Monday, 06 October 2008
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June 2007 • VOLUME 22 • © HORSES For LIFE™ Magazine Chapter One "My beautiful, my beautiful! That standest meekly by, With thy proudly-arched and glossy neck, And dark and fiery eye!" -- Caroline Sheridan Norton (1808-1877) It was a mission only a horse person would understand. Driving six hours in a car, all the way to Rockford, Illinois, when there were plenty of Morgans in Michigan, might have made no sense to some people. Indeed, I had “shopped” around Michigan, surveying countless equines, their soft muzzles, their sharp sweet horsy smell, their wispy manes and eyelashes. I looked at legs and feet, disposition and movement, all the while never finding the intangible Something which fueled my search. As I watched the cornfields rolling past, I pictured my first Morgan, Sharolyn, with her bittersweet coat and cresty neck, and her gentle, walnut eyes. I leaned back in my seat and remembered with gratitude and sadness this mare who had introduced me to Morgans, and horses in general. Thirty years I had waited. Thirty years of dreaming; of countless horse drawings, paintings; dreams of velvet skin stretching over bone and sinew and muscle; of riding like a prairie fire with the wind in my face. Despite my fantasies, though, I knew I was green, green, green. I needed a horse that could teach me everything. I’d decided right away on a Morgan, because I liked their reputation for versatility and I figured a Morgan would have the temperament to endure my beginner's mistakes. It was February 1994, and to my surprise, when I started looking, I saw a lot of horses that didn't look like Morgans to me. They were beautiful, but tall and rangy. Most of them were missing something. I wanted a horse like Figure, the original Morgan stallion who had started the breed back in the 1700s. Figure had been bay, and according to legend was short and sturdy. He’d belonged to a New England schoolmaster named Justin Morgan. The horse was ridiculed by many because of his size. But he could work all day hauling logs in the rocky terrain of Vermont lumber camps, then go into town at night and win races. He competed with thoroughbreds and all kinds of other horses that had been bred for speed, and he won every race he ever ran. He was reputed to be a powerful stallion with a gentle and kind disposition. His most distinctive characteristic, though, was his ability to reproduce his own traits. Every mare he was bred to went on to produce a foal that was a carbon copy of himself. I loved the story of Figure; loved the fact that the Morgan was the first breed of horse produced in America. During my search for a Figure of my own, I finally was referred to Kelly Batton. She was giving lessons at a barn in South Lyon, which her mother had sold to new owners. I didn’t realize it at the time, but Batton’s Farm was legendary in Michigan, and now a crumbling dynasty of old Morgan bloodlines. Kelly told me about a mare that was for sale, and invited me to come and start taking lessons there. That way, even if I didn't like the mare, I could learn to ride on Morgans. This seemed like a great idea! I was in the middle of my first lesson, bouncing along the rail on an old mare named Cinnamon, when someone led a black horse into the arena. "Nancy," Kelly said, "This is Sharolyn." The next few moments were like a dream.
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An Equestrian Legacy