This beautiful, gentle-eyed beast is Shadow. Recently, he carried me up Seneca Rocks, a famous West Virginia mountain, and brought me down safely. But he wasn’t happy about it. Since I was a child I have loved horses, but it was a love based purely on literary and cinematic exposure. My favorite books were The Black Stallion series by Walter Farley. My favorite movies included Black Beauty, My Friend Flicka and National Velvet. It just so happened as an adult I found myself riding a water buffalo in Arkansas and an elephant in Thailand, but Shadow was to be my first horse.
By horse standards, he was a teenager, his owner said. And so it was with the recalcitrance of a teenager being forced to clean his room before supper that Shadow ferried me along the rock-strewn path up Seneca Rocks. I swear he wanted to ditch me a couple of time, but he was well-trained. Once back at the base of the mountain, we parted happily, he with a swish of his tail, and me with a much greater respect for horse attitude, not to mention the width of their barrel backs.
Words + Images 