The curly work horse moves methodically through sucking mud and rows of mature nut trees. Replicating a dance known through long generations, your spine sways with the movement of your animal’s hips. Pausing randomly to graze on patches of sweet clover, your ride ignores the insistence of your heels as often as not. You tell yourself that this is the nature of a vehicle without pedal, throttle linkage, or blindly obedient fuel injection. Despite your quick mind and opposable thumbs, you are a partner in this journey and you know that you can’t always set the pace.
When he decides to move, the beast chooses his own path through the orchard and down to the creekside, unaware of your elevation. Spectating and giving no direction, you feel yourself passing through a slow film projected frame by frame. Filbert branches dangling pale green catkins scratch your cheeks. Fat red-breasted robins light on beds of dead leaves as pale blue jaybirds squawk in the high arms of a split-trunk cottonwood. Down low in the brush, against a backing film of fog, newly pregnant buds on cherry limbs supplicate with clasped hands, praying hopefully for a swift warm spring to come.
As you perceive the clop of hooves coming up behind you, the serial moment passes and life’s scenery regains its swift cadence. Wishing to cling to the magic for an instant longer, you tighten the reins in your left hand, rise in the stirrups, and peer over a steep embankment. You watch cold creek water sliding across, and superficially describing, the slabs of bedrock which have borne it lightly since days before time. Another moment passes on. Halting his mule next to you, Straw Hat passes a thermos steaming with the scent of hot coffee and Irish cream. Nodding in appreciation, you take a sip out of courtesy, feel the good burn on your lips, and ask old Stormy to carry you home.
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