By Meriwether Hardie
We climb upwards, seeking thin air.
Our shod horses strike sparks against the granite mountain floor.
We pause to catch our breath.
Steam rises and the air is heavy with the scent of heated muscle,
leather, sage brush and musky earth.
If, as Kahil Gibran wrote,
‘work is love made visible’
then working with soil or animals is one of the deepest loves I know.
Every morning, we gather our herd and grain them,
doctor them, brush them, tack them,
and then they carry us throughout the day.
We traverse through lavender and Indian paintbrush.
We scramble over boulders encrusted with rust and daisy-yellow lichens.
We weave through aspens tucked into knotted clusters.
We cross old creek beds dotted with Douglas Fir pines.
We climb over rocky scree, where we drop our reins and let our horses pick their own
routes, as they always know best.
Cumulonimbus clouds begin to gather overhead.
From years of learned cowgirl wisdom, my friend looks up
at the darkening sky and shares,
‘Whatever comes will come….(and then after a long pause) or it won’t.’
We decide to stop and make our camp for the night,
it’s best to stay below tree line if a big storm is brewing.
We pull the pack saddles down from our horses backs and take out their bits,
some of them let out contented, deep sighs.
They turn their tails towards the oncoming wind,
and bow their heads to graze as the sun lowers.
The peace of the evening settles around all of us.
To move through a landscape at the pace of a hoof,
can be slow.
To depend on the light of the sun, the trust built with an animal, a route outlined on a paper map,
can be hard.
To only have access to what you carry, to need to fix things that break, to be stopped by weather, to see an animal hurt itself and depend upon you for doctoring, for you to lose your way and drop your reins, asking your horse to take over steering,
is humbling.
It is also powerful.
A reminder of union between human and animal,
between creature and earth.
A reminder that in the busyness of the world around us,
that balance is a relationship of give and take,
of dark and light,
of both leading and following.
That sunrise always comes after sunfall,
that hot coffee in the morning,
a soft horse nicker,
and dry socks at night,
are always a good thing.