A Spirit Horse For Traveling
My words today are gathered into a prose piece. This broadcast is a little longer than usual but I hope you find it satisfying.
I wrote this story some time ago when I was having a supremely challenging day. We’ve all had those days, the kind where we want to just stay in bed and pull the covers up instead of facing the tasks before us. But face them we must and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.
Although exhausting, often these days turn out to be among our most fortunate, the gift in them being unexpected treasure and a recognition of abilities and resources we never knew we had.
I wish for you triumphal days and the revelatory largesse they bring.
A Spirit Horse for Traveling
Even the best of gamblers make mistakes. My father, who had been one of the best, made a mistake when I was ten. He bet me that I could not make straight A's for a year. I took the wager although I have never been a gambling woman. It was the prize that seduced me, and the knowledge of a sure bet, the absolute certainty of winning.
The prize was a horse. If I won, I'd get the horse for which I’d been begging.
When I presented my father with my final report card, he accepted defeat gracefully. I think now that the bet was a cover for his pride. The venture was a ruse, a ploy to keep me occupied while he found a way to purchase a horse we couldn't afford. An honorable gambler, he paid up and Bonnie came to live with me.
My Bonnie was a two-year-old red-brown mare with a white star on her face. Part quarter horse and part cutting horse, she was perfect. I immediately loved her. She unhesitatingly reciprocated.
I was to have no saddle, only a bridle – some story about how my mother was afraid I'd get my foot caught in the stirrup and be killed like her father had been when she was two. I was to learn to ride well and eventually we would get a saddle. It is obvious to me now that we couldn't afford the tack but then I accepted the tale without a second thought, knowing nothing of the financial or other burdens my parents carried. I happily rode Bonnie bareback.
A rollicking wonder, she shared time with me and played. She tolerated my wildness and nurtured my imagination. Bonnie was never out of humor with me, not even when I attempted to jump on her back from the porch roof, just like Randolph Scott in the Saturday afternoon cowboy movies.
Fortunately, Bonnie did not let me do this. Each time I jumped, she neatly stepped to one side as I came crashing down. Then she nuzzled me, seemingly amused, and patiently waited for me to scramble on to her back from the ground. Off we'd go into the far back field and whatever story I devised for the day.
We'd race around that field, Bonnie flying full out and me leaning my whole body against her, my hands wrapped in her mane and my legs locked around her torso. Fearless, she gleefully turned corners with that nimble, calf-cutting, turn-on-a-dime maneuver of which she was mistress. I often fell off in spite of all my efforts to stay on. When I did, Bonnie stopped instantly and nudged encouragement. Then we'd go again until, tired of the game, we gave it over to roll in the high grass.
I spent long, happy hours brushing and combing Bonnie. When I finished her grooming, she would prance around her pen to show off, proud of her good looks and the attention.
I was equally grateful for the attention she gave me, the chance to ride and become a Lady or Knight of the realm, a sheriff or outlaw of the Old West. Serenaded by crickets, we sometimes camped out all night like cowboys on the range. Most often we played Indians, I a brave warrior princess and she an Indian pony bearing sacred signs and war marks I painted on her rump with white shoe polish.
When I was simply a lonely little girl confiding her heart's desires, Bonnie listened with a calm sincerity, a reassuring quiet. She knew my sorrows too, and comforted me with nuzzles and soft whinnies, her breath warm against my neck as she leaned against me, an eloquence of language surpassing spoken words.
For two years, Bonnie and I spent joyful days and nights together. Life was paradise. I had Bonnie and my grandmother, and my parents' financial and psychological pain had not grown unbearable for them.
The morning I thought I'd lost her, I was more than devastated. I searched everywhere. Finally, I discovered her tracks where she had gone over the back fence.
Bonnie looked chagrined and whinnied an apology, asking my understanding when I found her. I saw her plight. He was beautiful, a white blaze across his face like a lightning bolt and a coat so dark it fooled the eye into saying it was midnight black. He spoke to me too in a voice charged with ancient energy and the timeless demands of the blood. But the high rail fence between them was sturdy and the gate padlocked.
Bonnie came home without protest. Walking side by side, I felt a contradiction in her step and I knew that some things were stronger than our contented closeness. We would be drawn apart by imperatives over which neither of us had control. Bonnie would follow an ages-old summons while I would be swept into the undertow of grief that would define my family's identity.
A year later, I lost my Bonnie for good. My father announced we were moving into town to be closer to my parents' work. The long hours of commuting and their hard labor as mechanic and waitress along with the daily one mile walk from the bus stop for my mother and me had become too much. Bonnie was to be donated to a boy's ranch. I had not been consulted; I had no say in the decision.
More grief-stricken than I realized, I withstood the blow only because Bonnie had taught me that when I lost my grip and tumbles came my way that I could get up, remount, and ride again. She had also shown me that some day I would have to let go. In truth, I'd already begun. I'd started high school, a world far away from cricket pastures, starry nights, and softly shuffling hoof beat.
The man who came for Bonnie praised her excitedly, clearly surprised she was so beautiful and capable. Our goodbye was brief – a quick hug, a final nuzzle, an affectionate snicker, one last apple. Then she was loaded into the trailer and gone.
I like to believe my Bonnie lived happily at that boy's ranch, that she had good work, that she found her handsome stallion marked by lightning. In my mind's eye, I see her running with her foals beside her.
At times, – if I open my heart's memory – I can still feel Bonnie's warm, firm back against my body, the softness of her red-brown coat, the ripple and rhythm of her strong muscles. Even now, when I am without reserves but have to keep going, I sometimes ask her to carry me though the day. She never fails me.
It is said that a shaman who is blessed can find a song to call a spirit horse. To ride this horse in quest of Wisdom is to know the most intimate partner the soul can have. If ever I discover the courage required for such a journey, I have my song ready. It's an old Scots ballad, the name-song of the one horse I would trust for such arduous and perilous traveling:
"My Bonnie lies over the ocean,
My Bonnie lies over the sea,
My Bonnie lies over the ocean,
Oh, bring back my Bonnie to me . . . ."
©Lou Liberty
