Those Zany Horses

You just never know with those guys. Last week I did a lot of picking in the lots. It's work I never mind doing. I liken it to cleaning cat boxes, only easier. For one thing, I don't have to bend over my fat pud to sift up the poop. For another, I don't have to chisel hardened clumps of pee free from poorly designed corners.

Still, it is work, so I can't avoid indulging in a small sense of satisfaction when I tip the last muck bucket into the dumpster. Yes, the paddocks look pristine, don't they, I say, praising myself smugly.

I suspect the horses agreed. Look at the formation poopwork they left for me to admire the next day; behold its fearful symmetry. I don't have to believe that they colluded, dupah to dupah, but I want to.

Backblogged

This is my favorite picture of Mr. Tabby Man. Tab-Tab, a sweet, shlubby guy, died a few years ago. He was kneading me when I took this photo, which explains his stoned expression, but I also look this way tonight because somehow I came down with bronchial pneumonia during the summer and just got it diagnosed today. I only knew energy was draining out of me faster than I could store it and I was getting too good at hacking up chunks of blondish spackle. Ah, well.

None of that was enough to prevent me from going on a two-and-a-half-hour trail ride with K on Sunday morning. It was chilly, and rain spat through the wind from time to time, but it was so good to ride. I left Saxony alone over the weekend, not wanting to involve her with a less-than-present me, and rode Gambler while K rode Red Death. The ride didn't do my chest any good, but it did wonders for my head, so I broke even.

There I was practicing my sitting trot on little Gambler, whose peg-legged, steppy Arab trot demands a deep, relaxed seat and flexing, opening hips. I found my way to the elusive moment when those abstract concepts converged into a simple physical harmonic and I stayed there, again and again. You have that moment where you say I actually get it, I really actually understand it because you feel it.

It's a lifelong, ever-sustaining pursuit, riding, and rare for being one that's more fun along the way than not. That's how I feel about it, and that's what I talk about with friends who've never had horses in their lives. Then I gloat when I become an enabler.

Which is exactly what is happening here. A dear friend relaxes on Gambler, riding on the buckle, both of them enjoying a lovely stretch after a session on the lunge line. This was only the third time she'd ridden Gambler, but what seemed to have begun as a minor case of the 24-hour horse bug may have flared into ... full-blown horse pneumonia. Presenting symptoms include, but are not limited to, unrepentant grin, reluctance to dismount, and sudden use of the word "lease." I recognize the moment when someone discovers their love of riding, their love of horses, and I never tire of sharing it. I know what beginners don't yet realize, how that sense of discovery never leaves us when horses are in our lives, and how it can help us even in those parts of our lives that have nothing to do with horses.

Which makes me think of K and what's going on between her and Scout. I still had Dar when Scout passed her post-surgery-and-recovery soundness exam. With Dar in training then, and Scout long ago cast in the role of beloved nemesis, I could only nod silently when Dr. B said, smiling, "Put her back into regular work."

Dar played out as he did and then the high season of my job drew me into its four-month maw. Scout idled happily in the pasture and uneasily in the back of my mind. Until the day K asked to ride her. That was some 15 rides ago, and now I know "K" stands for Kismet.

Riding with them on Sunday, watching their growing connection, I continued to think about how they are matched, about how the right fears can sometimes dovetail with precisely the right horse in the best way imaginable for the horse and the rider. That's happening here, and I'll write about it when I've understood it well enough to explain what I mean. For now, it'll stay in my backblog, along with Saxony, thoughts about dressage, questions about endurance, and new steps to regaining confidence.

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.

Higher Forces

I paid for Saxony on Sunday, making it official. There she stood, grazing quietly in the rain. I left with her grooming kit and a few other things her previous owner, M, passed on to me. M was teary-eyed, and I understood why. Big changes in her life prompted her to sell her beloved mare, nothing more. She's going on the road and you can't haul a horse trailer behind a semi truck to any real purpose. She was letting go of the horse of a lifetime and we both knew it. Even though there were many steps along the way to my buying Saxony, I'm sure it seemed shockingly sudden to her how quickly she'd sold her horse.

Honestly, I felt humbled and subdued in the face of my good fortune. Because I'd just flown back from Kansas City that morning after a cluttered, jam-packed couple of days on the road, I was tired, too. That helped dial down my excitement, but I would have lowered the volume further on myself if I'd had to so as to not celebrate my gain in the face of M's feelings of loss. I haven't even begun with this horse, but I already know some of what she is, so our transaction was more about M giving her up than me taking ownership of her.

I got in the Pathfinder with H.G. and left without visiting Saxony, peaceful in the belief that numberless days lay before us, but also aware how suddenly it happened that I bought her. Save for Nature itself, I don't perceive or believe in the presence of higher forces. Except there are surprises. If luck lies in acting without hesitation when opportunity presents itself, then I'm amazed I did it, startled I did it. That's never been my way in life, being someone who's lost too much to waiting. What moved me now?

Here She Is

Through the window of my apartment at the fair I hear all night the ceaseless rush of the interstate. It sounds like the ocean to me. The ocean makes me think of travel and travel makes me think of time. Slightly less than a year ago, I wrote my first entry in this journal. I was poised for change, and change I got, just not in any way I expected.

It my was deciding to let go of Scout that prompted me to reach for words back then. She was the horse I got after two decades' absence from the riding life. Right place, right time, little thought. I acted based on what I remembered of my long-ago horse times, not based on who I was then, all those years later. So, Scout was the horse I got.

Dar was the horse I wanted. I've written of my lust for him, my crazed infatuation with the hope of him. I chose not to keep him. Even so, it took the summer to reconcile myself to the loss I felt.

This is my new horse. She is the horse I need. I'm proud of myself to have realized it.

One led to the next and the next led to her. I settled deep into the saddle and understood.

I've named her Saxony. There's a touch of elegance behind her sweetness.

Thanks to my friend Kari for taking pictures I was oblivious to in the moment but am so grateful for now.

Things That Fall Out of the Sky

I put Dar into a place I could finally carry and keep him when I wrote about him on August 31st. That's also when I understood that I was ready to move on, eager to move on. The next day, this notice showed up in an email:

Lovely black Appendix Mare: 9 years old, 15.3hh, loads, clips, bathes, great on trails alone or with others, good on roadside riding, rides English or Western, loves to jump, dressage prospect but would need fine tuning in the ring, sound, sane, no vices, pet personality, up-to-date on shots, worming, farrier, negative Coggins 2010. Moving, must sell. Good home only.

I wasn't looking, not to say as much, anyway, but something in the advertisement moved me to call. Here she is going through a pre-purchase exam during yesterday's rainy morning.

A Kind of Freedom

The festival is over. We made our numbers amid wretched economic conditions and oppressive weather. Just three days after closing the park is nearly empty and the animals are reclaiming their places all over the site. Skunks come out to play after dark, chipmunks streak across the fairways all day long, and we keep a sharp lookout for unexpected arrivals because this is when people begin to dump unwanted pets at the foot of our long driveway.

Show seasons compress like a sponge clenched tight in a fist. With closing day, the grip relaxes and the sponge begins to open. Those of us who move our lives here for the summer look up, look around. Exhausted, we prepare to move on.

I felt that sense of compression strongly this year. It squeezed my decisions and reactions into odd, jerky moments, but often I was aware of little more than just the process of change happening within me. Sometimes I noticed my struggle over Dar. It felt like an event that was happening to me, but I had no time to really be present in it. It erupted from time to time, is all. But there was a process that culminated in my realizing there was no longer a real reason to look back. Somehow, I saw that Dar had moved from hope to memory; I was already looking somewhere else when I saw that I had left him behind. Looking at someone else.