Perhaps a meditation on past and present, the grain of rounds leading to the stroke that splits them clean. Is tracing the knots and whorls like reading a fortune of how they come apart and how they cleave together?
Or perhaps a meditation on form and function, the swing of the maul both power and grace. You feel it, rising and falling like your breath in the cold, the slide of sinew and muscle under your coat, the wood warming already your skin.
Or a meditation on enough and plenty, on stocking and stoking the rack, on tending a house until a sense of home fills the air. The radiance of flame, different than the blow of a furnace, releases all the years of growth, like branches reaching skyward.
And how that means generations, your father’s swing and motion now your own, becoming our son’s as he carries an armload inside and helps me lay the fire. Which is all to say, a woodstove and its heat are simply beauty in the end, and love.
I initially wrote this poem as a Father’s Day gift for my husband, Rob, and he later had a version of it tattooed on his leg along with an image of the log cabin in which he grew up. Todd O’Hare of Rolling Tattoo in Laramie did the ink. His work is fabulous (and I would know – he’s done about ten tattoos for Rob and one for me, so I get to enjoy his art every day.) Check him out here: https://www.rollingtattoo.com/todd-ohare.
One of my favorite “people” is actually my horse, Scout. She is an eight-year-old buckskin, Quarter Horse mare. My dear friend, M., gave her to me as a gift when she was a yearling, right after my beloved gelding, Tucker, died. With lots of guidance from M., I started Scout myself, and I’ve done all of her training since. She is a gentle, generous horse, and she has never bucked and rarely spooks unless a duck flies out from under a bridge. (She is not a fan of birds in general.) We’ve done a fair amount of trail riding around Laramie, Riverton, and Lander, and in the winter, we are lucky to have access to an indoor arena at the barn where I board her. I’ve learned a lot over the last seven years with Scout, most certainly more than she has learned from me.
When you start and train a horse yourself, you see your own strengths and limitations mirrored back to you every time you handle them. As many a trainer will tell you, horses don’t lie. So, I am proud that Scout stands quietly while being saddled, takes the bit willingly, and is more likely to walk up to a flapping tarp to inspect it than she is to shy away from it. On the other hand, she grows anxious and tense when I ask for a lope in the arena.
She’s heavily “left” handed, meaning she prefers to pick up her left lead any time she lopes. When a horse lopes, their legs on one side will stretch farther forward than on the other, determining the “lead.” When you ride a circle, being on the “correct” lead means the inside front and back leg are the ones leading. If you’re riding down the road and decide to lope for a bit, it doesn’t really matter what lead the horse picks up, but if you’re riding in a circle, being on the wrong one makes the horse less balanced and the ride far rougher. In show competitions, riders are penalized if their horse is on the wrong lead. It is usually easier for a horse to pick up the inside lead, but they don’t always do so.
Scout likes to be on the left lead, even if I’m not riding her and she’s going to the right in the round pen. We’ve worked on this issue for a long time, and I’m afraid the result is that I get too heavy in my hands and overly strong with my legs when I ask her to lope — I pick up on my inside rein too much, cue her too hard with my outside leg, and if she picks up the wrong lead, I’m too fast to gather my reins and slow her down. The result is that she throws herself into a fast lope rather than picking up an easy one. She’s nervous, anticipating the tug at her mouth and the touch of my spur.
On the other hand, if I am patient, if I am gentle with my cues, if I give her time to settle into the lope and find her own cadence, she calms and softens. As we practice lead departures in this relaxed, easy manner, she begins to gain confidence, and we both build the muscle memory and trust needed to move forward into more advanced maneuvers.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this lesson from Scout as we enter the new year, with all of the associated pressures to set goals, be productive, and generally improve in all areas of our lives. The most obvious resolution for me is to double-down on my writing, especially after setting aside the revisions of my novel following my father’s death, during the holidays, and while I’m teaching a four-week winter break class at the University of Wyoming. But instead of setting ambitious deadlines and hard targets for word counts and hours spent at my desk, I’m trying to give myself the time and space to listen to characters and the story, to let the novel lead me into the rhythm it requires to move forward. So, perhaps this is my goal for 2024, to be softer and far more patient as I decide what patterns, habits, and aspirations I want to foster. Scout will let me know if I’m getting off track. After all, horses don’t lie.
