I know nothing about horses, but I do know something about wildflowers: They’re beautiful, enticing, intoxicating. Which is what Riley, the runaway horse, discovered after travelling four miles in search of a boyfriend. She opted for our patch of native forbs and grasses instead, fifty unfenced acres where she could run around and kick up her heels. Fifty acres blooming right now with black-eyed Susans, grey coneflowers, blue vervain, wild bergamot, slender mountain mint, butterfly milkweed, and cardinal flowers.
We’ve grown to expect that the white-tailed deer and Eastern cottontails will munch on our natives, but since the plants far outnumber the animals, the damage has been negligible. A thousand-pound horse was another matter. But she was such a joy to behold! She tossed her mane and galloped through the flowers, the sun gleaming on her flanks. I couldn’t take my eyes off of her– I was more focused, more “there” than I’ve been in ages. And I think she knew this: She let me pat her nose, and she drank from the bucket of water I brought her. And then she’d dash off into the flowers again.
It took two hours to locate her owners via a “lost animals” site on Facebook. It took the owners two more hours to decide they couldn’t catch her—she wasn’t broken yet, and the more they chased her, the faster she ran. They went home and brought back a male horse, hoping he would lure her into the trailer. Riley was interested in the male, but she was more interested in loping through the field, which had turned a fiery yellow by then. After a while, she began to nudge the male and then dash off into the flowers, nudge and dash, nudge, dash. Before they lost two horses, the owners re-trailered the male, left the door open, and drove slowly toward home. Riley joined them eventually, but on her own accord, at her own pace.
The runaway horse could have gone anywhere, but she came here. And she stayed here, even though there was nothing to hold her.
Except the flowers, right?
Do you know how to tell whether deer or rabbits are causing damage to your plants? Rabbits lop off stems at a forty-degree angle; deer lack upper front incisors, so they pull at the plants, leaving ragged edges or uprooting the whole plant.
M. H. Perry 
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