Still And Pewter World

There is a horse that lives on the property behind ours.

I don't know the gender of this horse but I think it is a female.

She has no shelter.

She has no companionship.

The one acre of dirt ground that she lives on is her entire world and she lives in that world alone.

She is fed and watered but she is lonely and I can see that she is lonely and I feel badly for her.

I have seen her chewing absently on the wood fence on the far side of her dirt field and I have watched her literally walk in small circles for a long time.

She is lonely and bored and I feel badly for her..................

 

One day a couple of months ago I was walking the perimeter of our property with Kory.

This horse was standing silently in one corer of the field as she so often does, and on the spur of the moment I reached down and picked a couple of handfuls of brown grass that lay dormant along the edge of the fence.

Throwing the handfuls onto the ground on her side of the fence I continued on with my dog.

As I reached the house I turned back to look the way we had come, and the quiet and lonely horse was eating what Kory and I had left for her.

The next day we did the same thing.

And the next day.

And the next.

Now she waits for us every morning.

I don't know how Kory knows when it is 8am each morning but (as LC likes to joke) "her puppy pocket watch tells her it is 8" which means it is time to go outside.

Apparently a lonely horse has a pocket watch of her own.

The picture above was taken this morning.

It was freezing cold and we walked in the frozen mist.

Looking up I saw the beautiful face of this horse and we walked over to find some more grass for her because now she waits for it, expects it, hopes for it.

And I don't feel like I can let her down.......................

The pictures below were taken looking across the road from the front of the house.

It was absolutely freezing cold.

 The world was completely silent.

Instead of a brown world, we were living in a pewter world.

A world almost completely devoid of light and color....................

Eating the handfuls of dried grasses I could find along the icicle covered fence.................

After retreating gratefully back into the warmth of our home, LC and I drank coffee and caught up with emails while slowly waking up on a slow Sunday morning.

By 9:30 we got dressed, bundled up against the cold and did what we do most Sundays.

We went to the historic Irma Hotel in downtown Cody for brunch.

We have tried other restaurants.  Other buffets.  Other decors.

But the Irma Hotel dining room is so beautiful and historical, the food so good, the wait staff so friendly, and the price so reasonable, that we always seem to gravitate back to the Irma.

After unsatisfying meals at other places on a number of consecutive Sundays, we decided to just stop experimenting.

Stick with what works.

Don't fuck with the system.

We went to the Irma Hotel this morning and it was a great meal as always:

http://www.irmahotel.com/

A couple of hours later we had full bellies (our weekly splurge while losing weight), we had bought a little metal fishing boat and tossed it into the back of our truck, and we had turned off the Southfork Highway and turned onto Bartlett Lane headed for Buffalo Bill Reservoir.

It was freezing cold but the wind (for once) was not blowing wildly.

We were dressed for the weather, we needed to walk and puppy needed to run........................

Bare trees, mountains hidden in the fog, and a frozen lake.

We walked.

Kory ran.

Aside from the dwellers of distant ice fishing huts we had the entire frozen world to ourselves.

It was colder than it had been all winter, but on this day somehow the cold didn't seem to matter.

 The still and pewter world was beautiful....................

One of a handful of ice fishing huts we could see from our vantage point above the lake...................

Winter is the slow-down
Winter is the search for self
Winter gives the silence you need to listen
Winter goes gray so you can see your own colors......................Terri Guillemets