Horse + Boy.

My baby just turned fifteen years old... I am in shock. Where on earth did the time go? 


It seems just yesterday he was in third grade and had started riding lessons on a big ol' cowboy horse named Ice (he had pale blue eyes). On a late November day, Ice went down in the icy mud (ironic?) taking my son down with him. Ice was fine, my son broke his wrist. 

 A Harry Potter t-shirt, a pirate headscarf, fingerless gloves and a black velvet cape -
sort of Errol Flynn does Zorro.

Then we started homeschooling, and after the winter off from riding, my son got back on a horse. This time he rode a pretty and willful Welsh Pony at our barn named Matilda. The ground was a lot closer from her back. 
When it came to riding, my son's concern was getting hurt again. Matilda's only concern was getting back to the barn. Fortunately it wasn't long before Matilda got too short for my growing son.

The battle of wills is rather evident in this charming picture.

So, my son began riding our 14.2 hand mare, TigerLily. 
TigerLily is a sturdy paint with canon bones like tree trunks. She loves this boy, but that love didn't extend to a good work ethic. In riding lessons with TigerLily, he learned about clarity, respect and consistency. She learned what she could get away with, tolerating the work and loving the attention.


Not too long before TigerLily, too, got too short. My son is a "tall drink of water" for his age - he is six foot two inches tall so far, and his legs hang down so far on her sides that everyone at the barn jokes that he could click his heels together under the girth and and say "there's no place like home..."

TigerLily loves her boy...

Then one of our dear neighbors, who board a tall handsome 16 hand Arab gelding at the barn, kindly offered this horse as a lesson mount for my son. These two hit it off immediately. This willing horse comes like a happy dog friend at the sight of my son and the halter, and they seem to understand each other completely. It's a good thing our mare loves this gelding too, (they are contented pasture mates) or jealousy might rear its ugly head - you know mares! 

Two wonderful boys.

This fall, my son wants to try high school... I'll miss being able to simply "go up to the barn" on a whim with him - to ride, to explore the woods or just hang out with the horses. I hope that horses will always be a part of his life, somehow. I guess I did my part, making sure he had the chance to experience for himself the magic, the power, the beauty and the love of horses. 


(Oh, if only he can find a nice horse-girl to love out there, somewhere... )

Farewell to a Gentleman Mule.

Mule Gal and Mule Guy are neighbors, they are friends and they own the barn down the road where our mare is boarded. They are the sort of people who you call when your woods are on fire and they come immediately with tanks of water and shovels... and hugs.
I know because I did - and they did. 


And, as you can guess from their nicknames, they love their mules. 


They love horses, too. 
But as Mule Guy points out, you can ride a horse to the edge of a cliff and say "jump" and a well-trained horse will. Do the same with a mule and the mule will say "you first". He swears their legendary stubbornness is simply a sign of superior intelligence. 


Mule Gal is a reserved rider, a very sensitive, highly intelligent and intuitive woman who had a deep and rich relationship with her mule partner. She's no cowboy. He was no ranch horse. Trust was their theme, and they were a joy to see together. This mule had the demeanor of a gentleman, the patience of a saint, and the deep, dark eyes of an old, wise soul. 


And this mule loved his human. 


Mule Gal's mule was struck and killed by lightning last night during a furious storm. 


I witnessed this same storm, from my place just down the road. I captured several pictures of the storm's dramatic lightning. It's entirely possible that one of the pictures I took is the strike that took this gentle mule's life... 

Lightning is a frighteningly powerful force of nature.
A precious, beloved life - over in a flash. Literally.
But the heartache has just begun for Mule Gal.


Fortunately, friendship and healing are powerful forces, too. And Mule Gal has many good memories of her kind mule to help her smile through her tears.


Farewell to a Gentleman Mule. 
You will be sorely missed, but never forgotten.

Rising from the Ashes

Easter Sunday. The first Sunday after the first full moon after the Vernal Equinox... 
a day that is rich with symbolism, both ancient and modern. Easter, as we observe it, is a complicated and strained marriage of pre-historic pagan celebrations and Christian mysticism at its most deep and poignant. The common theme winding its way through all the stories, of course, is one of the spiraling cycles of death and resurrection, and the belief in the eternal nature of the soul. 


Fire is often associated with sacred and seasonal celebrations - a wild and barely contained force of nature as in the ancient bonfires, or a carefully controlled servant in ceremonies in the form of candles and fuming censors inside the hallowed walls of churches and temples. Fire is seen as a purifying agent, a powerful elemental agent of release, destruction and new growth. In some cultures, burning is a way to send prayers or spirits to the sacred realms. 


We witnessed the primeval power of fire firsthand this week on our twenty acre haven of woods and fields. It's been unseasonably warm and dry here, and that day there was a strong wind from the southeast, setting the stage for a potential disaster. 

Looking back, I recite a list of "things I am grateful for" like a mantra, to protect me from thinking about the list of haunting "what ifs":


We were home, we smelled and saw smoke as it was carried fast and furiously on the wild wind. 
Our horse lives down the road "a piece", so she was safe. 
It wasn't the dark of night. 
Or the dead of winter. 
Our neighbors came to investigate on atvs, with shovels and water. 
The volunteer firefighters came fast, worked fast and worked smart. 
The flames were put out before spreading to any homes, barns or pastures.
And there were no dead bodies, human or animal.


The fire spread alarmingly fast, but was contained and subdued in a matter of hours. The fire's path of charred trees and blackened ground originated in what we consider the 'heart' of our woods, a vortex marked by a huge flattened boulder that is a resting place during rambles, and the offering place for treasures found along those journeys - feathers and fragments of bird eggs, gnarled twigs or wildflower blossoms, delicate bones or fallen nests. 


The sense of violation is potent, the evidence of interlopers was clear - someone was burning something in an old bullet-pocked metal bowl on top of the heart-boulder. My intuition is that it was an accident, probably just kids. I can't even consider that the fire was intentionally set. I'd like to think that a lovesick teenager, sensing the inherent sacredness of this spot, came to burn love notes in the quiet embrace of the surrounding pine trees... 
admittedly, I am a hopeless romantic.


The next day dawned sooty grey, and got darker as the morning progressed, culminating in a lovely soaking rain. The burned woods, cleansed. In between outbursts of birdsong, you can almost hear new green shoots pushing their way up through the ashes. 


(Spring is bitter/sweet). 

Postscript:
It seems 'Spring is Ironic' in a cosmic sort of way as well... a tattered Mourning Cloak butterfly was the only sign of life I saw today, three days after the fire, as I walked the untouched margins of the woods. In fact, its presence was impossible to miss, as it buzzed me repeatedly and so closely that I could hear the rush of its beating wings.   

Spring is Bitter/Sweet

The moon of spring waxes full, and round-bellied mares, feeling the lengthening daylight hours and the pull of the tides, bring forth their foals.

But spring is bitter/sweet.

At a friend's barn, a mare gives birth to a beautiful, healthy foal, gives her the precious colostrum-laden first milk, and then the mare falls to the ground, dead. Meanwhile, just a few miles away at the barn of a friend of this friend, a mare loses its newborn foal. Humans intervene to try to bring this mare and the orphaned foal together. If all goes well, these strangers will help each other to move forward in a patchwork of loss and need, of longing and fulfillment.

Spring, if you buy into the perennial hype of retailers and marketeers, is an orgy of joy and newness, of all things green and growing. All for your purchasing pleasure. But spring has its own price. There must be a balance, and the shadow of spring is sacrifice and surrender. Mother Nature invented recycling.

But spring is bitter/sweet. 

The full moon of spring brings an abundance of roadkill and tree frog songs. I get a phone call. A dear friend's cancer has returned with a vengeance. Though spring's promise of renewal feels hollow, hope for a miracle could take root in the fertile, dark earth of this, the  bitter/sweet season... 

I want to go to see my horse and breathe in her sweet, warm living fragrance. 

I Have a Boot Thing...

The Vernal Equinox and the first day of Spring.... what a long journey it's been since the last time the daylight and night time hours stood in delicate balance. 

Spring means shedding, which horses do prodigiously - that's a lot of square footage of winter fur that has to go! Every year I forget and wear something warm and fleece-y to the barn, and every year I swear I won't make the same stupid mistake again. Fleece is never the same once horse hair has insinuated itself into that welcoming fuzzy surface. When it comes to all the mud and muck, I fare a bit better. Tall rubber boots are standard issue for March and April. I've always been good with boots. 

In fact, I sort of have a boot thing. 

It started when I was a kid. I was the only girl, and also the only one of three kids in our family who wanted to go "up north" to a family friend's cabin on summer weekends with my sweet 'Papa'. The same wonderful ritual preceded each "up north" season - a trip to the Holiday sporting goods department for boots. Back then there weren't a lot of boots to choose from, and nothing for girls. Which was fine by me. From the time I was allowed to dress myself, I fancied a uniform inspired by the Beats, even though Hippies were the next big thing. I wore black boys jeans (I was tall and rail-thin, and boy's pants were the only pants that fit me) and plain black long-sleeved turtleneck shirts. Johnny Cash had nothin' on me. Every year I would pick out the same black engineer boots, in a size bigger. I was smitten with their classic style, sturdy construction with the cool strap across the front and the even cooler silver buckles on the sides. I'd clomp across neighbor's yards and over their split-rail fences, pretending I was a horse. 

(Draft breed I'm thinking, in those big ol' boots...)

My elegant mom, a high heels, gloves and hat kind of dame, just didn't get it. Me being the only daughter, she had such high girly hopes for me. Her sister had been Mrs. Minnesota and ran a charm school. And then there was me with my boots. She refused to let me wear the beloved boots to school. As far as she was concerned, their only merit was that I could tuck my pants into the tops of them and outwit the wood ticks. 

Mom sent me to the local department store's annual 'Glamorama' teen fashion training camp when I was in sixth grade, in a vain attempt to glamor the tomboy right out of me. All that happened was that I still, to this day, merrily sport black engineer boots. The pair I've worn for the last twelve-plus years happens to be from Harley Davidson. I swear they will last forever. They are the most comfortable footwear I have ever worn, hands down. Or, feets down, I guess. I don't ride motorcycles anymore since my husband traded in the Electra Glide for a Hayabusa. I said "NOT A CHANCE IN HELL AM I GETTING ON THAT!" regarding this Japanese monster that can do 200 mph. 

But I do ride my horse, real easy like, in these great boots.

Meanwhile. engineer boots have actually come to be an acceptable footwear choice, worn by just about everyone, and without a tsk-tsk or a second glance from most mavens. And when the mud dries up at the barn, and I put away the rubber boots till next spring, the black engineer boots will be my first choice for footwear. Unless I'm in the mood for one of my many pairs of old cowboy boots. Or my english style field boots. Or...

Like I said, I have sort of a boot thing.

Spending time in the field with the horses is what I did today, an intoxicatingly warm sunny early spring day. I also brought TigerLily, my equine partner, into the barn for a good brushing and to visit with a friend's gelding.

Spring is definitely here in the north - within minutes they were nuzzling and nipping each other over the gate with heavy-lidded eyes, ear-splitting squeals and a few kicks for show.

Horse-love is tender and terrible, and mercifully short-lived. And, if TigerLily is representative of all Equines in these matters, horse-love is also cured by treats...

And so it begins.

Actually, it began before I can consciously remember. All I know is that as far back as I can remember, I wanted to be a horse.

As a child, this seemed a reasonable request. Perhaps, as some people grow up to be astronauts or movie stars, I would simply grow up to be a horse? The closest I could figure, as a kid, was that I would bide my time as an artist until then. It goes without saying that I'm still an artist. It's not, after all, such a bad second choice.

Now it must be said that there is a fundamental difference between 'wanting a horse' and 'wanting to be a horse'. The former is a common phenomena, particularly with girls of all ages. The latter is, if publicly announced, likely to land a girl in the looney bin. And yet the latter sentiment may go a long way in explaining why I struggle with riding: it doesn't quite make sense to me. I am, however, perfectly content to while away an entire afternoon, out in the field in the company of horses...