Ridin', Reinin' and Writin'

I believe for every drop of rain that falls, a flower grows.
I believe that somewhere in the darkest night, a candle glows.

I committed to posting a blog every Monday, and I start thinking about what I will write a few days before that, but last week I could not put anything together. Not for lack of topics - Valentine’s Day, the Olympics - but I needed something else… Then, Saturday evening, the phone rang.

It was not good news. A friend of mine had just buried her mare – her companion, her confidante, her heart. We talked about her mare, about horses we had lost and about how we cope with losing one. We philosophized a little, looking for answers, I suppose, and comfort. Then we discussed the fantastic opening ceremonies for the 2010 Olympics. I think we even mentioned Valentine’s Day.

After I hung up, I searched for a connection between these three events, the significance of Valentine’s Day, the Olympics and the death of a special horse. Two words came to mind – “Believe” and “Love” from the first two events – and how those two words applied to the third.

We do not doubt our love for our horses but are horses capable of that emotion? Many will scoff at that idea, but I believe (there’s that word again) horses can love… and they do. They love other horses and they love people. The stable mate of my friend’s mare calls out for her companion; she waits by the barn door head down, eyes dim. She is in mourning. I remember another story of a beautiful young mare in acute pain with colic, that lifted her head one last time and whinnied for the girl she loved when she came to say goodbye. And so many stories of affection from my horses on a day-to-day basis.

So, to use a very old phrase, “I believe in love”, pure and simple. And not just a man/woman love, but the broader context. I believe my animals, especially my horses, love – each other and me, and I believe Olympic athletes love their sport more than they love the win.

It will be months before my friend can remember her mare without shedding tears, years before a month goes by with no thought of her friend, but she believes she is part of bigger picture now. She takes comfort in that and in remembering the love of a kind companion.

And I'm holding on when it gets rough
'Cause you can get through most anything
If you just believe.~ Suzie McNeil

Today is my brother’s birthday. I think about that February day and where he was born. I think about the circumstances of his birth . . . and I remember two grey mares.

My parents ranched in the Coteau Hills of Saskatchewan, isolated from the settlement by hundreds of acres of rolling grassland. Though a rough trail accessed the Diamond Dot Ranch in the spring, summer and fall (when it didn’t rain!), motorized travel was impossible in the winter. Then horses were the only way in or out. Most often Mom or Dad rode but if the family all went (a rare occasion), we traveled by horse drawn sleigh. The only horses I remember pulling that sleigh were The Grey Team.

Dad harnessed The Grey Team almost every day. They pulled the mower, rake, hayrack and stone boat; they hauled the hay to the stack; they hauled it from the stack to the cattle; they pulled a stone boat laden with manure, rocks or fence posts. And sometimes in the winter, they pulled the sleigh, a wooden box on runners.

Thus it was, in late January 1946, that Dad hooked The Grey Team to the sleigh to take his wife, eight and half months pregnant, and two-year-old daughter to a friend’s farm. The Grey Team pulled the sleigh over twelve miles of snow-covered, uninhabited hills to the farm at the edge of the settlement, where Mom and I stayed. Then Dad “sledded” home to care for the livestock. The friends would transport Mom to the hospital for the birth when that time came.

Since there were no telephones, Dad could have only guessed when he should return for his family. In any case, when my brother was two weeks old, Dad returned to pick up us all up and take us home . . . with the sleigh and The Grey Team of course. Bundled up in wool, we snuggled together under cowhides in the bottom of the sleigh as Dad faced the desolate distance once again.

The trip should have been uneventful, but several miles from the Diamond Dot, the weather changed. A sudden blizzard blew in. Snow driven by gale force winds pummeled sleigh and horses, obliterating the landscape and driving them off the trail. Blinded by the icy pellets, Dad fought to keep his bearings, but the storm won. He lifted the cowhide covering his family. “I don’t know where we are,” he told Mom. I can only imagine how he felt.

Lost in a Saskatchewan blizzard, he had only one choice—he must place the lives of his family in the capabilities of the dependable mares in the traces. “Giddap,” he said, as he loosened the lines to the mouths of The Grey Team. “Take us home.” And that’s exactly what they did. Skirting snow-leveled draws and deep buck brush that would have halted the sleigh, over hill after hill of endless white, bowing their heads to the driving, relentless blizzard, they delivered their family home to the little ranch house in the valley.

In the words of my mother, “Those were the days . . . when horses were more than gold.”