2010-03-03T05:04:00.000-08:00

The Sun Father's Horse

An Ancient Navajo Myth

In the time of the beginning, when the earth was newly formed, the gods came down from the heavens and made love to mortal women. So it happened that the Sun Father himself had two earth boys, who were called Left-Handed Sun and Right-Handed Sun after their father, of whom they new nothing except that which came to them in dreams.

Right-Handed Sun was bold and moved like a warrior, and one day, riding on an eagle's back, he ascended to the House of the Sun. There, his father met him and the boy saw the Sun Father had five corrals and five horses, and each was a different color for the different times of day. Yet the horse that excited him the most was Nightway. This was the stallion that his father rode only after nightfall. The horse had a jet mane that was swept back on a long, sleek neck, and his fine coat was agleam with grains of mica.

"This is Nightway," Sun Father said.

"May I ride him, Father?"

"What you want, my son, is dangerous. You ask for a power beyond your strength and years, for Nightway may outrun a comet. He may leap the tail of a shooting star. And, when he comes to earth, he dances on the upper circle of the rainbow. Beware, my son, this horse is not meant for mortals, and I do not want to give you the gift of death. I am proved, therefore, a father by my father's fear."

His warning ended, but no caution was taken by the overeager son, who saw himself riding down to earth on his father's fabulous mount. And so into his eager hands Sun Father gravely gave over the reins of jet. Gently, then, Sun Father stroked Nightway's neck. "Take him back to earth with you," he whispered into the horse's ear. "Take him through the north and through the night until you come to the dawn-land, and there set him down softly, as you would a child."

Then Right-Handed Sun leaped onto Nightway's back, and the powerful horse thrust off into the starry abyss. The excited boy had no time to say good-bye to his father, for Nightway took the bridle made of forged meteors in his teeth, bit down, and pulled the helpless boy to the back of his thrusting head. The reins slipped out of Right-Handed Sun's hand, and as he listed to one side of the heavy-necked horse, he lost all control.

Now Nightway felt the full run of his freedom. His legs leaped wide to the rhythm of his hooves as they rang on the moonlit cobbles of the stars. In reckless abandon, the surging horse took the midnight sky; his smoke-plumed nostrils flared, and his tail flashed as he parted the star grass, his hooves of flint tearing up the velvet road of darkness. Far now from his father's house, the frantic boy tried to grasp the flapping, flinging jetted reins. If only I can seize them, he thought, then all might not be lost - but if I can't...

And the hooves danced sparks and the long mane drank the darkness and made a song as it flew. Far below, Right-Handed Sun saw the dawn-flushed land, and he grew pale, his knees knocking against the soaked plates of the massive runaway horse. His hair burned at his ears as he and the horse fell through the vapor-trailing night into the spreading rose-tinted dawn.

Now the jeweled stars splintered off, arcing and spinning, and night was indeed dying as they fell, the stars themselves expiring. The morning was coming on as fast as they were falling - the rosy dawn blotting the night-frozen stars - and below, the day reddened; the moon's crescent went pale; sky and earth were suffused in the strain of the wild blood-rose morning. And still they plummeted out of control.

The dawn was amply aglow, and the shadows of night were all but gone. Nightway cut through the peach-colored clouds, pawing, breaking free, still falling. Then Right-Handed Sun made one last try to take the reins, and reaching out, he managed to somehow catch one, then two. Holding both, he reined as hard as he could, not the little pull of a mortal but the goodly grip of a god.

And he felt as a result the double buck of the breaking horse. They went into a sidelong lurch that crashed horse and rider into the white-walled meadow of the cloudbank.

The great horse turned to the left, skidding against peaks and pinnacles, mounds and mountains, crags of cloud-mist; and then to the right, plowing through the peach-blown desert dawn, making a splendor of thunder as up came the massive sweat-runneled neck and down came the hammered skull into the shattering cloud plane. Everywhere the pink clover born of clouds spotted the sky in ragged shreds.

Nightway came plunging down, parting the graveled dawn as, finally, momentously, it churned upon the solid earth. His hooves drummed the molten morning, the dust rose up like fountains, and the ridden horse at last bowed to the unthrown rider.

Seeing them safely home, Sun Father smiled on high.

And thus was the horse given to The People.

2009-10-22T14:36:00.000-07:00

Some of my earliest childhood memories are of happily sitting at my grandparents home, cutting horse photos out of his Western Horsemans. These were used in a variety of ways. From making collages, to using as silhouettes while I taught myself to draw, to pasting to cardboard and cutting out for service as "paper dolls" with my delightful childhood imagination. Many trails we traveled. Many adventures we experienced. It was what turned into a lifetime in pursuit of "all things equine". And here is where I am going to document my learning of where my horses came from, how they arrived to be my companions, and why I love them so much. Thanks for joining my journey!

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