Monday, May 25, 2015

Why I Can't Stay Away: A Haphazard Narrative

Author's Note: Prepare for the length of this one, friends, for I've had a bit to think on. Also, you'll have to forgive me for starting mid-thought. Wonder not though, for I assure you —I spared not for brevity. 
~ ~ ~ 
That's the trouble with beautiful places; they're too difficult to leave. But then again, if they were easy to leave, I suppose there would be no longing to stay. So, maybe all is as it should be, just as it was tonight where I start my musing. 

After my "mouth surgery", which is an exaggerated way of saying the extraction of my wisdom teeth, I'd been pretty keen on lounging around the house for healing and the regaining of chewing abilities. Tonight, however, now four days past, I was in need of reprieve from my respite, and really, there was only one place I wanted to be, the inhabitants of which for the most part have four legs and a grass diet. Hardy Farms; I moved Levi there a year ago this June, just a few months after we first bought him. I'm sad to say my boy and I will be parting so soon and I know I said in a prior blog that parting doesn't make me sad. Well, allow me to singularly contradict myself. This parting of ways will ache softly for a while. That being said, Levi and I have had a good run together, a run made more beautiful by Hardy Farms. For that, I am grateful. 


Bonita, Levi's photogenic girlfriend. (She's a redhead).
 This particular evening held more beauty than I've ever seen out there in the last year. Perhaps it's because I haven't seen the sunset in four days due to post-surgical healing and such; perhaps it's because I sensed my approaching leave for the summer lying more directly in my foresight. Either way, save for the flies, it was a perfect night. To start, the sunset was definitely the heaviest I've ever witnessed.  I'm serious. Atop my horse rounding vast, white-fenced pastures kissed with pink and orange sun, wistful clouds drifting slowly to the East, geese choosing that moment to fly into the sunset in arrow formation, the blaze of the sunset offset by a cooling horizon, all whispered to me on the wind, you're leaving soon. 'Twas a bittersweet lullaby that lulled off the humid honeysuckle breeze; almost tantalizingly hanging intangible options in front of my gaze. Stay....the night tempted.
I cannot....I whispered back, breathing my resistance.

Go, said Levi. And it wasn't a go as in leave for good, like the silly notion I've periodically let slip into my vision of the future, but go as in "Yes, the sunset is nice, but hay is better and hay is that-a-way". That horse; he always knows what he wants. Given he lives moment by moment, but, still I envy his lack of indecision.

Levi tossed his head to tug at the reins—a slight suggestion— offering up his two cents. A moth fluttered around us, disappearing in the fields of white-haired dandelions under hoove. You're supposed to wish on those... and I did so thoughtfully, wishing for more nights like this one.

A young barn cat danced on the dirt road to my left as we rounded the last pasture, its tail twitching over curved back. There were many more cats living here now than when we first arrived. On this particular evening, every tenth foot traversed revealed a different set of paws, as if signaling the way around the pastures; they made rather adorable traffic guards, however little traffic there was tonight. As far as I'd seen, the only pair riding so close to sundown was reflected in a puddle Levi and I passed. Neither I nor the cats minded the solace.

I glanced up in my peripheral, per the suggestion of the twitching tail; the half-moon glanced back. On par with the pact well made at the dawn of this earth, the sun graciously bowed out of sharing the sky with its lunar counterpart, though they exchanged parting words a good while as they swapped look-outs with the clouds as their couriers. Their conversation a colorful show, a stream of silent words that passed through brilliant rays which simultaneously darkened and grew more saturated, greatly amused me from my seat on my horse, my wonderfully decorous horse.


Though I may digress, I dare point out his weakness in saying the approach of darkness frightens him. It's been in witnessing Levi's increasing anxiety that I've come to admire the power of darkness. To explain Levi's fear, in which he is unquestionably not alone, the oppressive nature of the unknown is modeled in the small and utterly exposed feeling it exacts on large beings...Examples of such beings existing in the form of animals that fear all, despite being bound in a metric ton of body weight with the ability to crush and kill by accident.

I return, however, to my musing. We ended our lap in a tight circle that allowed me to face the sunset before it dipped away into the tree line; for once, Levi didn't fight the one step backward. I appreciated the finality in his allowance. Call me dramatic. After that, I untacked him by my car and set the torn dressage saddle I'd been given from someone's garage in my trunk; this last year I'd treated it as my prize. God had provided all we needed and then some to enjoy our time together over the last year. Every gifted item brought a smile to my face. The horse world is a wonderful world and one I've been blessed to have been apart of.

After returning Levi to his pasture, I passed the owner of the farm checking on a mare in foal; she was expected to give birth anytime tonight. New life. I smiled.
Dazzlin', the mama-to-be.

I headed back to my car, sweeping the farm one last time. The wind moved, the horse tails moved to swat at flies, the clouds were on the move, and soon I would be too, and yet, everything was still. So still. That's one of a thousand reasons why I can't stay away. Somewhere, sometime, someone commanded the stillness of this world. All that was requested in exchange for that stillness was the acknowledgement of the omnipotence of the One Who Calmed The Seas.
"Be still and know that I am God". 
Psalms 46:10

I took a deep breath to take in the advice. I could do this.

For me, tonight's great sunset and peaceful, easy ride with my old trail horse symbolized the end of our run together. At least, that's how I see it for now. I can't tell what will happen for sure beyond today; I'm leaving him behind for the summer to mission in Montana, and that's that. You might be thinking, for lack of personal interest, he's just a horse. You're right. Though his well being is of great concern to me. And believe me, if he fit in a suit case, I'd check him in a heartbeat, PITA forgiving. But he doesn't, and when I return the first of August, who know's how much time I'll have for leisure, for college awaits me mid-August.
Perhaps I'll find a way to take him with me and board him in Berrien Springs. Perhaps I'll find him a new running partner with better shoes and more stamina closer to home. Perhaps, I just don't know.

Either way, if chance would have it that we never run again, and if by chance it were that tonight be one of the last memories of us constructed of only a picture-perfect evening and a short but thoroughly enjoyed ride with my old boy,  to me, I think it's safe to say it would be the finest of farewells.




Go in peace. The presence of the Lord be with you on your way. -Judges 18:6
                               

                             ~ ~ ~