Thirteen thousand years ago an ice dam melted, flooding the entire Missoula Valley with cold, icy water. All of what is Missoula today was once entirely underwater and Glacial Lake Missoula was created. The flood carved through the soil and rock and still to this day, if you stop and put your ear to the land, it will tell this story.
Aquatic creatures thrived, including monsters and mermaids, salmon, water gremlins, swordfish and sharks. There were also seahorses. They chased each other in the water in circles, playing ring-around-the-rosy, bickering and laughing as they swam. They can be quite feisty animals. They had a unique zest for life and a passion for fun. Most seahorses are smaller than a goldfish, some as big as a salmon. But the seahorses in Lake Missoula at that time were the size of real horses! And they came in all the colors of the rainbow. Some were striped, some spotted. One was named Starboy. Another was named Koko, Moonlight, Prince, Hardhat and Paint.
But all things in life change. And after some time, all the water in Missoula Lake dried up. When this happened, the seahorses' spirits sank into the ground, becoming deep roots of trees throughout the valley. They slept there dormant for thousands of years, buried within the soil. For a while, they only played games in their dreams.
Then one day, a very special man, a cabinet-maker named Chuck, started waking up in the middle of the night with wild dreams. He’d hear the galloping of hooves. By day, when he strolled among giant trees in the forest, he’d hear the neighing of horses. Chuck chopped down a tree and brought it back to his house. Whenever he couldn’t sleep, he walked under the moonlight to his workshop and began carving away the wood that didn’t belong. He was amazed to see the muscular form of a life sized horse emerge. He cut down more trees and kept carving horses, one by one. After awhile he had wooden horses piling up in his yard. They needed a home. He dreamed of a place where the children of Missoula could ride the horses. This was a big project though. He knew he couldn’t possibly do it by himself. This was a dream he had to share. So he gathered the people together and told them, If you will give the horses a home, and promise to never take them apart, I will build A Carousel for Missoula. We can build a carousel for Missoula together.
For years Chuck recruited other woodworkers to help him. Whispers of this dream spread throughout the area. Soon many people were wanting to help. But not everyone knew how to carve wood. So Chuck organized classes where he taught all kinds of people how to carve. There were smokejumpers and farmers, school kids and plumbers. Wielding chisels and mallets, hammers and knives, they sliced away splinters, swarms of wood clippings in a cloud of sawdust and glitter. Everyone, young and old, led by Chuck’s passion- and fueled by their shared dream, freed the seahorses by chiseling them into wood horses for the carousel.
This is all history. What you may not have heard is that on certain nights in the darkness, the horses actually ride off the carousel and fly through the night sky, over the river and rooftops and visit all the places they used to play when Missoula was a lake. Before dawn, they return to the carousel so they can bring joy to the children of Missoula. They freeze the moment the sun comes up, transforming, perfectly motionless, and become statues until the moonlight comes again.
So the next time you take a ride on the Carousel, think of Chuck and Lake Missoula and the seahorses. It may be a slight curl of their velvety mouth as you float up and down, round and round, watch the horses very closely. You might see one will look up towards the sky, dreaming of coral and clouds.