, living with the wind and
the sand and the stars.


At least until next spring, when the World Famous
Saltwater Cowboys ride again.



I handed the Black Horse back to his owner with a
big stupid grin and thanks.


“By the way, you never told me his
name.”


The answer couldn’t have been better if I’d made
it up; “Zorro,” he said.





The original tale was typewritten, well before I had a computer
with word processing capability. It has no date on it. Since I mention the
working student stint I did in 1987 or ‘88, I suspect this Halloween excursion
happened in the late 80s or early 90s. I don’t remember the cowboys’ names, but
I remember the horses, Buck and Zorro. Thanks to all of them for making this a
Halloween to remember.


 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 A creek or river has two directions: upriver or down. Easy to navigate. The
winding creeks, bays and marshes of the Chesapeake look, from the air, like a
tangled forest, Mirkwood perhaps. From the water, the view is of a circle of sea
and tree woven together like a mare's tail in a high wind.


I guess I should have stayed with the Vikings. But then I wouldn't have had
an adventure. And adventures are things you tell stories about after you survive
them.


It started at the butt crack of dawn, before it actually; me, in the dark,
zombieing around finding breakfast and the last things I needed to throw in my
buddy's Subaru with the boat gear. I don't do Butt Crack of Dawn. And I really
truly deeply loathe navigating the traffic on 83 south and anywhere near
Baltimore. So I rode shotgun and thought about sleep, but ended up with a big
fat coffee from a pit stop in Mary's land instead.


We headed south, along the western edge of the Chesapeake Bay (laregest
estuary in North America). Through Baltimore, still sleeping in the early
Saturday morning light, silvering its way around tall buildings, the Aquarium,
tall ship Constellation in the harbor. South, south with D.C. far off to the
west, up the Potomac. Our destination, a small farm in southern Maryland, lay
near the other end of the Potomac. There, in a slip at the end of Canoe Neck
Creek, off St. Clement's Bay, off the Potomac, lies a forty foot Viking Longship
called Sae Hrafn, (she's docked at the house of a guy who flies blimps, so the
Longship captain and the Blimp Captain live on the same road... really!).


The ship is owned by the Longship Company, a doughty crew of serious amateur
historians and reinactors fascinated by the Viking Age. We are computer wizards,
cinematographers, artists, writers, fixers of engines, retired Park Service, and
at least one rocket scientist (really; he works for NASA). If you show up for a
voyage (it's free, but donations always accepted) you'll probably find someone
wearing a T-shirt with Viking runes on it that say: if you can read this you are
a Viking, or "Viking World Tour" (in the style of rock concert T-shirts) with a
list of historical high points of Norse culture (often battles and raids). At
least half a dozen crew will be wearing Thor's hammers, and some of us may also
have the Nerf version of Mjolnir (from the Marvel Comics' Thor film) on our
desk.


We pull up to the crumbling tobacco barn, load ship's gear into trucks and
cars, drive down the long farm lane to where the land ends. We load the ship, I
load the kayak... in about the same amount of time. A 1-person crew has to have
all the safety/survival gear the big ship has, with less crew to load it. I have
food, water, canned coffee (all the necessities of life), first aid,
windbreaker, bilge pump, towline, more water, spare paddle, fins (to help me
swim back up onto the boat if I dump), camerabag, cell phone tucked into an
Otter drybox in my PFD pocket. I don diveskin (protection from sunburn and sea
nettles) and hat and river sandals and PFD, shoved the kayak down a short grass
slope into the cool waters of Canoe Neck Creek. Here the world is sandy bottom
(unless it's mucky silt), semi-saltmarsh (we're as far down the west side of the
Bay as Assateague Island is down the east coast), farms, wooded treelines,
scattered houses, and a few marinas out there, somewhere, where there is more
boat traffic.


The new crew (visitors on the ship for the first time) hear the articles read
(rules of the Ship), and get a demonstration of rowing commands. Frogging oars
and catching a crab have nothing to do with local wildlife. The new crew
includes a lady who grew up in Hawaii (who may or may not have had ancestors who
sailed there a thousand years ago), her husband (who may or may not have had
ancestors who sailed the North Atlantic a thousand years ago) and a charming
Halfling (our favorite moniker for children, a reference, of course, to the
beloved Hobbit). The ship is readied, the docklines undone, the crew sets oars
and Sae Hrafn (Sea Raven) slips out of the slip.


I back paddle, shooting video, some stills (easier to upload quickly, videos
require editing, a coherent storyline and music). We head out into the creek,
beating against a brisk 8-10 knot wind, singing sea chanties (the bawdier ones
are left behind as we have a Halfling aboard). I paddle rings around the ship,
literally. They are chugging along under oars at a pace that leave me drifting
in their wake, occasionally dipping a paddle into the drink. I can charge ahead,
turn around and get shots as they pass. Swing behind, and cross the stern firing
video from a camera (a Nikon Coolpix L100) rigged with a bit of aquarium hose
covered wire so I can hold it in my teeth and keep paddling. Aboard, Captain
Dave has the new HP Go Pro slung around Sae Hrafn's dragonwolf figurehead's neck
taking shots of the action aboard.


Out into the sun, bright silver glinting off ever choppier waves as the water
opens up before us. Most of the new crew fall into the rhythm of rowing, and
watch changes (so rowers can rest). I paddle, with no watch changes, but at a
slow enough pace (tracking the ship) to relax. The Halfling takes the Helm; a
tiller attached to a steerboard (hence the word "starboard"), the tiller carved
to look like a raven's head. Someone mentions that Blackistone Island (now known
as St. Clement's Island) lies ahead, there beyond the mouth of St. Clement's
Bay, and we should make for it. Our one Captain and Founder is Bruce
Blackistone, who seems to be related to the founders of the island. He is
aboard, and it seems proper for the Captain to visit his Ancestral Holdings. I
float in the ship's wake, swinging around shooting video, falling back to the
lee side of the ship (port, in this case), so as not to drift into the oarsmen.
The dim misty island stays dim and distant. They row, I paddle.


"Are we there yet?" no one says. We sing, we feel the wind, the chop dances
under our hulls. My bow shoots out of the water on oncoming waves. The camera is
high enough to not get wavesplash, the sun is shining, the wind is blowing, the
white gulls are crying...


...to the sea, to the sea, the white gulls are crying, the wind is blowing,
the white foam is flying. That's Legolas' song of the sea from J.R.R.Tolkien's
Lord of the Rings, perhaps my all time favorite bit of poetry, although it is
actually a sort of sad going away song. The rhythm is fine for rowing or
paddling, especially if you sing it in Elvish. Cormorants flap by, blue herons
stalk the edges of the water, an eagle flies overhead and vanishes into the
trees. The Elves would love this.


"Are we going to make landfall on the island?" I ask. I'm thinking I may have
had too much coffee for breakfast, and not enough potty breaks.


"Want to go scout ahead?" Since I can paddle considerably faster than they
can row, and have less stuff catching the ripping good headwind, it seems like a
good idea. I stuff the paddle in the water and shoot ahead. (Comparative Stuff
That Catches Wind 101: Me: me (the kayak has ridiculously low freeboard)...
Them: a few feet of freeboard, mast, rigging, manblocks, random boathooks spears
and axes, 40' hull, a dozen rowers, a sail furled on a yard, figurehead shaped
like a cross between a wolf and a dragon, tail high atop the sternpost, oars,
flags, cameras, the Captain's Chest, tiller, steerboard). For the
sailing-impaired: freeboard is how much of your boat sticks out of the water.



The sky is a still blue dome, spotted with sheep clouds and no chance of Thor
slaying frost giants with Mjolnir (no thunderstorms predicted). The wind is in
our faces kicking up waves. Still above, chaos below. A chart of the area shows
a sandy bottom varying in depth from foot-deep shoals to thirteen feet or so in
the channel. Wind blows the water, tide pulls it another direction, it bounces
off shoals, intersects with a powerboat wake, drops into the deep, ricochets off
riprap (the ubiquitous rock armour lining many shores, especially ones humans
have built stuff on, stuff they don't want washed out to sea when the sand
erodes). The waves rock, roll and collide, making a pattern like a horse
galloping over rough country in the dark. After awhile, my head is spinning
trying to keep up with the motion; not seasick, but kind of wishing it would all
just stand still for a minute. I focus up, on the non-moving horizon and the
motion under the hull starts to make sense again.


The ship is behind me now, a blit somewhere against a distant treeline. I
can't turn around to look; turning the nearly eighteen foot sea kayak is like
turning a truck... and while you're turning, waves are blasting you from all
angles, and at the height of the turn, blasting you dead broadside. Just turning
in the cockpit is a yoga maneuver, one best not done in bouncing waves... you're
likely to be twisted like a pretzel about the time you get a wayward broadside
and find yourself in the drink. So I paddle ahead, keeping an eye on the biggish
tree in the middle of St.Clements Island. I note the compass course as I start
away from the ship: the reciprocal heading is 210 (the direction I want to be
going on the way back). I actually learned to use a compass underwater; for our
dive test we had to navigate a triangle in about ten feet of visibility, and end
up back at our starting point.


Easy compared to navigating the Bay.


The low blueish line of trees that is Blackistone/Clements creeps closer. The
water to either side rolls away to the horizon. That must be the Chesapeake. I
think about turning around, to see where Sae Hrafn is. I think about turning
back; it's getting choppier and I am essentially alone. I have a whistle. I have
a cell phone. I soon learn that the primitive tech is far more useful. I eye the
beach; is that a dock? A ramp? Sand (easy to beach on)? Or riprap (impossible to
land on)?


The waves shift shape again, lower, reflecting waves bounce off the shore,
and the shallows beneath. I spot a dock, with guys fishing off it. I paddle up
and shout ahoy or something. They ignore me. I shout again, and ask if there's a
public landing. I get a blank look and something about their look and demeanor
suggests they might not speak English.


Now I know how Captain John Smith felt. He was the first Englishman to
explore the Chesapeake. He went in a small boat called a shallop (about the size
of Sae Hrafn) with a dozen or so guys, rowed and sailed into unknown territory.
He encountered people, but they did not share his language. He had a compass and
other navigational instruments, but had to make up his map as he went. He had no
support, no backup, just him and his crew. There's a spot on the modern map
called Stingray Point, not far from where we are rowing today; it's where Capt.
Smith saw a stingray in the shallows and ran it through with his sword. The ray
objected and stabbed Mr. Smith in return. The Goode Captain became so ill he
told his men to dig his grave... he managed to recover enough to have the ray
for dinner... and to go on to help create that Pocahontas myth.


I see sea nettles, but no stingrays. I do see a water taxi, and evidence that
Blackistone/Clements is now a tourist destination. I paddle under the dock in
some nice waves, yell something like "Ahoy the taxi!" and get someone who speaks
the same language. Yes, there is a boat ramp around the other side of the
island...and a potti.


The last thing I want to do at  this point ispaddle around an entire %$#^%$#^
island. I look at the island; not very large, actually. I'll just go around that
point and see whats there. I really gotta go.


I pass a picnic area. Something decidedly Park Pottyish. Riprap and nowhere
to land. I keep paddling. The waves shiftshape, flaten, rise, reflect, bounce
off the riprap. I turn the corner and LO! there is an actual sand beach. rising
above it are bushes and trees in Victorian fall colors; deep greens and browns
and burgundys and rusts. And rising above that is a white house with a cuppola
on top which is a Light.


I haul the boat up on the beach, then haul it up farther. The last thing I
want is to call 911 and explain that I am stranded on an island because I didn't
park the boat correctly. I find the potty. I take some pics of the lighthouse,
and somewhere in there I play phone tag with the crew of Sae Hrafn.


I'm hauling the kayak up higher on the empty beach when I hear the muffled
sound of the Star Wars theme. I crack open the Otter box in my PFD pocket and
see the call is from Dave. "Hello? HELLO?!?"


bzzzzzt... the phone calls vanishes into the ether. I hastily dry my hands on
the least wet thing I can find and poke through the phone menu to find which
Dave number that was (I am tech-impaired, so this took a minute). I call back,
he calls back, call drops, I call back.


I can see for miles across the flatness that is the lower Potomac land and
seascape. I can't imagine what's blocking a cell signal. I move up the steps to
the lighthouse and the phone rings again. "HELLO?!?!?"


We establish that I made it to the island, and they didn't. The other tall
ships in the Bay have backup engines for conditions where they can't sail. Even
then, they often are much less efficient under power, or in the case of the 1768
Schooner Sultana, buck and snort like recalcitrant Shetland Ponies because their
hulls were designed to fly before the wind, not plow into it. Sae Hrafn's backup
engine is the dozen or so rowers aboard (the longship, shaped like a big canoe,
is not built for any kind of engine). We are investigating the use of a push
boat (much like the push boats used by Skipjacks) in our (hah hah) copious free
time. The wind has shoved Sae Hrafn into a near standstill. Without forward
motion, you can't steer her; the steerboard doesn't have enough water flowing
past it to be effective. Then the wind grabs her and shoves her sideways. the
rowers try to counteract this by rowing more on one side or the other. In a
kayak, you instinctively counteract the force of the wind and the shove of waves
with an extra stroke, a harder stroke, a longer stroke. On the longship, you are
coordinating 8 to 12 rowers, shouting orders over the wind that's shoving you
into the marsh.


They wisely have decided to turn around and sail back.


I am half an hour ahead of them, I haven't eaten anything except a few
granola bars since breakfast at 6am. I've been paddling since noon, it's now
about 2:30. I know I can't catch them once they set sail (I have paced them
under sail, but I can't paddle faster than they can sail, or make up a half hour
lead). I need to eat, and then I'm making the voyage back alone. I have a
compass course, and I can see their sail when I get farther up the creek (though
they might have dropped it by then). I down a few quick bites and contemplate
resting on the beach for a bit... I'll have the wind behind me, surfing on the
waves, but it will still be rough, a rest would be good.


I don't waste much time. I take a few pics and video of the light and the
beach to prove I was there. I batten everything down in the 'yak, dryboxes,
drybags, stowed. I shove her out into the waves and hop in, popping the
sprayskirt around the cockpit. I paddle around the island to the midpoint where
I first approached, set my compass course, look up the creek from which we came
and...


...there are two creeks. Separated by a bit of land. Two long stretches of
water, bordered by treelines and agricultural land and scattered houses. No road
signs. No arrows pointing "this way to longship landing". Left creek or right
creek? I look at the compass again. Looks like left creek. Unless I'm at the
wrong point on the island. Does that look familiar? Can't tell. Water. Trees. I
head out into open water, to where it stretches away to the far misty blue blur
that might be distant trees or clouds on the edge of the world. I dance on the
waves, they sweep up behind me, yawing the 'yak right and left, even with the
rudder down. I shove on the paddle, the 'yak surges forward, surfing the waves
home.


Finally the treelines around the creeks grow greener, nearer. I check the
compass a few more times; it seems like I am on the right track.


Then the bright red triangle of a daymark appears in front if me. Really, I
don't remember that. I look at the compas. I twist around and look back at the
island. Yep, this makes sense, that looks like what I was paddling toward.


How could I have missed the osprey condo with the big bright red triangle on
it? I call Dave, and raise the ship. Just want to make sure I'm on the right
track before I paddle up the wrong creek. Dave and Bruce check the chart aboard
Sae Hrafn, Can't find the red daymark, number 2. No really, I'm sitting infront
of it, it's here. What? what was that again? The phone crackles like a joke in a
horror film. I hear mumbled sounds, then "Oh, here it is."


And I am totally up the wrong creek, with two paddles. And they are telling
me it's St. Patrick's creek I am in.. and that I should be in Canoe Neck, and
that's to the north. I look that way and all I see is a long unbroken treeline.
I am convinced I am either in the correct creek or I need to be in the one to
the far right (east). A conversation ensues while I try not to drop the cell
phone in the wrong creek and the guys on the ship check the chart again. Unable
to visualize what they're telling me, I finally agree to go up the creek and
look for a marina. They'll come find me.


What I don't know, is that I am actually in the mouth of St. Clements Bay,
the "creek" to the right (east) is Breton Bay and would put me somewhere on the
far side of the world if I paddled up it. St. Patrick's Creek is to my left
(west) and Canoe Neck just beyond it to the north. I can't see either one of
them. In the Chesapeake region, creeks, rivers and bays make stumpy tree shapes,
branches going out short and thick and twisty, then abruptly ending in marsh and
land. The land interweaving with this ends in gazillions of puzzling peninsulas
called "necks". I was looking at a series of "necks" which from that angle,
looked like one solid treeline.


Stealth ninja creeks.


I paddle up the broad chunk of whatever water I'm in, looking for a marina.
Farms, stray houses, fields, riprap, wooded shores falling into the water as the
sand under the trees' feet is eroded by wind and weather and tide, a random dock
here, a tied up boat there. Nothing like a marina with an address that someone
could drive to. I see a large, official (ie: non-houselike) building with a
sandy beach at its feet. I pull the boat up on the beach, start to hike up to
the building, now clearly i can see it is a quonsett hut, a big silver half
cylinder (farm? secret meth lab?) surrounded, in the back, by tall chain link
fence. I pause, turn and pull the boat up farther, then tie it to a tree.


The building is empty of life, except for two vehicles parked out front, It
looks like some sort of business, and a sign suggests farm. then from somewhere
in back coems a deep throated bark, more like a dragon cough, then a roar, then
more, and I consider two things: the guard dogs will bring humans who I can ask
the address of and if it's OK for my friends to pick me up here... or the dogs
will jump the fence... or the dogs are guarding a meth lab. OK, that's three
things. I run back to the beach and untie the boat, head out, very tired, into a
lowering sun and falling light on an empty river.


Then I see a sailboat, going downriver under engine power. I paddle out
toward it, wave vaguely. Shout. Finally blow my whistle. They look, slow, turn
and come alongside.


"Is there a marina around here somewhere?"


"No, you're in St. Clements Bay. No marinas."


I explain where I came from and that I am lost and looking for St Clements
Creek, no wait, Canoe Neck. It's been a long day.


"It's up there." One sailor points vaguely at the distant treeish haze.
Pause... "you want us to throw you a line?"


Sure. Absolutely. Two random guys on a boat, towing me some random place I
can't see. They could be pirates. Axe murderers. Drug dealers. But probably not.
There's a kind of law of the sea at work here. The kind of thing that causes
three kayakers to go up to a 60 foot catamaran they've passed at the same spot
hours before and ask if everything's OK, and find out they're stuck on a
sandbar, and offer to tow them off. We didn't hook the towline up to the 'yaks,
we used the cat's anchor to kedge them off the bar. Law of the sea. The guy
struggling with his jet ski in the middle of a thunderstorm on the banks of the
Susquehanna while I cowered in my van (Thor may be one of my favorite mythic
characters, but I really hate thunderstorms)... I jumped out and helped him with
his boat, even though I loathe jet skis.


I run up behind the sailboat, one guy ties a line off to the 'yak's bow, they
pay out 30 feet or so of line and start the diesel. "Don't worry, we won't put
her up on plane or anything..." Sailor humor. Sailboats don't plane, powerboats
plane. Kayaks would plane, for about two seconds before they did some rather
spectacular special effects. We don't plane, we chug along, the wind blowing the
diesel fumes sideways, the 'yak gliding along at an unnatural speed, the rudder
keeping her in line with the big boat.


Somewhwere in here, Star Wars rings out in muffled splendor from my PFD
pocket. I juggle the phone, the paddle (trying not to catch a crab with it as
I'm being towed)... "I, ah, hitched a ride"...


A few minutes later, they untie the line at Canoe Neck Creek. I invite them
to come play with Vikings, and I paddle up the creek looking for the third cove
on the right, and certain that I'm going to have a chart next time. 　


10 mile paddle. Mostly into the wind. Plus 1.6 mi up St. Clement's Bay to the
quonsett hut (farm/beach), towed to mouth of Canoe Neck Creek by sailboat.


St.Clement's is actually Saint Clements Island State Park.


I was in the mouth of St. Clement's Bay, not St. Patricks Creek (to the
left/west at that point), and needed to go up the Bay (north) to Canoe Neck
Creek. I went north as far as the quonsett hut place (visible on Google Earth,
1.6 mi north of the mouth of Canoe Neck Creek).


The two creeks I was looking at were actually St. Clements Bay and Breton
Bay. Indeed the water to the right (Breton Bay) would have been way wrong.


The course out of Canoe Neck to St. Clements Is. is a long sweeping curve;
there is no  point where it seems like you have made a sharp right turn to the
south. I was following the ship and shooting video, so I wasn't really paying
attention to the course.


Charts: never leave home without them. 


www.longshipco.org We need a few good
rowers...uh...sailors. No experience
necessary.


　

 A conversation with a young friend I work with spawned this... 

She had gone to the York Fair and seen some farm animals. Her childhood in
the Phillipines included a grandpa who had a small ... what we'd call a farmette
or gentleman's farm or truckpatch: pigs, chickens, garden. 

"What kind of cows did you see", I asked.

The ensuing discussion pointed out how much most of us don't know about our
burgers and ice cream and where it comes from. I have a passing knowledge of
some of the cattle breeds, generally color-coded: if it's black, it's an Angus,
if it's white it's a Charlais, if it's black and white it's a Holstein. If it
looks like Disney invented it for a Bambi movie it's a Jersey... Bambi with the
attitude of the Terminator.

I asked if she had cows back in her childhood home. Sure, of course. Water
buffalo? What? A quick google search on the phone turned up pictures of
kalabaw.

"The carabao ( Filipino: kalabaw;  Malay: kerbau) or Bubalus bubalis
carabanesis is a subspecies of the domesticated water  buffalo (Bubalus bubalis) found in the Philippines, Guam, Indonesia, Malaysia, and various parts of Southeast Asia. Carabaos are ssociated with farmers, being the farm animal of  choice for pulling both a plow and the cart used to haul produce to the market."  (Wiki)

Which led me to wondering how they are related to cattle and buffalo/American  bison.


The Cow:
Family: Bovidae Subfamily: Bovinae Genus: Bos Species: B. primigenius Subspecies: B. p. taurus, B.
p. indicus
 
The Water Buffalo: Subfamily: Bovinae Genus: Bubalus Species: B. bubalis Subspecies: B. b. carabanesis

The Bison:  Family: Bovidae Subfamily: Bovinae Genus: Bison Species †B.
antiquus, B.  bison, B.  bonasus,†B.  latifrons,†B. occidentalis,†B.  priscus

The Cape Buffalo  (of Africa, which  looks like a water buffalo) is a whole 'nother beast: it is not closely related  to the domesticated water buffalo, and it is not the ancestor of modern cattle.
Domesticated Water Buffalo are quiet, gentle beasts... Cape Buffalo are one of  the most dangerous beasts in Africa, you're better off meeting a lion on the  trail than a buffalo. Cape Buffalo will ambush and attack pursuers. Of course,  their main predators are humans, lions and crocs. They have to be
tough.

The Yak: Family: Bovidae Genus: Bos Species: B. grunniens 　
 
Family:  Bovidae Subfamily: Bovinae Genus: Syncerus, Species: S. caffer...
subspecies: S. c. caffer,  S. c. nanus, S. c. brachyceros, S. c. aequinoctialis, S. c.
mathewsi

Clearly all the same beasts (bovinae) up until the "genus" part. 

When I looked up cattle species (not breeds), the idea of Cow got more  complicated...

What Wiki says: 

Cattle were originally identified as three separate  species: Bos taurus , the European or "taurine" cattle (including similar types from Africa and  Asia); Bos indicus, the zebu; and the extinct Bos primigenius,  the aurochs. The aurochs is ancestral to both zebu and taurine  cattle. Recently these three have increasingly been grouped as one species,  with Bos primigenius taurus, Bos primigenius indicus and Bos primigenius  primigenius as the subspecies.

Complicating the matter is the ability of cattle to interbreed with other
closely related species.  Hybrid individuals and even breeds exist, not only between taurine cattle and  zebu (such as the  sanga  cattle, Bos taurus africanus) but also between one or both of the se and  some other members of the genus Bos – yaks (the dzo or yattle, banteng, and gaur. Hybrids such as the beefalo breed can even occur between taurine cattle and either species of  bison, leading some authors to consider them part of the genus Bos as well. The hybrid origin of some types may not be obvious – for example,  genetic testing of the Dwarf Lulu breed, the only taurine-type cattle in Nepal, found them to be a mix  of taurine cattle, zebu, and yak. However, cattle cannot successfully be  hybridized with more distantly related bovines such as water  buffalo or African buffalo. The aurochs  originally ranged throughout Europe,  North  Africa, and much of Asia. In historical times its range became restricted to  Europe, and the last known individual died in Masovia, Poland, in about 1627. Breeders have attempted to recreate cattle of similar  appearance to aurochs by crossing traditional types of domesticated cattle,  creating the Heck cattle breed. The yak  may have diverged from cattle at any point between one and five million years  ago, and there is some suggestion that it may be more closely related to  bison than to the other members of its designated genus. Apparent close  fossil relatives of the yak, such as Bos baikalensis, have been found in eastern  Russia, suggesting a possible route by which yak-like ancestors of the modern
American bison could have entered the Americas. 　

Cornfuseled yet??? 

"During the population bottleneck, the number of bison remaining alive in
North America declined to as low as 541. During that period, a handful of
ranchers gathered remnants of the existing herds to save the species from
extinction. These ranchers bred some of the bison with cattle in an effort to
produce "cattleo". Accidental crossings were also known to occur. Generally,
male domestic bulls were crossed with buffalo cows, producing offspring of which
only the females were fertile. The crossbred animals did not demonstrate any
form of hybrid vigor, so the practice was abandoned. The proportion of cattle
DNA that has been measured in introgressed individuals and herds today is
typically quite low, ranging from 0.56 to 1.8%. In the United States, many
ranchers are now utilizing DNA testing to cull the residual cattle genetics from
their herds. The U.S. National Bison Association has adopted a code of ethics
which prohibits its members from deliberately crossbreeding bison with any other
species."

 America nearly killed off the bison (part of it was an attempt to subdue to
Native tribes who depended on it, part was greedy hunting). Out of those
slightly more than 500 individuals came our present thundering herds. Not a lot
of DNA to work with there. I was surprised to see the cow DNA lurking in there,
that second generation animals were fertile, (unlike mules) and that ranchers
have tried to eliminate the cow DNA now.

There it is, the tangled DNA web of Cow.  I leave you with oen more Wiki
contemplation... of the word COW...

 Cattle did not originate as the term for bovine animals.  It was borrowed from  Old  French catel,  itself from Latin caput,  head, and originally meant movable personal  property,  especially livestock of any kind, as opposed to  real property (the land, which also included wild or small free-roaming animals  such as chickens — they were sold as part of the land). The word is closely
related to "chattel" (a unit of personal property) and "capital"  in  the economic sense. The term replaced earlier Old  English feoh "cattle, property" (cf. German: Vieh, Gothic: faihu). The word cow came via  Anglo-Saxon cū (plural cȳ), from  Common Indo-European gʷōus  (genitive gʷowes) = "a bovine animal", compare Persian Gâv, Sanskrit go, Welsh buwch. The genitive plural of "cū" is cȳna", which gave the now  archaic English plural, and Scots plural, of "kine".


　


　


　


　


　


　


　


　

I'm a fan of fantasy and Disney (from childhood), so the poster of a little
boy named Timothy Green with his falling sock and leafy leg was intriguing. Ah,
sez I, a tale of a Magical Child, an Elf child, the quirky misfit kid who
somehow changes those around him. Which is pretty much what it is. Sort
of...


Jim and Cindi, a couple who can't have biological children, commiserate their
Awful Fate of not being able to pass on their Highly Unique DNA to someone else.
I am appalled by the 7 billion people overburdening the planet already, so I
find myself shouting at the screen, "Oh just adopt a frickin' puppy already!" To
which Cindi wails, "I don't want a puppy!" (really, she says that). Jim draws
Cindi into a game, a rite of passage, in which they state All the Things Their
Child Would Be If It Had Been, write it on pages of a small notebook, place
those in a box, and bury it in Cindi's garden. Now they can Move On.


The setting here is a sort of generic fairy tale American rural town, rather
like Charlotte's Web was a generic American fairy tale 20th century farm, or
Brave was a generic pan-medieval fairy tale Scotland. All the apple pie and
soccer mom and sunshine through autumn leaf stuff you remember, or wish you had.
And the Dad who doesn't understand you, the sister who's kids are always better
than anyone else's, the tough coach, the school bullies, the snotty boss, and
the other quirky kid who develops a relationship with the Magical Child. The
actors are fine, the kids are excellent (especially the young boy who plays
Timothy), and NotMom Cindi is overdressed, (like, does she even own jeans?!?) as
if she's always on the verge of attending a party in some posh part of New York
rather than living in a rural town in Middle America with garden in back and a
horse across the dirt road.


Jim and Cindi go forth to an adoption agency, and are on the verge of being
rejected because they haven't filled out their paperwork quite fully. They fill
in the gaps with the Timothy tale. Here is where my suspension of disbelief had
a Major Epic Fail.


In fantasy or science fiction, you must have "suspension of disbelief". The
fictional world created, with its sun and moon and trees and familes... and its
Godzillas and Spiderman and Elves... must be believable. In fact, you work
harder, as a fantasy writer, to make the audience believe a guy bitten by a
radioactive spider can now stick to walls and shoot webstuff to catch crooks. Or
that a radioactive dinosaur rises out of the sea and sqashes cabs and busses in
Tokyo. Or that the Elf in the Fellowship really can bring down one of the
Mumakil with a single bow shot.


Sorry Disney; your framing story of Jim and Cindi explaining to Adoption
Agency Corporate Heads how they became better parents because a magical kid
emerged from the garden, with leaves on his legs, and Changed Their Lives is
just plain ^%$#^%#!!! stupid.


If you felt the need to have them tell the story, that is, narrate the film
we are watching so we get more Deep Insights, then have them tell US the
story... or narrate it to an unseen viewer... and in the end, we can see that
they were telling this "fairy tale" to their now adopted daughter.


There is also a bit of Epic Fail in how the magic is presented to other
people in the town, near the end of the story. Ooooooo, look, there are leaves
on his legs. I would have liked to see some more intense effects there: some
viney greeney stuff growing up from his feet, rootyer, Entyer (you surely
remember the Ents from Lord of the Rings?) greener stuff coming up (still
disguisable by the hilarious socks) and turning into a kid. There is one nice
little scene where they try to cut off the very odd leaves, so he'll be a Normal
Kid and the pruning shears suffer a Catastrophic Fail. They could have used that
idea again, in the town meeting scene, where a few people look at the last leaf
stuck on Timothy's leg and ooooo and ahhhh and Believe.


Or maybe he just used some super glue...


The film does have some lovely cinematography; that Fairy Tale America we all
want to believe in, especially in an election year. It also has an Epic Scene in
Timothy's arrival in the teeth of a gale. Kind of like Beowulf, only Timothy
isn't trying to row a Viking longship while also sailing it (impossible) or
standing in the bow in 100 pounds of chainmail (glub, glub). There is thunder
and lightning and rain (which at the end falls up), and the fertile soil
of the garden bulging like a treasure chest. We cut away before the emergence of
Timothy: a child rising from the earth would just be too zombie flick. Here in
the storm, the rain and the fertile soil the film hits deep mythic notes. In all
those ancient tales, the sky gods rain down and make the earth goddess fertile,
and she brings forth riches. In Norse myth, Thor is the storm and Sif his golden
haired earth goddess wife.


Gene Rodenberry (Star Trek's creator) once observed that you a cowboy doesn't
stop to explain how his six-gun works, he just uses it, you see how it works. So
Captain Kirk doesn't explain how his phaser works, he just uses it. We also
don't see how it works that Timothy gets into school and soccer and other bits
of normal life without some sort of history, birth certificate, social security
card and vaccinations. We just see that it works. It's not the point of the tale
anyway, the point is how he changes those around him. And he does, whether it's
turning the school bullies' Attack of the Killer Lunchables into an art
installation (he's the installation), showing the hidden beauty (and chin hairs)
of a prim museum manager, jumping off a diving board and finding he's never
learned to swim (gaining the attention of the other Weird Kid... and kicking her
in the head), or kicking the winning goal ... for the wrong team, he makes
everyone around him rethink their reality.


The avancing autumn, and the turning of Timothy's personal leaves to gold and
red and brown is a lovely little bit of storytelling. He has not come to stay,
but only for awhile, to teach them something. He is a Force of Nature, an
Elemental, something magical and archetypal, something tied to their dreams. And
like all dreams I have had, the reality is not better or worse than the dream,
only slighly sideways of it.


There is a wonderful relationship between the Girl With the Raspberry
Birthmark (Joni) and Timothy. She is older, taller, beautiful like a young Arwen
Undomiel (the Elven princess who Aragorn fell in love with in Lord of the
Rings). Their pure, innocent relationship causes Jim and Cindi no end of
education in the Art of Parenting Preteens and the Discussion of Romance Etc.
The kids create a wonderful sanctuary in the woods, an art installment made of
fallen leaves, lines of them stiched through branches, panes of them hanging and
catching the last autumn light. Leaves are the iconic image of this film: the
red and gold trees framing the country house, the autumn woods that are a
backdrop to the bicycle journey of Joni and Timothy, the leaf pencil that saves
the pencil factory (um, yeah, a pencil factory figures largely in the plot...
seems Stanleyville is the pencil capital of the world).


Timothy's tale, like all good fairy tales, has a point; it shows the parents
doing Dumb Parenting 101, the mistakes they make, well-meaning mistakes, and how
it is resolved, and how they really are pretty good parents after all. He is the
Magical Child, wiser than his apparent years, quirky, odd. He lets them make
their mistakes, he shows them a purer way, and the joy ripples out to the whole
town.


It's a quiet little film. Nothing blows up. No Grand Quests. No huge tears.
Timothy is everything Jim and Cindi have written on their slips of paper and
buried in the Box in the Garden... only different. Like all kids, he manifests
those dreams in his own unique way. He has a fresh viewpoint. He is the sword of
the hero (or maybe the pruning shears), cutting away the outworn, the old, and
replacing it with something new.


At the end, Something new arrives in the form of Jim and Cindi's new child,
adopted, not a bit like Timothy. Possibly none of the things they wrote on those
slips of paper in the box in the garden, or maybe all of them. She's carrying
her own brand of magic.

 (a random musing on the top three comic book superheroes) 


For the Comics-impaired:

Despite being born at the beginning of the Silver Age of comics, I grew up
comics impaired. OK, I watched Superman on TV (the George Reeves version). We
got one channel and it didn't carry Batman (the campy version with Adam West),
but I caught glimpses of it at my cousins' house. It wasn't until the films came
out that I finally got to truly meet the 2nd oldest modern superhero for real.
Having just seen The Dark Knight Rises, I felt the need to contemplate why
several Batman action figures lurk on my shelves. I went to wikipedia to get an
overview of seventy years of Batman (and Robin), I was basically able to skim
the massive mess, and my head is spinning. You'd spend a lifetime simply
catching up on all the real comics and films and TV shows and radio...

So here it is, in a kind of nutshell. A really big one.

The Big Three, according to the Polls:

Superman, Spiderman and Batman rank as the top three favorite comic book
superheroes in several polls. 

In this one, "Top 10 Comic Book Characters" by Aaron Albert, About.com
Guide, it's Superman, Spidey and Bats, in that order. In another on IGN, it's
Superman, Bats and Spidey. 

Superman, as the original Man in Tights, the first comic book superhero, the
icon of the genre, the... oh, you get the picture... he started it all, so he's
at the top of all lists. (First Appearance: Action Comics #1
(June 1938)) IGN says of him: "Superman is the blueprint for the modern
superhero. He’s arguably the single most important creation in the history of
superhero comics. Superman is a hero that reflects the potential in all of us
for greatness; a beacon of light in times that are grim and a glimmer of hope
for the hopeless. He’s an archetype for us to project upon; whether you consider
him a messiah or just a Big Blue Boyscout, Superman’s impact on the genre and
pop culture is undeniable. " 

Spidey, I covered in another blog. But here he is again, just for
comparison: IGN sez: "Peter Parker is
the everyman. He’s the common, average, middle-of-the-road guy that just happens
to be endowed with amazing powers when he’s bitten by a radioactive spider.
Despite Spidey’s fantastic abilities, Peter Parker still has to deal with the
woes of middle-class living. Girl problems, making ends meet, keeping his family
together, getting through school; all the tropes of our everyday normal lives
lived out through the eyes of a superhero. Despite all this, Spider-Man remains
one of the most snarky and fun heroes in existence. His cheesy banter during
combat is always appreciated, and he’s able to make light of even the most dire
of situations. There’s never a dull moment when ol’ webhead is around, and
there’s something to be said for an icon that doesn’t take himself too
seriously." (August 1962, Amazing Fantasy)

Batman: Aaron Albert's Batman blurb reads; "There is something about the
dark brooding sense of Batman that intrigues people. Or maybe its Batman’s
alter-ego, millionaire Bruce Wayne, that people wish they had more in common
with. Maybe the reason so many people identify with him is that Batman has no
truly supernatural powers. Any one of us could be Batman Whatever the case,
Batman has struck a chord with fans around the world. The Dark Knight is hugely
popular with a multiple hit movies and many different comic titles to choose
from." IGN says:

"He’s the world’s greatest detective. He’s the world’s
premier martial artist. He’s the world’s broodiest billionaire. The only human
being to stand amongst the Justice League – alongside gods like Superman and
Wonder Woman – without superpowers. Bruce is a man, for better or worse, that is
so utterly devoted to his mission that he’s sacrificed his entire existence to
fighting a never ending battle. (First Appearance: Detective Comics #27 (May
1939))
 http://www.ign.com/top/comic-book-heroes/3 
 http://comicbooks.about.com/od/characters/tp/topsuperhero.htm

Archetypes, Archetypes:

So sayeth the experts. I like all three characters for much the same reasons
they mention. 

Superman's the iconic Golden Hero, the White Knight, the Cowboy in the White
Hat. The Sky God who comes to Earth to right wrongs. This archetype has existed
in every tale told around every fire since the Dawn of Time. 

Spiderman is another archetype: a gentle trickster, using humor and trickery
rather than raw power. He also makes mistakes, and unlike Loki, atones for them.
In the myths of the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota (the people mistakenly called
Sioux), Iktomi the Spiderman is the trickster figure (as Loki is in the Norse
myths). He looks human, his name means "spider", and he is (unlike Peter Parker)
mainly a negative role model behaving as socially inappropriately as possible.
"Most Sioux stories about Iktomi are consequently very funny, ranging from
light-hearted fables about buffoonish behavior to ribald jokes. But sometimes
Iktomi's misbehavior is more serious and violent, and the stories become
cautionary tales about the dangers of the world." 
http://www.native-languages.org/iktomi.htm

Batman is the Dark Hero. The one who strides the fine line between light and
shadow. Bagheera from the Jungle Books, Zorro, and Dracula. He is "a creature of
the night, black, terrible..." as he states in his origin tale, striking fear
into the hearts of evil. His look, character and gear is primarily evolved from
pop culture of the 1930s, including movies, pulp magazines, comic strips,
newspaper headlines, and even aspects of Bob Kane (Bat's creator) himself. The
Bat Whispers, Doc Savage, the Shadow, Sherlock Holmes, and yes, Zorro (who
dresses like Batman, rides a black horse, and plays the wimpy millionare by day
while battling crime by night). Zorro ("fox" in Spanish) is also a bit of a
trickster figure, like Spiderman (Fox is ever a trickster figure in myth), as
well as a dark avenging angel. Bats is driven by vengeance (bad guys killed his
parents) which brings me to...

Why Are They All Orphans???

Superman: planet blows up, parents throw him in an escape pod and he falls to
Earth. Presumeably parents blow up with planet.

Spiderman: parents mysteriously disappear in plane crash. Raised by Aunt and
Uncle. Uncle dies due to lack of intervention by a young Spidey who hasn't yet
absorbed that Great Wisdom of Uncle Ben: with great power comes great
responsibility.

Batman: parents killed by small time criminal before his very eyes.

There are other Heroes who don't seem to have parents. I can't think of what
happened to Wolverine's. Or Nightcrawler's. Or most of the X-Men's. Luke
Skywalker has no idea who his parents are and his aunt and uncle get killed by
the Bad Guys, then he finds Dad and well, that took 6 films and 20 years or so
to tell... Captain America wakes up in the wrong century and everyone he knew is
gone. Loki gets kicked out of the family. Thor does too, but he redeems himself
and gets to go back home with his parents.

Oh wait, there's always Ragnarok.

Orphans. Why does it always have to be orphans? Perhaps it is Rule #1 of
writing for kids; get the parents out of the way so the kids can have an
adventure. Or it's give the Hero the worst possible angst and obstacles so he
can look awesome overcoming them. Batman seems to have the market cornered on
angst and broodiness. Even the films are dark, noirish, full of the elventy
seven shades of grey found in cities that are under siege by villains. Full of
rain, and snow and eternal night and winter. (from Wiki): "Concept artist
Tully Summers commented on Christopher Nolan's style of cinematography when
asked about the difference between his designs for this film and fantasy-based
designs for Men in Black 3: "The difference for me was Christopher Nolan's
visual style. One of the things that makes his Batman movies so compelling is
their tone of plausibility. He will often prefer a raw, grittier design over one
that is very sleek and product design pretty. It's sort of a practical military
aesthetic. This stuff is made to work, not impress shoppers. The Dark Knight
Rises is a war film."

BRRRRRRRRRRRR! GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!!!

I prefer bright and light and Spidey cracking wise while swinging Tarzanlike
through the canyons of NY.

But wait. I love Batman. Why?

73 years of comics. 7 films. Something about Batman has resonated with a
widely varied audience for a lifetime. He's shifted and changed a bit over the
years, going from dark pulp fiction crime fighter who showed little remorse over
killing or maiming criminals, to softening a bit with the addition of Robin in
the 40s, to less social commentary and more lighthearted juvenile fantasy in the
years following WWII, to pure camp in the 60s, to Frank Miller's Dark Knight
Returns in the 80s, to Tim Burton's films (1989 etc.), and Joel Schumacher's,
and Christopher Nolan's return to the very Dark and stormy Knight. Like most
mythic figures (think Robin Hood or King Arthur) comic book superheroes that go
on for seventy years don't have a real "book canon", what consistency? There is
no consistency! You can't have umpty writers and artists over seventy years
telling one coherent story in the style of, say Harry Potter. So characters like
Batman remain what they are: archetypes, re-imagined over and over again. And
there is the concept of retcon (from Wiki): " Pannenberg's conception of retroactive continuity
ultimately means that history flows fundamentally from the future into the past,
that the future is not basically a product of the past." Comics are always
retconning storylines.

Oh yeah. Why do I love Batman? 

It's not just hunky actors. There's lots of those in awful films I can't
stand (don't even mention Twilight!). Christopher Nolan says: "We throw a lot
of things against the wall to see if it sticks. We put a lot of interesting
questions in the air, but that's simply a backdrop for the story. What we're
really trying to do is show the cracks of society, show the conflicts that
somebody would try to wedge open." Storytellers tell a story. Some use
allegory, which my favorite author, J.R.R. Tolkien loathed,
as allegory relied on the author pushing his ideas and intentions on the reader.
A equals B, so why not just write about B in the first place?
Applicability (Tolkien liked applicability) is telling a
great archetypal tale and letting the readers relate it to their own life, in
their own ways. 

We all can, in some way, relate to Batman and his struggles. We can admire
his determination to perservere in the face of impossible odds, to beat the
villainy, the monsters in the dark, his unswerving comittment to justice and
unwillingness to take life. This unyielding moral rectitude is our ideal. He
also fills that place occupied by the lone Hero; we have goverment and military
and police and various forces in our culture supposedly protecting us, but we
have a very deep need for The Hero. We realize the limits of those societal
forces of justice. We note that they are susceptible to corruption, to not being
there when we need them, to being underpaid and overworked... so we need The
Hero. 

In The Dark Knight Rises, Batman is not the only Hero. Others ranging from
Gordon to Catwoman to ordinary citizens to kids to the young man who's name is
revealed at the end of the film (yeah, I thought I recognized him) do their own
heroics. Batman does not act alone. He acts, he neutralizes villains, but he
also inspires. He inspires us too, in our non-fictional world, to rise above our
shortcomings, our obstacles, our supposed physical limitations.

Here, a review which sums it all up nicely. (Spoilers!) 
http://www.comicbookmovie.com/news/?a=64767


　


　


　


　


　


　


　


　


　


　


　


　

When I heard they were rebooting Spidey, my reaction was "What happened to
Toby Maguire?" And, "why do they have to keep telling the Origin Story again?"
Just write a new story already, there's only 50 years of comic books to draw
from. (Spidey first appeared in Amazing Fantasy #15, August
1962). Oh, and TV shows, and newspaper comics, BBC radio, and fan films, and a
random bit from, yes, Turkey. Here's the lineup from Wikipedia: "Spider-Man has
been adapted to TV many times, as a short-lived live-action television series, a  Japanese
tokusatsu series, and several animated cartoon series. There were also the "Spidey Super
Stories" segments on the PBS educational series The Electric  Company, which featured a Spider-Man (played by  Danny Seagren) who did not speak out loud but instead used only word
balloons."

I missed most of this. I grew up comics-impaired. My parents listened to the
radio for the "screamin' preachers" and the news. I read books, mostly
containing sagas about girls and horses. I did watch George Reeves' Superman,
(my cousins watched Batman, because they got that channel),Star Trek, read
faerie tales, and newspaper comics. That's where I think I first saw the
web-slinger. Or maybe it was on TV; but we only got one channel of NBC until I
was in high school, then we got that and a couple of channels of snow and
blizzard (if you stuck the tin foil on the antenna just right, you'd get
slightly lighter snow). As an adult, on the heels of movie releases, I caught up
on Batman, and X-Men and a few other random comics that caught my eye. Spidey is
kind of hard to miss, being Marvel's flagship character.

In 2002, Spidey hit the big screen, played by Toby Maguire. We loved it. We
loved part 2, and I mostly forget part 3, but I know I saw it. 

Enter the Reboot.

WHAT?!?!?! Where the bleep is Toby Maguire?!?!?! And why are we retelling the
Origin Tale again? A friend once observed, of my own writing, that I had to keep
track of what was going on and not get on the Road to Inconsistencyville.

Oh, you mean like Marvel. Every time you turn around there's a new version of
the same superhero or team. A new origin story, a new reboot for this decade's
generation. There are so many storylines and versions of, say, Spiderman, that
there is no definitive story. He's become, actually, rather like King Arthur, or
the original Thor (of Norse Myth), an archetype of the collective unconcious, a
collection of tales with meaning for a very broad range of people in all times
and places. He is not at all like a character in a novel, or series of novels,
where all roads lead to Consistencyville.

Enter the Reboot.

A redhaired woman (only slightly older than Spidey himself, and somewhat
younger than Sally Field's Aunt May) walks into a theater... I opted for the
9:30 2D show, because I didn't want to wait, yawning, for an hour for the 3D
show. I work at night, so there are limited options for when to see films. I
sat, I waited... then a couple walked in pushing a baby stroller.

%*&^%*&^%!?!?!?!?! WHAT PART OF 9PM SHOWING OF SPIDERMAN DO YOU NOT
UNDERSTAND!?!?!? Really, this should be illegal. There should be baby-free zones
in theaters, either specific theaters, or specific times; like after 9, you need
to be old enough to understand that if you shriek, talk, burble or blather, I
will drop you off a cliff. If you have enough money to see a movie, you have
enough for a babysitter. Or you can shanghai a relative or friend, or trade
(cooking, laundry, shopping, driving, mowing) for sitting duties. I did not dish
out the Big Bucks to hear your kid's sound effects in my movie. And seriously,
on the kid's side of things; the kid may be sleeping now, the kid may not
actually watch the movie, but he/she will hear it, and that is way too scary for
anyone still in diapers. I walked out, smiled at the nice young men in charge in
the lobby and gave my ticket back, with the assurance I'd be back soon. I got as
far as the parking lot, and realized I'd be doing stuff like this blog the next
day, and doing battle with the privet hedge from hell, and scooping poop, and
Gawdknows what else, and i'd better just suck it up and go see the 10:30 3D. the
nice young men in the theater lobby were amused, I got a ticket, and sat
down...

Andrew Garfield (Spidey) turns out to be nearly 30, which puts him in that
interesting place spoofed so well by the Scream sendup Scary Movie, in which
30-somethings play teenagers. I would never have guessed, I thought he was,
like, 18. Oh well, once you reach a certain point, they all look alike; 18, 27,
34... all the same to me. He's a Jewish-American-Brit who... oh, and a Whovian
(appeared in several Dr. Who episodes)... was a gymnast and swimmer (hence the
chops to play the gymnastic web-slinger), and has already been nominated for a
Golden Globe and a Tony. 

The Amazing Spiderman starts with awe-inspiring visuals and keeps going. You
sort of know when it's CG, but only because you know no stunt guy could do
that.

Or did he? 

There's a lot of nifty Spidey-cam viewpoint as he's diving through the aerial
spaces of NY. There's stuff you can't do in the comics, because comics don't
move. There's stuff that works terrifically in 3D, without being really in your
face or obvious. There are background characters that are absolutely believable.
And I never realized till I read the credits that Martin Sheen and Sally Field
were Uncle Ben and Aunt May. They were that good.

This artist has seen just enough of the comics to be aware that each Marvel
character has a distinct visual style, a distinct way of moving, distinct poses
captured in comic panels. Spidey may be one of the most unique. Even the
web-impaired will note that the film captures these iconic moments as he swings
through the canyons of New York. And the end shot is the best comic book cover
ever, summing up the character on one terrific image. Andrew Garfield is nothing
like Garfield the cat... sort of the opposite actually; lean, lithe, wiry, a
gaunt gangly teenager Spidey in not-Spandex, a crouching spider chasing a hidden
mutant dragon through a fantasy framework of tunnels and skyscrapers and
bridges. In high school halls he's twitchy, quirky, unsure of himself. My first
thought about Andrew was "he's too pretty"... "he lacks the quirky, plain (but
appealing) quality of Toby Maguire". Then he started moving, talking, slouching,
hiding in his hoodie, shifting his feet trying to make words come out of his
mouth when confronted by The Girl. 

Perfect. The post-bitten by genetically altered spider moment when he's
crashed on a subway seat and awakened by a joker who's balanced a cold bottle of
beer on his forehead... let's just say a drop of water wreaks havoc... through
which Peter keeps being wildly apologetic... while wreaking more havoc...
because he doesn't yet realize who he is.

Yes, we cover the ground of the robber, Uncle Ben's demise, and Peter
wrestling with his responsibilities. But it's done from a fresh viewpoint, and
while not brushed off, we don't dwell on a story point we already know. We also
have a nod to the wrestling scene in the first Spidey film, though this Spidey
doesn't take a detour through lucha libre land. There is a funny bit where
Spidey draws his inspiration for the mask from a lucha libre wrestling poster. I
wonder how many of them were inspired by Spiderman? Certainly the variety of
winter Olympics spandexes containing spiderweb designs were inspired by
Spidey.

Which leads us to the scene in the film where Peter Parker is perusing the
web (yes, the web) searching for costuming... "Spandex... spandex... it's all
spandex!" I guess teen boys aren't too keen on spandex. What he ultimately comes
up with is the latest in a long line of superhero costuming: a sort of highly
textured stretchy Not-Spandex that looks like it might actually survive an
encounter with the Villain From Hell, and still shows off those muscles. The
original point of the Spandex Superhero, as I heard it, was that drawing anatomy
is easier than drawing the endless array of wrinkles in clothing. It also shows
off your superheroe's superness. Hence everyone in comics looking like they are
dressed for snorkelling in the Bahamas. (The diveskin is a full suit of spandex
which is very useful for snorkellers and kayakers who do not want to keep
applying sunscreen to wet skin every five minutes. I do not look as cool as
Spidey in mine).

The films necessarily are different from the comics in their continuity... or
again, I say, what continuity? The films must speak to not only the comics-savy
but to the comics impaired who just want to see a great flick. (By the way, did
you know you couldn't use the word flick in comics? the L and the I are too
close together and might form another word.) A bit of diversion here is NYCP
Detective Captain George Stacy, involved in a fight with the Lizard of Doom in
this film, he actually dies in a fight with Doc Oc in the comics. And I kept
going, "where's Mary Jane?" Seems Gwen Stacy is an early Peter Parker
girlfriend. Seems the reason we don't hear more of her is because heroes can't
always save the day: In issue #121 (June 1973), the Green Goblin throws Gwen
Stacy from a tower of either theBrooklyn Bridge (as depicted in the art) or the
George Washington Bridge (as given in the text). She dies during Spider-Man's
rescue attempt; a note on the letters page of issue #125 states: "It saddens us
to say that the whiplash effect she underwent when Spidey's webbing stopped her
so suddenly was, in fact, what killed her." An interesting nod to reality,
after all those moments when Aunt May is hanging by her cane from a ledge
(Spiderman 2, the film), or Peter Parker falls from the top of a 20 story
building (same film)(it's OK, he bounced off several clotheslines and one car
roof).

In the history of the comic, Stan Lee and Steve Ditko get credit. It is also
noted that Spiderman owes his existence to an army of writers and artists. In
the end, he is quite different from a character in one writer's novel, or one
director's film. Because he is shaped by so many, he becomes an archetype, a
character we all recognize some part of in ourselves. Our most iconic heroes are
archetypes: Superman is the Golden Hero, the Skygod, the Cowboy in the White
Hat, the Knight on the White Horse... Batman is the Dark Hero, Bagheera the cat
who walks by himself, the one striding the fine line between light and shadow,
the Hero who is always one misstep away from becoming the Villain... Spiderman
is the Trickster Hero (there is actually an ancient trickster hero in Plains,
Southwestern and Western myth called Iktomi the Spiderman, his costuming,
though, runs to buckskins and racoon). The Trickster can be dark; see Batman's
nemesis Joker, or positive; in many Native American myths Raven is a Creator's
helper, see also: Zorro (the Fox) and Robin Hood (in Norse lands, the word for
raven sounds much like robin). Spidey wears a hoodie in this film... Spidey
Hood, Spidey in the hood, Spidey in da' Hood. 

About that ancient Spiderman: from 
http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/tales/inktomi/Ant.htm 
Iktomi comes to us from the Plains, Southwestern and Western Native American
groups. Iktomi has sider-like characteristics and features. From Lakota legend,
Iktomi is "firstborn son of Inyan, the Rock, who was originally named Ksa. He
was born full grown from an egg and was the size of an ordinary human. He has a
big round body like a spider, with slender arms and legs, and powerful hands and
feet. He dresses in clothes made of bucksin and racoon." As a trickster, Iktomi
occupies the audiences of the Santee Dakota and other Dakots groups, and the
Arapaho know the Spider trickster as Nihansan. The Spider figure has many roles,
and even changes gender in tales throughout different cultures. The Navajo have
Spider Man and Spider Woman, Holy People who taught humans how to weave. They
also established the four warnings of death. The Spider appears as creator to
the Pima and Sia Pueblo Indians, and as a heplful elderly woman to the Pueblo.
The White Mountain Apache know Black Spider Woman, and the Spider Man of Taos is
a well-known and respected good medicine man. In Zitkala-Sa's tale, Iktomi meets
Coyote in her retelling of a Sioux legend. The Spider character also encounters
Coyote in another tale from the Plateau tribe known as the Coeur d'Alene. In
this tale "Spider Women are again beneficial beings; they live in the sky and
help Coyote's son drop back to earth in a box."

Archetype.

From Wiki's page on Spidey: A 1965 Esquire poll of college campuses
found that college students ranked Spider-Man and fellow Marvel hero the Hulk
alongside Bob Dylan and Che Guevara as their favorite revolutionary icons. One
interviewee selected Spider-Man because he was "beset by woes, money problems,
and the question of existence. In short, he is one of us." 

This Spidey has the eternal Spiderman issues we can relate to. This film
gives us a fresh view of those issues, a different angle on the problems that
Toby Maguire so elegantly evoked. Andrew Garfield is a younger, geekier, even
more gymnastic, awkward, incredibly graceful Spidey. I can't wait for more.

Near the end, there is a moment in a classroom when a teacher says there is
only one plot in fiction: "who am I?"  This film explores that... amazingly.　



 Oh... and then there's SpiderDan. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Goodwin) On November 21,
1980, Dan Goodwin witnessed the MGMGrand fire in Paradise, Nevada United States,
including the inability of the Clark County Fire Department and the supporting
fire departments to rescue scores of hotel guests trapped inside. His ideas
for rescue rejected by the fire depts, he donned a Spidey suit and scaled some
buildings, just to prove a point. You can learn more by googling Dan Goodwin, or
checking this: http://www.skyscraperdefense.com/building_climbs.html


　


　


　


　

a musing by members of the Longship Company on the anachronistically Brave fantasy-Scotland world of Pixar
 
A posting on our Longship Company yahoo group about Pixar's latest computer
generated faerie tale "Brave" left these comments in its wake. Be warned; we are
manaical historians, horsemen, swordsmen, blacksmiths, cookers of medieval
feasts, weavers of chainmail, descendants of Scots and Vikings... oh yeah, and we
have a 40' Viking longship on which we've road tested all the theories of  sailing, rowing, and dodging Thor's hammer in existence.

 Forthwith, our discussion;

(Teanna) Noted, on second viewing of Pixar's "Brave", that once more
Hollywood thinks you can row and sail a Viking Longship at the same time. OK,
they're coming into dock and the sails are a tiny bit on the slackish side...
comments anyone? (otherwise, it was a terrific little movie... even with the
anachronistic castle and the Clydesdale from the future (the Clyde didn't exist
until approximately the American revolution, she should have been riding a
Highland Pony or an Eriskay). 

In "Beowulf" (the CG version) we also see a Viking ship arriving in the teeth of a gale with the crew rowing... and the sail up. This would definitely cause breakage and destruction; since you can't row as fast as you sail (nooo, not even Beowulf or Thor), you'd catch a very large "crab", the water would rip the oar out of your hands, breaking things along the way; the side of the ship, your arm, your neighbor's head...

(Capn' Atli); Well, you can in light winds; but it gets very messy as soon as
the breeze picks up! Of further note- did anybody notice the steerboards on the
port side? Christi nearly punched me when I pointed it out. Her attitude is:
"Just watch the movie!" ;-)

(Jim) I had a friend who used to go out on
the bay and simultaneously motor and sail. He would do this when there was no
wind -- thus, he would be the only boat on the bay with sails up. He would motor
in reverse. The result was taut sails and, he presumed, confusion on shore.

 (Roger) Might the horse have been a "destrier," a medieval warhorse? I don't
recall anyone in the story providing a breed name. 
Steerboards on the left is a major offense. 
Rowing with slack sails...not so much. Around here they occasionally have
smugglers' races which allow the use of sail and oars both. How you juggle them
depends on your level of experience. 
As for the Viking/Scots mix. My ancestors came from the Isle of Raasay. The
first clan chief on the island, Malcolm Garbh MacLeod, was the grandson of Olaf
the Black, a norseman.

 (Teanna) Noooooooooo that was most definitely a Clydesdale. A beautifullly
cartooned Clydesdale. A beautifully cartooned, animated and anachronistic
Clydesdale... but then some other stuff was also in that vague sort of early
pre-gunpowder faerie tale Pixar time period. Exactly how I (as a kid) pictured
the time between Bible Stories and the American Revolution: that vague place in
which existed King Arthur, Vikings (with horns, of course), Robin Hood, and the
Three Musketeers. Here's to a new generation of histoically cornfused kids. 
But probably they'll be so enchanted by  the story they'll look up the actual
history.I suspect Pixar used the  Clydesdale (like the Scottish highland
Cattle, the Scottish Deerhounds and  the black faced sheep) as recognizeably
Scottish things, without regard to precise period.

(Drey) Before Teanna jumps into this one: Naw, that ain't a destrier. Its
another flub on the part of the filmmaker. Warhorses were not draft horses: but
many people seem to think so anyway.
Still a pretty movie...

(Dave, cameraman, on anachronisms in film) I was hoping to get a lot of good
footage at the 149th anniversary reenactment for stories concerning the 150th
anniversary next year, but I kept having trouble with the camera's anachronism
filter. I'd get a beautifully accurate shot lined up, and just as I'd hit the
record button something or someone from 150 years in the future would wander
through....
Since the "war horse" is, for all intents and purposes, an extinct breed
(like the "Conestoga Horse" of Lancaster County), I can't fault Pixar for going
with the best availiable reference information; and yes, no particular breed was
mentioned.
Agreed, portboards were a major faux pas--at least til an
archeologist digs up a ship with da steering thingie on the wrong side...
Since this was "Fantasy Scotland"--and one damned good flick-- I'm no more
worried about the anachronisms and what we perceive as technical errors than I
was bothered by the horned helmets in "How to Train Your Dragon". What really
worries me is that Hollywood can't seem to make anything look beautiful
anymore without running it through a computer.

 (Teanna; on the steerboard on the port side); (headsmack) DUH! (and, I uh,
saw it twice...) 

"Steerboard" became "starboard"... it's the starboard side of the boat
because that's where the steerboard is! Pixar... you flubbed bigtime! (Dyslexic
Scots?)(or computer artists?. Call us next time you do a film with Viking
ships.

(Teanna) As noted even on the dreaded WIki, the modern draft horse is not the
medieval destrier, or any other heavy horse. the draft is an exaggeration of the
earlier heavy horses, bred for pulling. Somewhere I read the medieval "warhorse"
would look more like a Friesian... Freisian... Frie fri... fro... frum... those
medium sized black hairy footed horses. Reasonably fast, agile, strong, somewhat
heavy of bone, but not a modern drafter.

It's spelled Friesian. "The Friesian horse is unique, truly a breed to be
proud of. It developed from a very old breed which was inherent to all of
western Europe. It's the only horse native to Holland. Historically speaking,
the Friesian horse has been influenced by eastern bloodlines and has often been
threatened with extinction. Thanks to the single-mindedness and dauntless
dedication of true horse lovers, one can still appreciate the many facets of the
Friesian horse today."  http://www.fhana.com

(wiki) "The word destrier does not refer to a breed, but to a
type of horse: the finest and strongest warhorse. These horses were
usually stallions, bred and raised from foalhood specifically for the needs of
war. The destrier was also considered the most suited to the joust; coursers
seem to have been preferred for other forms warfare.They had powerful
hindquarters, able to easily coil and spring to stop, spin, turn or sprint
forward. They also had a short back and well-muscled loin, strong bone, and a
well-arched neck. From medieval art, the head of the destrier appears to have
had a straight or slightly convex profile, strong, wide jaw, and good width
between the eyes. The destrier was specifically for use in battle or tournament; for everyday
riding, a knight would use a palfrey, and his baggage would be carried on a
sumpter horse (or packhorse), or possibly in wagons."

(wiki) "There are many theories as to what type and size destriers attained, but they
apparently were not enormous draft types. Recent research undertaken at the Museum of London using literary, pictorial and archeological sources, suggests war horses (including destriers) averaged 14–15 hands, and were distinguished from a riding horse by their strength, musculature and training, rather than their size. This estimate is supported by an analysis of medieval horse armour located in the Royal Armouries, which indicates the equipment was originally worn by horses of 15 to 16 hands, about the size and build of a modern field hunter or ordinary riding horse."

Actually, the modern Lippizanner is very close to this description.