The Life and Times of the Plume

I sit deep in my saddle and relax my hips and legs and give the horse a completely loose rein and we look out together over the soft ridges and verdant valleys to the mountains in the distance and I tell the horse, “I don’t know how to be myself anymore.”

I wish he could offer me some wisdom. He’s a horse. He is exactly himself every moment of every day. He thinks simple things. He is afraid so he runs. He is relaxed so he curls up and rests in the sunshine. He gallops. He shakes the flies from his ears. He bucks. He nibbles and bites and rips his food from the ground and chews it thoroughly. He is busy being a horse. He has no time for anything else. He is who he is. He is free to be himself.

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The edges of the trail are festooned with billowing clumps of butter yellow lupin. The air is honeyed and viscous and humming with bees. I dismount and drop down on all fours, like an animal, to better see this universe of flowers on the forest floor. Stamens and pistils, pollens and fruits.

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Late in the afternoon the horse begins to snatch at tall grass as we move up the trail. He is unsuccessful at snacking, we move at a good clip. It is unlike him to attempt to eat while working. He’s hungry. We pull off into a small meadow, I slip the bit from his mouth and he drops his head and eats. Slowly at first, and then with vigor. I smile as I realize this is the horse version of popping into a gas station — fill the tank, check the oil, clean the windows. I sit down and listen to the horse chew. His teeth on grass are percussive and rhythmic. Ancient music.

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Down in the creek bottom the wind subsides. The path of water is dry, the snowmelt a distant memory. The drainage is filled with a vague longing until a spring pours forth from the ground and we ride alongside the merry trickle and it pools in small reservoirs until the spring becomes a narrow flowing stream flanked by wildflowers, willow, elderberry, nettles, huckleberry, salmonberry — thirsty things, they. The sound of moving water is refreshing after being blasted by the cosmos at the heights of the ridges. I look at the terrain as we ride and imagine where I would make my bed if I were a deer, where I would stand and eat if I were a moose, which branch I would employ as a hunting perch if I were an owl.

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My gaze zooms in and out. I look at the remains of winter on distant peaks, I look at flowers, I look up the bending trail, I look at the aspen leaves upside down and clattering in the wind like a school of fish in the sea. I tune my eyes to movement. I blink at the sun. I wonder if the horse sees what I see and finds it beautiful. Does he like it here? I look at the horse’s ears as they twist and turn and flicker in their sockets, hot with veins and sweating slightly at their base where bridle leather presses into crimson fur. Those ears are always working, sensing and parsing. The horse has stronger senses than I. I depend on the strength of his senses when we ride together. We become a herd of two — two animals, two hearts, two sets of eyes, one mind.