tolackcolour: “A lovely horse is always an experience…. It is an emotional experience of the kind th
tolackcolour: “A lovely horse is always an experience…. It is an emotional experience of the kind that is spoiled by words.” -Beryl Markham(This is going to be kind of a long story, sorry in advance) I lost my first horse when I was 16. Her name was Cloud. We got her when I was 10 years old. I grew up on her, almost literally, and I was closer to her than I was to pretty much anyone or anything else. There’s no better teacher than a horse, especially one that doesn’t have a problem pointing out when you’re wrong, or when you’re being selfish, or just not being present. Cloud never had any trouble telling me when I was being a shit-head. She shaped me into the person I wanted to be, the kind of person that could deserve having a relationship with a horse like her. When she died I felt like all the lights went out in me. I didn’t know how to be me in the absence of her, because so much of my self had been tied with her. My identity had always felt twofold; Claudia and Cloud.I didn’t ride for a long time after she passed. Every time I tried to go down to the barn to see our other horses everything would remind me of her: her halters still hanging up in the tack room, her saddle collecting dust. So I avoided the barn. I loved all the horses that were still down there, but the absence of Cloud was too big. Gradually I returned to the horses, helping feed and do the daily horse chores, I would ride occasionally but it felt a little bit hollow. Like getting onto the back of a horse that wasn’t Cloud’s felt like visiting someone else’s house whereas her’s had been home. And then one day my dad came home and told my mom and I about a horse he had met named King. He was a 9 year old palomino gelding who had been diagnosed with Navicular disease, and his owner had decided they didn’t want the responsibility of him anymore. For some inexplicable reason I couldn’t stop thinking about him. My dad wanted to take him, but the deciding factor was my mother, who was typically very attached to the phrase, “We really don’t need any more horses, David.” And yet something about this horse had her as well because she said, “Ask if they will sell him to you.”And so we ended up with Osiris. I named him Osiris because I was taking an astronomy course at Pima college at the time and Osiris is a planet orbiting a Sun-star in the Pegasus constellation, and I thought the name had a nice sound to it. The day he was supposed to be coming home I went to pick up the mail at the post office and on the top of our pile of junk mail was a glossy black piece of paper with a golden winged horse on the front and the word Pegasus scrawled across the top. I opened it and realized it was an old vet appointment/bill from Cloud, who had been gone for over two years at that point. I took that as her stamp of approval.When I met Osiris I felt 10 years old. He looked at me with his big, kind, brave eyes and filled a void in me that I had gotten so accustomed to I didn’t notice it anymore until suddenly it was gone. I remember walking in the round pen with him, my parents watching from the rails and overhearing my mom say, “It’s so weird…I keep looking at him and seeing Cloud.” I remember climbing up onto his bare back for the first time and feeling an instant lump in my throat. I felt at home. (photos by Nina M. Baker, edit by me.) -- source link
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