Closing The Weave

I really did step back from my mare, and it's been a strange kind of hard work to do it. I wrote about needing time to let a bad horse year go and begin another one fresh. Then I imagined an encircling winter, the kind that brings to mind weathering it out on an 1800s prairie, living the punishing days by rote until the thaw. For me, there's renewal in that kind of waiting. What I imagined isn't quite how it went, though. There have been too many days of mildness and the weather has disoriented me in my own thinking. It's like it's summer and I've already lost the spring, squandered the spring. At least, I have those shimmers of guilt.

Then I found this amazing picture. It's not possible to say all that I see in it, all that I think about it. I can say it really stirred me up. How she clutches that horse to her, how she hunches protectively, the tension plain to see. I felt like that a couple of times last year. Her fierceness - I felt that. The sweet compliance of her mare even reminds me of my own.

Once I had a horse, Scout, who was attuned to every tension in my body. It wasn't a good thing for us as a team under saddle, but it was oddly validating, a kind of direct proof that things were going on in me, in my life. She could remind me of how bad I felt, how wound up I was with the churning of things. She reflected it and that brought us close together. I don't have that with Saxony; she's not that kind of horse. I have to bring myself down to be with her, drop out of my head, come closer to simplicity. It's really hard. She wants her rubs, her dawdles, her German muffins, our gazing eye to eye. She doesn't know that I'm a mind-rooted existentialist and she doesn't feed off my auto-cues of anxiety and doubt, either unwitting or overt. It means she can never become part of my drama unless I drag her there. I know that is a good thing, but I also know that's why it's taking me so long to come back to her. I am trying to discard things in my life I don't need or want anymore, trying to discard those things from myself.

My mare may be unbalanced, but she travels easier in herself right now than I, who can walk a straight line effortlessly but still struggle to get out of my own way.

The Best Breath of All

Lift-off is imminent. I've been prepping on the launch pad for two weeks. Tomorrow my life will be commanded entirely by the 10-day run-up to opening day of the event I work for. It's a ceaseless hurtling toward that moment, the home stretch still demanding and startling despite this being my 11th year doing it. I will work for 150 hours or more, frantically hacking off a bit of time here to spend another bit of time somewhere else. This is Hell week. Everything else becomes subordinate to it.

I went to the barn to see Saxony and Scout tonight knowing it would be my last chance. I had to hunt out the time, stalk it, isolate it, and then take it. I took S with me and we met K there. After picking our paddock, we each took a horse, speed-groomed, bridled, put on our helmets and then clambered on bareback.

Oh, that feeling of settling on your horse's back after days away, settling there along that impossibly strong, tensile spine. I can't believe the crap that melts away in me. Forty-five minutes idled past as we drifted up and down, around and through the long outdoor riding arena. We walked, letting gravity seduce our legs long, draping them against the horses' sides. Gambler, Saxony and Scout met each of us halfway; welcoming the easiness of it, they settled into well-strided, forward walks. They sighed and snorted contentedly. Together, we all walked and it was wonderful.

It was like I was buying time, in the best way, buying breath, energy and resolve. We were there for just two and a half hours, but I banked enough time for the next 150, all I need to carry me to opening day.

Backblogged, Gazing into the Middle Distance

I went to the barn last night feeling low and on the edge of being nuts. Some kind of sense prevailed, though, and I found myself outside in the quiet, hand grazing Saxony and Scout side by side with a good friend who's come to stay for the summer. What kind of a metronome is perfect? The metronome that is a horse. They steady my breathing and decelerate my thought process. Beholding them, I have to slow down.

And I did, I slowed down. It's hard to say how horribly wound up I got about Scout's bucking caper this Saturday past. When I'm in the run-up to the opening of the summer festival I work for, everything bottlenecks to the same forward-leaning, hurtling place. My perception turns funnel-like and peripheries begin to vanish even though there are people, places and things living there. I can miss important things.



My friend, K, has a very different view about Scout and the bucking, but I didn't take the time to see it in the moment. Rushing and reacting, I didn't even ask. It's hard to admit that.

I've wanted to write the story of what's been going on between Scout and K for a long while now, and boy, I really wish I'd made the time to do it. Now I have to gist and compress it to acknowledge K's perspective. In one year she's ridden more miles on Scout than I have in all the years I've owned her. She's done things with her that are unimaginable to me - road riding, solo riding, galloping, pushing her to deal with life as a trail horse. K just has a handle on how to cope with this hot, anxious, nosy, distractible mare.

My knowledge of Scout presumes my own failures with her; she's defined as the horse I can't manage. When it's your failure, it's easy to make excuses even if you think you're over it. The hyperstimulation of a new stable, two days spent indoors during inclement weather, inadvertent feeding of oats by the barn owner, running out of the Mare Magic sample we tried on her, all these things auditioned in my mind until I settled on a girth sore being the root of her bucking K off. I don't even know why it mattered to me. But K doesn't have my baggage; she just sees a horse to ride. A horse she loves something fierce, but, all the same, a horse she insists does not respect her, a horse she will have to have it out with in the end. I never went to that place with Scout; I didn't have it in me. I don't have it in me. When K told me that Scout bucked her off out of piss and vinegar and sheer disrespect, I was shocked and wanted to defend her. But why? This is the very horse that broke my confidence. Be surprised, why? Maybe because I wouldn't know what to do about it, seeing what K has seen. I think it tells me a lot that I never even saw that place with Scout, the place where respect must happen.

What is it that I want to say? I think K is right. She faces Scout in ways I never did, has ridden her deeper than I ever could. I should have seen it.

Whoosh . . . Crash

If I'd had time this week, I would have groomed both of my mares deeply, thoroughly and slowly, with ungloved hands. If I'd had time, I would have whiled away hours in Scout's paddock, being with her while she reconnoitered her new environment. Sometime, I would have cleaned and shined Saxony's bridle and saddle and run my fingers through her silly fat forelock.

If I'd had time, I would have spent more than 20 minutes in turnout with that new foal and her kindly first-time mom. I would have lingered in the squealy joy of seeing a newborn filly discover she can buck and run, I would have photographed her impossible attempts to mimic her mother at the water trough and hay feeder.

If I'd had time, I would not have felt the rash of passing seconds searing across my mind, my skin, irretrievable. Sometimes it really cuts me not to get to the horses when I need them. I know the days will come, but oh, did I need them now. All I could steal were the moments for this crabby bleating, which is only like looking at a picture of a picture of a picture.

No Rushing

Fail. I am backblogged and missing writing, but demands of the last few days have left me cramped for time. That's one thing, but then today, to top it off, I found myself rushing. Rushing.

Later I stood at the edge of the barn, watching the horses settle into their candy mounds of hay for the night, sighing and snorting into the mist, pleased to be outdoors in the unexpected warmth. High above, the moon beamed in white robes and there came the whistle of the train, my train, the summer train, all of it conspiring to make me feel winter has gone.  

This moment stopped me, but it was compressed into an essence that left me, like perfume, as soon as I moved, for the rushing.

Horses in Their World

Because I have to practice not rushing, I didn't head straight down into the barn for chores tonight. I stood outside first, surrounded by falling lake-effect snow. Just like Scout.

She was very curious about what I was doing, and kept close by, even though I wanted a distance picture.

She presented her muzzle, adorned with ice crystals.

 

And she took the time to tell Kee-pad to back off.

She has a way of looking at me that often seems to suggest an imperative. The imperative is treats. I broke up a whole two-pound bag of carrots, tossing them across the paddock in pieces, sending the snow ponies off in search of fresh treasure. It took time, and it gave me time.

Note to Self: Rushing

That there is a road ahead is certain. Beyond the bend, there's another bend, and beyond that the horizon, always beckoning. I only want not to rush toward it. I have to learn to stop rushing. Because I see the thing and before I know it, I've blown right by, left whiplashed looking back to grab what was there before it's gone. It's rushing that sees me chasing futures I cannot map while forgetting pasts that could have guided me.

Slow the fuck down.

Shuttered

The event I work for is readying itself for winter's sleep. Autumn overtakes the park. Amid the shortening days, our tall trees shed their leaves in drifts across the grounds. This is a moment I come to every October as one of the last people still living here. For me, it always feels like the end of the year, and that's how it's been since I began working for the company. My sense of time has been trained season to season, not those of nature, but of the show. So I walked the park tonight to see this past one go.

Across the glass-like south pond, the ship already wears its winter lashing, held fast and anchored to survive the storms of another blizzard season. The light falls quicker than I can walk. Every trace of the 175,000 people who came to visit has been erased; it's as if they never were.

Except for the impossible golden light glowing through my apartment windows. Up there, all 11 cats are snoozing in the space-heater warmth, some curled inside-out, others fat in piles on the bed.

Over it all hangs the harvest moon. This is how each year ends for me. This, and with horses. The horses I've had in the past six years have come to me at the end of a season. I bought Scout from the jousters at the end of the 2004 season. Dar, another reject jouster, came home with me at the end of the 2009 season. I bought Saxony in September. She had nothing to do with the festival, but that doesn't matter. It's something about coming to the end of the season, the year as I know it, that finds me reaching for horses. I took Scout and Dar, both project horses, through fleeting autumns and straight into winter. Winter is the time I find most natural for bonding with horses, and it seems I set it up that way.

It will be no different with Saxony. I haven't said much about her, and that's because being sick has kept me holding back, trying to rest, even as I champ at the bit. She is a whole new story, one to begin at the beginning, and though she's mine, I don't feel I've begun with her yet, not at all. My tack is there, it fits, and I've been on her a couple of times, but it's not quite real. She waits.

White Horse on the Hill

Watching the UK Telegraph's live video of the preparations to rescue the 33 Chilean miners trapped deep in the earth for 69 days , I saw the camera pan across the scene, over the family camp, past heavy cranes and sea containers, slowly pulling focus to the immense structure erected over the half-mile-deep rescue shaft.

Families and press alike watch the TV monitors. Helicopters circle low in the approaching dusk; dignitaries disembark. In that arid, desert mountain place, the soil looks dull brown, relieved only by rough bits of scrub.

But there, high on a slope, beneath a Chilean flag, sat an officer astride a white horse. The Telegraph's camera rested on that image for a long moment. I'm glad it did.

Night Horses and a Club Date

Even as it lingered fresh in my senses while I drove away from the barn, I knew I would not be able to capture in words the simple purity of tonight. It was the kind of night that quietly marks the end of one season and beckons toward another, suggesting in its stillness riches in all to come.

It began with an unplanned club date. Scout's tail was so rigid with burrs, it bludgeoned her every time she lifted it, bluntly irritating her into forward motion when she only wanted to sigh and browse in the evening light. I can't solve a tail like that in less than 20 minutes, but I can't let it go, either. I put the brakes on my pace and shifted my awareness of time. Often I carry a sense of urgency even when nothing is pressing at me; it's a habit I forget to let go of.

I brought the horses in for P.M. feeding, then dropped hay in the lots under the glow of the south shed light. The air was so kind, so clean. I watched a jet cross high in the sky, its belly lights winking down from the darkness.

Scout stood sweetly, one ear tipped back to me, while I slimed on detangler and picked through the burrs, sliding them in mean little clumps down the length of her tail and off the end. I talked to her as I worked. It's been months since I've been alone at the barn, alone with the horses, alone with Scout. She's had her adventures this summer, just as I've had mine. I murmur to her about this and that. "Ahh huh huh huh," she replies, whickering low in her throat. I rest my head against her flank, listening to the whistle of the distant train, that train I hear so often at the barn, the one I love.

When the horses had been turned out for the night, I meant to leave, but something held me there. I went out into Lot 1 and leaned against the stone barn wall. The horses snuffled through their hay, moving easily, peacefully, between the flakes. In the stillness I tried to pick out and listen to each pair of jaws grinding; in the darkness I tried to see the shadowy bulk of each body. The light on the old shed glanced off a hip here, a shoulder there. I stood silent, fully present, captivated by the easiness of the horses at night, all of them content in their basic world, all of them completely unaware of nourishing me so much through their nearness and their calm. What a way to breathe.

The Summer Train

Tonight, I paced myself through a full set of chores. After scrubbing several feed buckets, I carried water up to Dar and Scout in their grass paddock. I don't think I expected (or even thought about, for that matter) that my two horses would like each other, but they do. They have their own agendas, I think, Dar to be boss, Scout to glom on to someone, but they've arrived at a contentment with each other. Together, they trotted up from the far corner to watch me pour the water into their trough, then crowded up to the fence for scratches.

I'm happy to see them side by side, not one here and the other there. Because he's in training, Dar has been uppermost in my mind, while Scout settled into the background.

I picked out the paddocks, dropped flakes of hay in the stalls, and brought the horses in for what is predicted to be a stormy night. Everybody was quiet after food time, ready to doze. Scout whickered at me as I swept the aisle. It was a summons that I recognized. I carried my grooming supplies into her stall. Forty-five minutes passed while I skidded the shedding block over her, sweeping after with a soft body brush. She rested her head heavily on my shoulder when I curried the spot where her neck meets her chest, scabbed over now from the brief storm of black gnats that visited the farm last week. I picked her feet and trimmed her bridle path before smoothing her all over with a bar towel. It was a deep, thorough grooming, the kind that long ago became a language for me and Scout. She was soft eyed and still. I stood with my arms around her neck and inhaled the smell of her. In the distance, I heard the long whistle of a freight train, a summer sound I love like the ocean, so deeply does it resonate with me.

All this reminded me of how it was with me and Scout. I could feel her knowing me, sense her sleepy devotion. I think I saw, in recognizing that, that I have changed, gone on from who I was when I perceived Scout almost always through a scrim of fear. I'd like to believe I've grown. If I have, then getting back on Scout could be different. That's the next step for us. I just have to know if I can ride her.

That Rarity: Purely Free Horse Day

There's no picture of today, but it was the kind of day that promotes lasting growth in horse people. I didn't have to work, and a planned visit from my brother was postponed. Among dozens of things I could have done -- laundry, cleaning, junk processing, etc. -- one called most loudly. Them. Those horses. I went to the barn at 1:30 and stayed until 6:00, peaceful in a flow of time unburdened by deadlines and demands.

Like I do, I stood leaning on the Pathfinder, watching the horses browsing in their paddocks. The wind lifted and riffled their manes. I thought I'd ride Gambler, but first I dropped hay and checked the paddock water troughs. Dar, curious child that he is, stood close by while I filled his trough. That tap releases a pitiable flow of water. I dipped all the wet hay and dead leaves out of the trough with my 50-cent pasta spoon. Dar was fascinated by that. I splashed water up his nose.

After prepping Gambler's tack and grabbing my grooming box, I went into Paddock 1, shared by Scout, the Keely monster and Gambler. I had my shedding block in one hand and my excellent, stiff, floor scrub brush in the other. Keely sauntered over. "Shed my hinder at this time," she said, simply by backing into my face. The wind was just right for shedding, strong enough to carry the clumps away, not strong enough to force them into my mouth. I worked on her for half an hour or so, because she was there and because I could.

Scout watched this with some interest, lifting her nose from the hay from time to time. Keely's lower lip sagged with pleasure until the wind caught it like a sail.

I turned to go to Scout, but she was right there behind me. "Shed my entire body at this time," she said. "Start with the crest of my neck." I complied. Shed. Shed, shed. Shed. Scout's lips were vibrating, her head sinking lower and lower.

K arrived at the barn. I was happy to see her, and we talked over the fence. Scout bumped me and lifted her head between us. "My belly? My belly." Shed, shed. Shed.

There was more to this lovely free horse day. I'll write about it soon.

5 of 5, Scout Goes Out

The end of her confinement, the end of her waiting. I don't think horses have a sense of time. Instead, now is always for them. Every day, she wanted something that she couldn't have. Every day, she waited. Now that's done, whatever it was to her, and forgotten as though it never happened.