Gus and me

The highlight of visiting my farming family in Alabama as a child was Gus. I thought Gus was the greatest thing in the world, a horse I could actually hang around with as much as I liked. And Gus never seemed to mind. I think my parents were hoping the horse thing would go away, but from the cradle I had the horse gene. Pretty cruel trick to play on my father who had his teeth kicked in by a plow mule as a child. Though I think my mother, who has a fondness for animals, was happy for the chance to expand her "fattening of all God's creatures" to the larger domesticated animals of this world.

I miss horses so much. Especially the scent of them. They carry all the scents of the field and forests in their manes. And there is no therapy like that of the rhythmic strokes of grooming a horse or the meditative picking out of stalls and scrubbing of feed buckets. There are days, when it is almost 100 degrees and there is so much humidity in the air you can barely breathe that I don't mind not having to go to the barn after a long day at work. But there are those mornings, when the mists are rising from the fields and the air is cool and crisp that I long to see that long white neck of Einstein in front of me and feel the strength of him in my hands as we trot and canter our way through the early morning hours building endurance for the next goal, the next dream, the next show. If only I had known at the time that that was the best part, right there alone with him in the rhythmic swish swishing of his four white legs striding boldly through the tall grass as we passed deer grazing in the fog.