Witchvox Article

Author: Devon, The Maid Of Epona
Posted: October 21st. 2007
Times Viewed: 1,821

The ways of Divinity are varied and confounding. Many times they send you signs and you have no idea what the sign means or what you are to do with them----until much later!

Epona tapped me on the shoulder not too long ago causing great confusion in my heart until I discovered what the true meaning of the sign was. It is, I think, an amusing story so please put up with me while I go into further details for this example.

Last fall my hubby and I attended a trail ride/drive sponsored by our local Haflinger Horse club through some of the more scenic parts of rural Pennsylvania near us. We chose to take my hubby�s small but mighty stallion, Alex, and his taller brother, my gelding, Tassletop.

Usually on these events, we split into two groups, one of riders who can go off road and cross country, through the woods, streams and hills and another group composed of carriages who must, of course, follow the roads. The turn out was small due to other conflicting events like 4-H shows, so there were maybe three carriages and four riders so we all ended up having to follow the carriages and take the roads.

My hubby and I were a little disappointed by this. Stuck behind a bunch of slow moving wagons! When were we going to be able to blow out our guys� carburetors and gallop? Not on this outing! Yippee Ki-Yi-Yeah! Ugh.

Unbeknownst to us, that was just the way Epona wanted it!

Halfway through the ride I had a fussy, moody woman�s moment and dropped back behind everybody. (Yes, I am sadly afflicted with such things!) About twenty minutes later my hubby noticed me missing and rode back to see what had happened. I had simply gotten tired and fell back.

Tassletop was none too thrilled with being separated from the herd and fussed back at me. But once he saw his brother appear around a bend in the road, all was well with the world again.

I rode on, cross at my hubby for not noticing his poor wife�s predicament sooner. As I have said before, I was being terrible right then! We came around the bend and Alex let loose with a loud neigh that pretty much said in horse talk, �I smell pretty woman!� I rounded the bend and saw what he meant.

The road made a large u before coming up to a one lane bridge. The curve of the road wrapped around a beautiful, old Pennsylvania farmhouse and an even larger, red, in-ground barn. The left side of the road bordered a large paddock, knee deep in grass complete with a wide stream winding through it. There was a brown and white paint mare and a brown mule looking at us. Then a horse got up from where it was napping and completely hidden in the long grass.

A BLUE horse!

This blue horse was followed by another newly awakened horse and another until there were four horses looking at us and one little foal at his mama�s side. All of the newly awakened horses were blue!

Now when I say the horses were of a blue color, I mean they were what horse people term as a blue roan. A blue roan is a color where the horse seems a weird shade of gray with darker toned legs, head and a black mane and tail. Some are darker and some are lighter.

Unlike white or �gray� horses, blue roans are born blue and stay that way until the day they die whereas gray horses are born solid black in color and gradually lighten until they are pure white at about ten years of age.

Blue roans really do look blue! They�re that strange shade of gray that could be actually blue or gray. They�re kind of the same shade as slate rock or well-aged asphalt.

We spoke briefly with owners of the farm who told us they were a kind of a mustang and then we had to catch up with the others.

I could not get these blue horses out of my head! I managed to convince my hubby to take a drive back to the farm the next day and find out more information. Meanwhile half of my brain was pestering me to just let it be.

We had a nice, long, pleasant conversation with the owners of the farm. It seemed the horses were their son�s hobby. He was away in college in North Dakota. While there, he had fallen in love with this type of mustang called a Nokota.

Nokotas are descendants of the herd that Chief Sitting Bull�s people raised and used. Every time their son came home, he brought some Nokotas home from the ranch, some to keep and some to sell.

We were able to go into the field with the horses and the herd came right up to us. One vastly pregnant mare was a little standoffish so we let her be and cooed over the other mares.

One of the more friendly mares was the one with the foal. She was a very dark, almost black, blue roan and her colt, Night Storm, was a shade lighter. The colt was extremely friendly and very trusting of humans. I was at first shocked that I was able to touch a baby mustang! And then tickled when I found that he loved the attention and the handling.

I could hug him without him getting upset, scratch him all over and even crinkle his ears. He just soaked it all up like a little, furry sponge. I was amazed and intrigued!

We left with a brochure on Nokotas. The brochure took up residence on our computer where I stare at it whenever I check e-mail.

Then the sensible side of my brain began to pester me. Why was I so interested in these �Nokota� horses? I already HAD my chosen breed. I didn�t have the money to invest in another breed, nor did we have the room for another horse.

I couldn�t train a baby; in fact I had no business training young horses let alone a barely touched mustang! I was a trail rider who belonged on old, plug, babysitter horses! We didn�t even have a round pen to work a young horse in. I wasn�t REALLY interested in buying one, was I?

Why did Epona lead me there?

I fussed and hemmed and hawed about the meaning of this. I had no idea what to do!

A month later I attended a Samhain celebration. Or I THOUGHT it was a Samhain celebration. What I actually ended up doing was crashing a Samhain Wiccan wedding! Whoopsie! Good thing I already had a covered dish with me!

I knew exactly three people at this wedding, the two head druids of a group from Baltimore we frequently socialize with and an acquaintance from massage school that I had lost track of named Chezhnian. Chezhnian is this red haired, firecracker of a woman who was distributing home brewed mead to the wedding guests and later ended up belly dancing around the fire as the drums played.

This school acquaintance and I ended up spending the whole wedding reconnecting. She had been raised with horses and was eagerly looking forward to getting involved with horses again. I invited her to our first Sacred Herd event at our place. She gladly accepted the invite.

We kept better track of each other in the following months. She ended up coming along for the ride when we went to the Harrisburg Draft Horse auction. We were NOT expecting to come home with another horse!

But we did!

Well, buying this horse presented us with some problems. We had bought a young gelding that was barely trained. He still needed a lot of work before he would make a good mount for my hubby.

Chezhnian offered to train our �Indy� for us. The money we paid her she would save to buy her first horse with. That way she could start putting the energy out there to attract a horse to her.

This worked out splendidly! Indy aka �the Brautwurst� really blossomed under Chezhnian�s tutelage. Even when he was being disciplined, he was thoroughly enjoying being the center of attention.

He went from nipping people to knowing that was not allowed. He realized the stirrups on a saddle were not really out to get him. He went from trying to kill the farrier, to only wiggling slightly.

He stopped being panic stricken when the clippers were taken to his face, to falling asleep on the cross ties while I buzzed his bridle path and prospector�s beard. He�s really come a long way in such a short time!

Then I offered to help Chezhnian find her next horse.

Now I�ve offered to help a lot of people find horses. They always seem to come to them on their own with no help from me. I asked her what kind of breed she was looking for.

Well, she didn�t care for chestnuts so I couldn�t convert her to Haflingers! (No problem! I don�t think two redheads would combine too well. Both are way too spirited! ) She didn�t care for drafts, or warmbloods. But she liked Arabians, she had a very soft spot for Morgans because that had been her first horse and she liked mustangs.

It was then that the light bulb went off in my head.

Mustangs eh??

What about a Nokota?

�A Nokota? What�s that?� was the answer.

So I told her. I told her all I knew about them. (Which wasn�t much!) I also told her that if she went to check out this farm, she really needed to check out the baby they had.

A week later she told me that she was going horse shopping that Saturday before she would come to our place to work �the Brautwurst� and have dinner with us. She told us that she was going to check out the Nokotas.

She walked in the door that night smiling like the cat that swallowed the canary!

�What did you do?� I asked, already suspecting.

�I bought him! I bought Night Storm!� was the answer.

Happy dance time!

It was then I remembered. I remembered my consternation over why I had become so fascinated with this strange breed of blue horses. I had to know about them because I was going to meet Chezhnian. I had to know so that I could tell her about them. I had to discover them so that she could buy Night Storm.

The Gods work in mysterious ways!

I guess Epona�s message to me was never bitch because you�re stuck behind a bunch of slow moving wagons! There was an indigo gem just waiting to be discovered. And we would have never seen it if we had gone cross-country. We would have never known that there were blue mustangs in Pennsylvania right down the road from us.

And Chezhnian would have never lost her heart to a blue, baby, Nokota horse, a horse that was bound to change her life forever.

Never question the message. Sometimes we are entrusted with a sign for a reason, either for ourselves or for somebody else.

Epona was trying to tell me to pay attention and listen. Magic was afoot!

I�m so glad I listened!

* Note* Night Storm has now been re-named N.S. Indigo.

ABOUT...

Devon, The Maid Of Epona

Location: New Park, Pennsylvania

Author's Profile: To learn more about Devon, The Maid Of Epona - Click HERE

Bio: Devon, the Maid of Epona is a solitary "Horse Witch" with one foot in the other out of the broom closet. Most of my
adult life has been spent in the carting away of vast quantities of "road apples". I practice Wicca in between removals and try to cater my religion around my beloved, blonde horses. Sometimes I even have time to ride!

Other Articles: Devon, The Maid Of Epona has posted 6 additional articles- View them?

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