The Fall

In every good story there is a point of absolute failure, when things go from the worst possible situation into sheer chaos. I just did not realize that stories are based from reality.
I was no longer cooped up in a mental institution but that did not mean that I was healed or perfectly happy. If anything I regressed when I came out of UNI like a goldfish that has gone into shock after realizing that a little fish bowl can suddenly change and become a large tank. I was still very unhappy and my weight kept dropping. My mother drew the line, "until you reach 110 lbs." she said, "you cannot go horse back riding or even work with horses it's too dangerous." I screamed at her till my voice was harsh like gravel. She couldn't take it away from me, my one solitude since I had gotten home. Horses I could feel safe and normal around horses but now that refugee had been wrenched away from me.
  I became feral and a wanderer. Biking around down town Boise looking for a way to pass the time, something to take away the burning with drawls of want, the craving for Bishops, the mountain view, the sound of horse hooves cupping the gravel and dirt, even the bitter tang of fresh manure would have been better than this rabid circling of the town that did not hold much for me.
  I would go to the store Win co and look in the yellow pages for book stores around town, browsing from one to another listlessly and bored out of my mind. I started testing my memory for places I had been and a thought came to my mind, Gretchen's house. Technically she was renting the basement but,  it was still a home, I knew where she lived.
If I could not have horses I would get the next best thing, a woman who loved them as much as I did, maybe even more. I biked down to through the boulevard neighborhood's searching for familiar streets and houses, listening for the familiar deep throaty bwoof of Derek. I was very lucky to have biked past her house just as she was pulling up in her car. I jumped off my bike suddenly awkward, I had just barged in unannounced. "I brought you some flowers. . ." I said uncomfortably, and held out the white lilies I had picked up for her. Gretchen smiled at me putting me at easy, and invited me in.
She told me the lilies were beautiful and that they were one of her favorite flowers. I think she may had added something about them reminding her of her mother. We talked for a while, edging around the topic of horses.
My eyes took in her house, I loved it. It was a cozy collection of true western furniture and art. Stuffed animals were everywhere, beautiful carvings and works of Native Americans, feathers, clay pots, antlers of deer, thick woven carpets, old brass handled trunks, pictures of horses, comfortable chairs of cracked leather all covered in a fine layer of dust. It was a masterpiece of a home, as if Gretchen had opened up her soul and let the contense materialize and build itself into the room I saw before me.
We talked about her work for a while, she was a veterinarian tech. assistant so she always had interesting animal stories.
Suddenly she looked me in the eyes and asked why I was not coming up to the horse. I mumbled on about my mom and the fact I needed to gain weight, and how hard it was to be away from horses because they made me feel happier than any amount of Zoloft or any other type of antidepressants medication ever would, and at some point started crying. Gretchen sat silently while fat tears rolled down my face. After I had calmed down she explained how much she cared about me and how she had gone through a similar problems in the past. She had grappled with depression before, and she was familiar with eating disorders in the past she had been a model and had constantly watched her weight and what she ate to the point of obsession. Gretchen's emotions became obvious in her voice but, she was strong and held the tears back. Afterwards she said she was going to make us lunch, so we had thick peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with layers of crunchy peanut butter and thick globes of dark grape jelly topped off with a glass of milk and a banana on the side. We moved on to lighter topics of conversation and had a great time. I felt like I had a family member in Boise for the first time, outside of my family unit, Gretchen was now like a grandmother to me and a best friend.Gretchen told me I needed to eat meals like this all the time to put weight back on my frail frame, and to stop biking around so much, and to stay home get lazy and read books all day.  I stubbornly said I would go stir crazy if I stayed at home for that long. She then offered to call my mom and ask if just for today we could go up and just look at the horses. My heart leaped up my throat, so we called and asked but my mom was unrelenting. I could not go see the horses in my condition.
My spine broke right then, the world was just to heavy, and I was not going to cry in front of Gretchen again, I said a hurried goodbye choking on my words and rushed out the door and onto my bike, I speed away without ever stopping to look back.

A Name

Ringo Star needed a new name. He was a son of Navarre, and needed a name to match his heritage. Calling a Spanish colt a Beatle, a little bug that can bang on drums just did not fit. (Note: I am a Beatle's fan but their names can stay out of my horse world.) Gretchen and Risa had been debating about a new name for some time. I was at this point starting to care deeply for the little colt and wanted to take part in naming him. I volunteered to go onto the Internet and find names for Ring with Spanish origin. Gretchen and Risa happily agreed and I floated on air all the way home, I was going to have a key part to play in naming him. I got home and launched myself onto the computer to a site I was quiet familiar with seeing as I had gone to it to find good names for characters in my fantasy stories on several occasions. . . BabyNames.com. I went to the advanced search and looked for boy names of Spanish origin. I selected names the same way I select chocolate, the name of the sweet must sound decedent and taste good on the tongue. Every name I picked I said aloud to myself feeling the way it rolled across my tongue, I wanted the name to feel like a marble, smooth, rolling, and perfect.
Adelo    Castel  Diego  Mateo   and Zavier.
Amor    Cezar  Eracio  Rafeal
Angelito Cinco  Hildago Rey
Antonio  Daren  Lazaro  Tiburon

Personally I was hoping for Zavier which means New House. The meaning was not great but the name sounded prestigious like the name of a grand godly stallion. Gretchen and Risa however liked the name Mateo and it stuck, Mateo means gift of god which fits a young colt. He has not grown out of the name yet, literally. The last time I saw Mateo he had not grown an inch in height, and had not grown since the first day I met him.

Stepping Stone

  Even though I hardly considered Tylo the ghost, a horse I still felt compassion for her and her son Ringo. I had just come back from UNI, I knew what it was like to be shattered into pieces and try to shuffle them back together into something that resembled the person I once was. I understood Tylo's appearance, the hair loss from lack of food, since I had gone through the same thing, only I had starved myself. Tylo distrusted new people, especially the people like me who liked to come into her personal space, touch her brush her, prod around to see what was wrong. She hated prodding people, and I despised psychiatrists we had common dislikes.
  Finally I managed to gain  shaky ground with her, Tylo knew I was not going to hurt her or her colt, but she did not like by cuddling and fawning.  Little flakes of her past  slowly began to dislodge and fall around me like snow.Tylo could not be tied securely to anything, she was claustrophobic in a way, she needed to be able to move without walls or fences moving with her. A few years before she came to Bishops she had been tied to a fence post for a long period of time, eventually something spooked her and she tried to run away, she pulled against her lead rope and the fenced came lose from the ground and slammed into her front. She took off running around with an iron fence tripping her legs and ramming against her body. Under Gretchen's wise instructions I tied Tylo to twine so if she spooked and pulled the twine would snap and she would be free.
  I brushed that horse again and again since we did not know if she would tolerate water and did not want to traumatize her. The gray shroud of dirt she had slowly brushed out into the dull coat of a black bay. With an iron curry I began to work the patches of long hair she had on her rump and along her back. It was the end of summer and she still had pieces of her winter coat clinging to her. It was an obvious sign of malnutrition, (as if her skeletal built was not enough) her body did not have the strength to shed. Her tail posed a problem, it I brushed it to hard all the hair would fall out, but she had a massive knot in her tail that needed to be removed. I worked carefully, like an archaeologist excavating a new site, I worked around the edges of the knot and then dove in deeper. Portions of the rat's nest were simply to tangled and I had to cut out chunks of tail. By the end about 1/3 of her tail still remained. Her mane was also tough to brush, the dreadlocks needed to go so Tylo lost about 1/4 of her meager mane. This brushing time with Tylo was not entirely unpleasant, I began to see pieces of her that were unique, she had small threads of white on her rump and on the outskirts of her pure black tail, and a few strands of white in her mane. Her eyes resembled the eyes of an ancient Egyptian with a streak of carmel eye liner under each eye. Her nose was no single color, she had splashes of pink mixed with pools of white and black. For some reason it reminded me of a rock cover in lichen. Unlike most horses Tylo didn't mind having her face brushed. However, she hated having her hooves picked, every time I clicked for and ran my hand down her leg to lift her hoof, she would lean onto that leg. We would argue for several minutes on each hoof debating the merit in her keeping all four hooves planted on stable ground or having a rock lodged in her hoof. Regardless we began to make our way along the stepping stones of returning to being human, and horse.
  During these brushing sessions I began to interact with Ringo. It did not take long to discover that Ringo was a little imp who had double intentions behind everything he did. When I first began working with Tylo he would butt in wedging himself between me and his mother. He did this partially because he wanted to protect his frail mother and be her shining knight, and he wanted to be brushed and investigate the bristly creatures running up and down  his body. He was arrogant like his father, and bold almost to the point of being pushy but I adored him.

Bright Light at the End of the Tunnel

At this time in my memoirs of Twilight, the memories are more like nightmares, dark corrupt with no sign of hope on the horizon. I assure you the story will get better eventually. This post will be different from all the others published so far. It is not a memory of the past it is a small glimpse of Twilight today on the 30th of August.
  Today Twilight and Rosie (Margrith's horse.  Margrith and Rosie will be introduced in full in later posts) had a race around the square arena at their current home on Pleasant Valley (also to be discussed at a later date). It was like a game of tag, the tall long lazy mare stretching out into an easy gallop barely ahead of the short collected paint in a wild sprint.Most the time Rosie easily laps Twilight, but today they are not competing they are companions. They were in perfect sync with each other spinning  at the same moment and racing in a new direction making circles around each other in a perfect unison of pounding hooves. They race right next to each other. The moment of true friendship lasted only a moment before both horse's broke into thundering sprints in different directions stretching their muscles and cutting through the air, the unison broken into chaos once more as they avoid the two demons trying to give them a good workout.
 After they were done  I went over and cooed at Twilight for a while, stroking her neck, finding her newest set of battle scars from a skirmish in her pasture. I let my hand wander into her thick mane, nothing compared to the thin snarls of when I first met her and grab onto her neck, she lets me guide her with that loose hold on her neck till it is time for her to stretch her legs in a flowing canter once more. I would not have believed  that two years ago Twilight had been a broken life less horse, because all I see before me is a fiercely independent spirit and powerful horse. Love ya Wild Black Lassie!

First Impression

    I first met Twilight on a warm evening. The sun was slowly falling behind the mountain casting orange rays of light that stirred up particles of dust in the air. It was the hour of contrast, the blue and grey pallet of night had already drained any color from the barn and surrounding landscape of sage brush and cheat grass, yet the shards of orange light made it beautiful.
    The sight I saw in the first paddock, was not a sight of beauty. Hunkered against the far rail, heads bent against a non existent wind were a pair of horses. A mare and her foal. The foal was filthy, heavy patches of caked mud covered his body. His legs were long and spindly, like most foals but the body it supported was thin, his petite neck did not look like it had the capacity to hold his square head.
   The mare was not even a horse anymore she was a shadow of a horse. A husk, just a body with no soul. Her coat was filled with dust covering her with a grey tinge. The balding mane strewn along her neck was composed of brittle dread locks that could snap at the lightest touch. Her tail was a rats nest hunched in upon itself in a massive snarl. She was a ghost, even her brown eyes were dull, I had been hoping to have a movie moment. A instant of moving a side the curtain of mane and seeing an eye of fire burning bright, defiant, even with hate but, there was nothing not a single shred of personality.
   This was the first horse I had ever meet that I could not envision myself owning, and that should have set the warning alarms howling  at once.This one was different.