Day 5 - The World Will Adjust
Before the sun rose, I was up prepping for the morning school commute, adding another chapter in my Big Girl Book of Life. Back in the saddle of my usual routine, in the darkness before the dawn, I dressed for lessons and eagerly waited for enough sunlight to get a visual on our 8 furry friends in their pasture. It’s a ritual I no doubt share with all horse lovers. If I can’t see them, I listen for their hoofbeats or Dan’s cribbing on the H brace of the fence corner. “Dan, it’s not good for your teeth,” I say into the darkness. I know he can hear me.
Dan is a magnificent 28 this year. I have had the pleasure of caring for him for the past 6 years and was quickly added to the list of humans whose lives he has irrevocably touched. His Life Book is getting pretty full and not all the chapters have been easy. Perhaps that is what gives him such depth, such character and resolve; the knowingness that the World Will Adjust.
His life story often unfolds in my sleep. Every now and again I wake up with thoughts like, ‘a horse might want a leader, but most of all he wants a friend’ or ‘horses will always choose fair and passive over dominant and negative.’ I save these thoughts in my notes under the title, “Dan’s Lessons” where I dream of a way to share them with the students.
Dan didn’t participate in camp lessons. I know the cold and wet weather can be hard on him. But while he was grazing in his well-earned pasture, he was still with us All in every moment. He was visited in the pasture, stretched instead of teaching lessons and given treats at the day’s end.
As my daily routine of lessons began today, the kids enjoyed one last lesson with Uncle Doug. They learned about Luffa harvesting, a “Feed me Seymore” plant that spawned its way from Little Shop of Horrors to our farm. Literally plants scream in fear when I walk by, but not this one - it has taken over our outdoor bathroom - apparently having also learned, ‘the world will adjust.’ Then it was time to say goodbyes at the roundpen, where I was teaching. Dan had still been sore, so my first lesson groomed him and then we had set him free into the pasture. He had stayed there, as a true alpha does, hanging by the fence where he could watch over the safety of his herd, 4-legged and 2.
In the background I could see the kids dressing up the cheeky pony Diamond in someone’s hat, a lovely gesture towards the beloved clown of the class, while others nestled into the endearing Penny in your Pocket. And as I watched from my lesson in the roundpen, I saw Dan watching from a distance in his pasture. Soon, it was time to go. The red spaceship was loading up to take the kids to the airport when they asked me, “Where’s Dan?” “At the trailhead,” I shouted from my lesson. And then, one by one, in their own way, their own time, their own groove, the kids made their way to Dan to give one last hug. As they walked away, perhaps too full of emotion to turn around, he watched them with bright eyes and perky ears, happy to be filling up another chapter of kid love in his Life Book. And I smiled because of him and for him.
Dan, the biggest Alpha you will ever meet in just a few 14 hands. Dan, the fairest and humblest leader I may ever know. Dan, who is never in a hurry, never apologizes for saying “no” and has volumes of conversations with me in a single glance. Dan the Man, Handsome Dan, Dapper Dan, Danny Boy.
A Hui Hou.
