Life

I dream a lot and often wake to the experience of wondering if a dream is real.


I woke thinking I was in a dream as a horse ran wildly.   Hoof beats on the hard dirt and gravel road echoed off of the hillside. Crazy neighs I thought it were in my head.  It seemed it had to be a dream until I sat up in bed and realized my senses were in tact.


Escaped, running back and forth, reverberating hoof sounds and squealing in and out of range.  I could not ignore the spirit of this real live horse running itself ragged out on the road.


As my adrenaline pushed me out of bed to put on my boots I felt sure about going out to help this horse calm down.  I didn’t have a plan.  It was as if the spirit of the horse called me out there into the dark warm night in my boots with a rope in hand.  For some reason the fear that I used to feel as a kid on my own horse, who happened to be a bit wild, just wasn’t there.  It was “all systems go” to help this creature.


I set off down the road still hearing the disturbed calls.  Getting closer I could now hear the horses winded breath in between it’s calls.  And there on the hill stood the silhouetted beauty of this spirited creature.  I saw it, it saw me at the same time.  In the moment that we startled each other I put out my arm and the horse came running.  


It seemed so relieved to see me.   As I sensed it’s moist inhale in my hand, a flood of fear washed through my body.  It seemed that the hugeness of this animal devoured my courage.  It was as if the primal fear that I wanted to calm in it was transferred into me with it’s one breath in my palm.  


Any idea of capturing the horse and preventing its running wild had flushed out with the flood of fear.  I told the horse that I would find it’s owner and turned back to the house to phone.  


I did not paint this.

Just this last week, I ran into a friend of the owner of this horse.  He said they had to put it down.  “On Friday the thirteenth.”  


The owner was saddling up while the horse got out from under the saddle.  It ran off spooking from the saddle it was pulling behind itself.  The horse fell off the cliff and was physically hurt beyond saving.

I feel sad for the loss of this life.