Mateo and Twilight in the Snow

Here is the only other photo I have of Mateo, I took both photos on the same day.

It was snowing, ( in the picture this was a moment before the snow started to fall, the photo of Twilight was taken about three minutes after the picture of Mateo) and with the snow came that spectacular silence that makes one feel like they are the only person on the earth.

The flakes were thick and shapeless, and blew across the landscape in a chaotic swirl, which gave them a life of their own like fairies almost. This was the first snow Mateo and Twilight had experienced at Bishops. The clouds looked painted in the sky an unmoving canvas of grey with lines of black, the shadows caught between the clouds. The sage brush transformed from the grey ragged bush to a carefully trimmed and sculpted  art, with tiny delicate blue leaves arching away from a dark mahogany trunk. The only beings that moved were the horses. Adam carefully moving his charges, Elfie, Carita, Twilight, and Mateo into the shelter of the crocked open shed, which appeared more like the rib cage of some great beast now and forever gone from the earth. Broken branches that sparsely littered the ground down the mountain side were suddenly bleached bones, a remembrance to the sacred silence that came with snow as a blessing and a curse. It was beautiful but with the slightest change of the wind it could turn deadly. Even the horse stood completely still for a time watching the snow fall to the ground, stirring ancient instinct to find shelter and warmth. Snow is a spell to them they react without thought, they just feel. They feel the need for shelter feel the caress of snow catching in their manes and alighting on their backs. Instinct tells them that this softness that touches them with the lightness of a feather can quickly change to the harshness of a dagger freezing them and bleeding them dry of warmth. In this moment however the snow is calm and the horses stray only a few feet away from welcoming shelter to feel it and watch it change the landscape, cleanse it into a white land clean of all prints, smells, and marks that would have made it familiar. As far as the horses are concerned this land that they have grazed on, wandered on and raced upon is foreign now a new world that must be meticulously inspected inch by inch to become familiar once more. I of course feel nothing of this, I just see the potential, the beauty of the snow piling on the ground, a new slippery adventure that will make my noise run and turn my hands red, soak my jeans till they cling to me like my own skin.