Wild Wild Horses

While on our annual beach trip to our own version of paradise, Emerald Isle, NC, Laeti (our former au pair whom I call my French daughter but who now lives in London and works like a dog but gets to meet famous British people with some regularity) and I decided to embark on a trip to Shackleford Banks. Shackleford  Banks is an uninhabited island just off the mainland across from Beaufort, North Carolina, which is one the oldest towns in the state. Descendants of Spanish horses brought over during the initial European arrivals to North Carolina live wild on the island, so it's even more worth the trip for me. The horses are pony-sized because the conditions and nutrition on the island, so they are often called Banker ponies, as Shackleford Banks, as well as other islands along the NC coast line, are all part of the Outer Banks. (For folks outside of NC, or for folks not from the coast, the area called "the Outer Banks"  by tourists is further north, and the area we visit is considered the southern Outer Banks.)
 

Skye and Laeti. Laeti knows a good thing when
she see it!

Laeti, my other French daughter Morgane (I'm so lucky; I have two!) and I took this trip several years ago, and trekked for what seemed like forever in 98 degree (F) heat and finally found a herd in the center of the island. This time Morgane was not with us (we missed her!), but my son George came with us since his twin brother Sam went fishing with his dad.

We took a ferry over from Beaufort, and ride was beautiful. When we last went across the sound there, Laeti, the boys and I had gone over to Cape Lookout, and we saw dolphins playing in the water beside the boat, sea turtle tracks from a nest on Shackleford and the ponies taking a dip off the beach. This time nothing of note happened, but it was just lovely all the same.

They let us off at the end of the island, and remembering our last trip, we headed around the sound side (side facing the mainland) which we now knew the ponies preferred. We started looking casually for shells as we walked and before we knew it, we had handfuls of our favorites. My favorite shell is Sinum perspectivum, whose common name is Baby's Ear. Take a look and you can see why.

My favorite shell.

For years I rarely found one, but this year I found over 50. George and Laeti found a lot for me and a lot of others as well.

Just as we started to put a little life in our step to go on a pony safari, Laeti spotted a dark horse about 500 yards away. Excitement! Yes, I see horses all the time, but seeing a wild one in nature is still a thrill. We headed in that direction and even after we lost sight of him or her, we knew we were on right track because . ..

Hoofprints in the sand! Thrilling.
My unpedicued foot, not so thrilling.

We're just like Aragorn in Lord of the Rings with our tracking skills, aren't we? We don't miss a thing! You would think having seen this, we would not be surprised to look up and see, literally right in front of us . . .

 A wild pony. Her name is Ariel, which is just another way that she is perfect.

Yet, somehow we were surprised, perhaps because we thought that the ponies would somehow give a toot that we were standing there and move away. Happily, they did not. We backed off a little to make sure they didn't feel threatened just in case they were just pretending that they couldn't care less.

Almost immediately two young women dressed in what looked like Steve Irwin outfits walked up. They were students from Princeton studying the horses for the summer, and needed to gather some of the ponies' poop for analysis. We asked them a couple of questions, but they weren't very forthcoming. Not so much because they had a secret mission, but it felt a little like "you wouldn't understand." This could have been Princeton attitude or perhaps just Yankee attitude. I was tempted to say "I've been coming here since before you were born, young lady!" But that sounded old and crotchety, so instead I mentioned how I had seen a sea turtle lay her eggs on Shackleford when I was my son's age. The one I told just nodded. I'd rather be my age and thrilled to see a wild pony than be her age and not thrilled by anything. Her job beats the Hell out of mine though. (I would in fact rather roam the beach searching for pony poop than be stuck in an office, but that's a long story for another day.)

Then as we were walking away, we spotted something else interesting.

In case you can't read it, it says "Edward Daniel Brown, Beloved Son." Obviously a gravestone or memorial of some type. Very curious. This was just a matter of feet from the water's edge, so it wasn't the wisest choice of gravesite, what with the constantly shifting sands and all. In any case, this is a testament to the fact that someone very much loved Edward Daniel Brown, and I saw the evidence of it. And now so have you. Mission accomplished.

From there, we trekked through the hot and sandy interior of the island hoping to catch sight of another herd. After a far amount of stoicism from Laeti and me and a far amount of complaining from George, we were rewarded.

Another herd. That's Beaufort in the distance.

George got tired of looking at horses pretty quickly. And yet he is related to me. Weird, huh? We continued on through the dunes separating us from the ocean, then arrived on the unspoiled beach to eat our lunch.

George on this unspoiled beach. He magically transformed into his ebullient self after
some Oreos and water. Amazing!

We then played around on the beach and looked for, and found, a bunch of shells. We then left too late to catch our ferry, requiring us to race in an undignified manner to get our trip back to the mainland. It would take more than that to spoil a day like that though.

To learn more about the ponies at Shackleford Banks, go to:

http://www.shacklefordhorses.org

We also have wild horses in the northern Outer Banks. To learn more about them, go to:

http://www.corollawildhorses.com