The Life and Times of the Plume

We ride out beneath a filthy, wildfire sky.  He walks beneath me like a drunken sailor, buddy sour and unwilling to leave Resero without brattish behavior, without an attitude.  I calmly correct him, urge him forward, flick his shoulder with the tail of a rein and he walks straighter, falling into his fast, flat walk so the horizon bobs between his pricked ears.  We ride closer and closer to the setting sun, to a sky strewn with smoke-tarnished clouds, rising and falling our way up the drainage like water in reverse.  I feel guilty for taking this time to ride when there’s something, so many somethings, to play slave to at home.  We ride on.  I hunch in the saddle, my spine remembering its position at my studio bench where I’ve been flicking and feathering flame for days.  I’m unable to shift my hips with his gait, crippled by my craft, tortured by tensions.  I’m too tightly coiled.

At the top, it’s gold spilling in every direction, the breath of the Spirit falling soundlessly and gloriously all around.  Gold on sky on grass on cloud on my own skin and bright light, shaking and streaming in all directions.  I am molten, precious metal — poured out and flowing and curling with smoke as impurities burn out of me.  I take a breath.  I take another.  I feel my body expand and contract, busy with the simple act of consuming wind and sky…like a wildflower.  My shoulders drop.  My spine softens.  Finally.  I kiss the air and we run.  I crouch down and his mane whips my face.  We go that way, exhilarated, gasping, intoxicated by freedom, by each other.

We drift back down to earth and into a smooth, fast walk.  I drop the reins across his neck and set my palms to rest on my thighs.  He knows the way.  An owl hunts the edge of dusk.  Nighthawks do their gleaning, twisting and turning on their trajectories with sharp wings, slicing invisible things into smaller pieces.

Two coyotes move through the sage, deep in the distance where the land curls up again in a soft wave.  They stop to look over their shoulders at us.  He pricks an ear, his gait grows choppy, he looks back to the path and we smooth out together and cover ground.  Behind us the sunset flares, the sky grows red as a woman scorned. We turn down the canyon rim towards home.

One hundred yards down the road he spooks, long legs scrambling in every direction, eyes wide and wild, nostrils snorting air like a boiling kettle and a rattlesnake shoots off the path while shaking his snare drum at us.  I reach my free hand to grab the horn of my saddle and painfully jam it as directions are reversed beneath me.  My wrist yelps as it shifts into an awkward angle against the horn and my ring finger turns against itself.  We’re running uphill.  I sit deep, drop my heels in the stirrups and slow him.  Stop him.  I run a hand beneath his mane.  I let him breathe.  I whisper to him that it’s ok, I’m here, I’ve got him, I’ll take care of him, he’s safe.  I work through his shivering, white-eyed flight instinct and he settles beneath me.

We turn and make our way carefully down the trail again.  I make him stand.  Spooled up tightly beneath the sage the snake shakes, rattles and rolls.  His tail is thunder and there is lighting in his fangs.  I see his diamonds shining bright black in the shadows.  I hear him rambling like a sun-stroked prophet.  We move past, careful, slowly, we move past.  Two miles from home, I pull my phone from my saddle bag and call Robbie.  I tell him all the things I couldn’t tell him the day before because I was angry and frustrated and overwhelmed:

I love you.  It’s too much for me.  I don’t want to live this dream on my own, it’s our dream.  Your job is killing me.  We need to take our leap of faith.

I hear him echo all my words.  It’s going to be ok.  We say goodnight.

The moon comes up, filtering down through smoke and ash, shining dimly on my back as we ride the last mile home.  We spook once more as an irrigation sprinkler hisses at our passing.  I hear the metallic clank of an iron shoe pulling free and landing on gravel.  I sigh aloud.  He hops and limps beneath me, suddenly tender of foot in the quiet of the gloaming.  The farrier is already scheduled for Monday, that’s something.  In the distance, Resero whinnies, his voice is like a star in the night to guide us safely home.