Now with the first part of this adventure still your mind, you can understand the reality of the of our situation, as this cow is hooking at this, what appears to be a small piece of white plastic, my dog comes around to a juniper, clearly annoyed at the straggler and gave her a hard nip in the heel.
This cow jerked her head up, takes off in a panic, brings this huge bellowing white, twenty foot sheet of constitution plastic, completely draped over her face and horns, blindly racing straight at me and Bob. I figure the wind was just right to make float and flutter some ten feet in the air
The cattle I was holding at the water tank sensed the coming apocalypse, throw their tails in the air and stampeded over a nearby ridge and into the brush. Even the dogs ran off and left me and Bob and the giant ghost to work it out.
I had a few different things going in my mind as time slowed way down. I sure set down in the saddle thinking if Bob blows up or out I was going to go with him, or stepping off and manageing the situation from the ground, all the time wondering how much either choice was going to hurt.
I could feel Bob’s muscles getting as tight as a banjo string, and hear the air rolling in his flared nostrils, looking at a ten foot ghost wildly gliding through the trees and brush bellering bloody murder.
One of the last thoughts going through my head was that nobody would really know how I died, or it they would even find my body, because in a second the wreckage would be scattered from hell to breakfast.
Now I’ll never know if it was because I was just sitting there on Bob’s back, deep in my own thoughts, waiting for the inevitable, and he got the notion that I wasn’t concerned, but without a thought or motivation from me, this big young colt started to back up.
He just naturally started to create his comfort zone, and he kept going back at a deliberate pace. His ears where perked and head was high, and still blowing air like a steamboat, but he put himself in a stead reverse, turning slowly in semi circle, always facing the ghost at hand, until she had passed on by at a safe distance.
This poor crazed creature crashed into a big cholla cactus which really got her on the fight, before she was able to get free of that sheet of cow eating plastic. With great relief she shook her head one more time in disgust and embarrassment, and trotted off in the direction of the rest of the herd.
I was astonished at the out come of impending doom and felt myself relax, and as I did, Bob began to step forward right toward that now limp and lifeless shell of ghost material. In about a minute he put his nose on it, push it around a bit and then looked off after the cattle now appearing way down ridge headed away from whatever had been going on up there. Kinda like a bunch of kids that had just broke someone’s living room window.
Some folks my say I was just lucky, (which i was) and others that I’m a hell of a horse trainer (which I am) But I can’t really explain the feeling of connection it creates, its just changes life as a whole, to know that someone’s got your back. In the plainold times we spent experiencing life together, something happened to us both. We started to care about and care for each other.
This big red sorrel horse is one of the most brave and confident horses I’ve ever swung my leg over. We’ve been in the thick of it a time or two with wild cattle and the like, but we always have come out with a job well done, and all the important pieces still attached.
If we get in a situation and he doesn’t like. I don’t force it cause he’s looking after me, and if he’s after something and I pull back, he knows we’ll still get it. I’m just looking for a better way.
He has also been a wonderful part of sharing the passion and joy of horsemanship with the next generation. There aren’t any spokes big enough to change the relationship anymore.
I’ve come away recognizing that there is a natural response to relationships, we are all created to care and be care for. It is in our spiritual DNA. It is unnatural to have contention with other living creatures. We were not created to fight, struggle, scratch our way through the greatest gift of relationship life and living.
I’ve observed that there is a big difference between what is normal and what is natural. Our human nature live in a shallow reality of repatriation that gives us a precipitation of normal, if it happens a lot it is the normal reality of life and we come up with ways to cope with it.
It was normal for Bob to blow up when he felt unsafe. It maybe normal for human beings to fight, struggle and scratch for what we need emotionally and physically, but it not natural. It is not created in us to live this way.
Bob naturally didn’t want to blow up when he was scared. He wanted to be relax and be confident, it just became a normal reaction. My normal reaction was to get made and a fight for our individual survival could have ruined any hope of creating a great partnership of experiences.
Perhaps the saddest thing of all this is that we are encouraged to except this existence as truth from the very instructions that should know better. When a horse can respond to the nature of comfort and security in another living being, why can’t we?
Maybe it’s just that we have never been told. I have bought this realization up in relationship to the christian faith. If the nature of God is love, then it is natural for God to love and be loveable. The is not struggle within God’s thoughts and feelings as whether to love or not, He can love with ease because His nature in love so it is natural for love to come from Him.
Therefore if He has breathed His life nature and character into our spiritual created humanity, it is natural for us to love and be loveable. Therefore it is easy to love and be loveable.
Yet there is great resistance to this revelation, because it is normal to believe that that we are by nature hateful, and we must fight against hate with the choice of love.
The cowboy philosopher in my came only say that we are looking at this horse from the wrong end. We will never appreciate the whole horse by simply looking under the tail.
We are loved, loveable and loving by nature. we don’t choose it, we naturally respond to the reality of creation.
Back Country Thoughts 