An Honest Horse

“Make me as big and open as the plains,
As honest as the horse between my knees”

From A Cowboy’s Prayer by Badger Clark

I rode an honest horse tonight.    

Starlight carried me for about 40 minutes on the trail, including the narrow path through the woods at the back of our property.  That was another first for her, and it included navigating some of the toughest terrain she has encountered.  It’s not hard by any experienced trail horse’s standards, but the stretches of muddy areas that are normally puddles in the path at the bottom of the hill, the sticks and limbs that had fallen across the path, the leaves on overhead branches that sometimes touched her head as we went by, and the blackberry bush-covered area that she wasn’t totally convinced was actually a trail, these were all new to her.

So was being harassed by deer flies on the trail, and having a rider continually reaching forward to smack them off her ears was also new (why do I bother buying fly spray?  I might as well shred up the money I spend on it, mix the shreds into a paste and spread that on her ears).

As she carefully stepped down the steep hill on the other side of the field, I let myself admire this steady little mare, who hasn’t said “no” to anything I have asked of her so far, in her young riding career.

Later, I watched her grazing with her herdmates in the pasture as the moon came up, huge and orange in the east, and I appreciated spending the evening with an honest horse.