A few weeks ago I found myself in the dark of our bedroom, wildly awake, my head lifted from the pillow with the clear thought, “Someday, I’ll be 65.”  I don’t know why I suddenly woke up or why that was my waking thought or why I chose the number 65, but I found the realization shocking.  I live in a way that makes me unaware of my age.  I’ve lived for a long time now, 36 years.  With the exception of a mostly dead thyroid gland, my body is healthy, agile, sleek.  My legs keep hammering when I run those long, sweeping distances of mine.  I’m small but I can carry a lot of weight over a great distance, my successful elk hunt this year is proof of this.  I don’t look especially weathered though that will come the longer I live in the high desert and I hope to accept those lines with grace and gratitude.  I have no knee pain.  I have some arthritis in my hands when the weather turns bitterly cold but this is a legacy of silversmithing and I do what I can to protect those little, working bones of mine.  I’m in great shape.  The notion that my body is going to age and eventually betray me is unimaginable, yet I know it will.  It’s the way of life to survive small deaths.  And so we go.

Time passes.  Time has passed.  Time is passing.  It seems like only yesterday I was a little sun bleached blond girl in the caragana stand out in the pasture, playing with romantic looking rusted tin cans and glass bottles I found in the treeline, barn cats by my side and the horses in the distance munching grass — but that was thirty years ago.  In most ways, I’m still that little girl.  It’s funny how many things don’t change in this tornado of constant change.

Yesterday was my birthday and we hauled horses out to Bruneau Dunes to ride for the day.  It might be my favorite birthday I’ve ever had.  The sky was bluebird.  The sun was warm.  What little breeze there was created the perfect blend of weather that whips the cheeks red and chaps the lips.  I live for that kind of weather in Idaho.  The sand and the brush and the wind whittled waves lay in light echoes beneath eight hooves.  We found ourselves feeling homesick for New Mexico which is where we usually spend my birthday, down in the sand country where the scaled quail live.

Yesterday we felt we had found a little pocket of New Mexico here in Idaho and we rejoiced in it.  The dune towered over us, its shadow slowly reaching for evening.  I marveled at the sand polished stones laying like dollars on the ocean edge.  All the gold on gold pinned down by vast blue, the buff of the rabbit brush, Robert on his yellow horse and the white sands shifting and roiling in every direction.  What beauty to behold.  Such beauty was ours.  We rode the dunes alone and in perfect harmony.

We circled back to the truck and trailer and cooked up franks with kraut for late lunch.  The dogs begged, the horses slurped water, the coyotes sang, we laughed when the smoke stung our eyes.  Our drive home was merry, I felt so full of joy and contentment.  Once, I felt such deep envy for people on horses on trails.  It made me want to cry.  I wanted that life so terribly.  I saw those nice folks with their trailers, hauling their stock to beautiful places so they could explore and camp and hunt with their steeds.  Oh, my heart yearned to have that same thing in my life.  To have this horse of mine is the greatest gift.  To haul Resero beyond our usual haunts, to have him in hunting camp this past fall, to be able to take him wherever I go is not just a luxury, it is a magical luxury.  This I know.

When I didn’t think my birthday could be more beautiful, Robert gave me my final gift — a bow.  I have talked for two years about wanting to make the shift from rifle hunting to bow hunting and last night he launched me in the direction of fulfilling another dream of mine.  It’s a gorgeous bow.  He was too good to me.  Now I must learn and master a new skill.

 It’s a good thing I’m only 36.  I have so much to do.

Note:  The palomino in these photos is not our horse, he belongs to our neighbors who have become some of our best friends — we are so lucky to have them living across our hay field from us.  They are too kind to let Robert ride their horses.  Every day I whisper a little prayer of thanks for them.