a winter's night

Winter is cold and dark. Out here in the country, on cold, dark nights, I feel very far away from everything. Like a pioneer who has only her family and her horse the home she tries to make comfortable to survive.

I am beginning, now, to feel the effects of isolation that living in the country bring. Even when people visit -- my sister and our old friend came for coffee just yesterday afternoon. Once they're gone I feel impossibly far again. When I am hungry, there is nothing to do but make do with whatever scraps of food I can find. I am used to living in the centre of everything. If I ever was hungry or lonely, I could go anywhere to find company and good food. Now it's just the two of us (and the dog) making ramshackle dinners out of strange leftovers and putting on snowpants as a part of every day's outfit.

It's true: I wear snowpants every day. I just can't stand the stinging feeling of the cold through my jeans every morning, afternoon and evening while I go to feed the horses. Meanwhile my relatively short-coated dog ploughs headfirst through snowbanks with unbridled glee. My horse has icicles on his eyelashes. I am sure he remembers a time when he was brought into a warm barn to thaw out, be brushed, ridden in a warm arena, fed, dried and brushed again before being tucked into warm winter blankets and returned to his pen. Now he has only his shaggy winter coat to protect him. There is no warm place for him to go, here.

I wonder how I'll feel in the spring. When my wonderful world of aspen forests and wide fields opens up again to greenness and warmth. Will I feel differently?

Christmas gifts

There is a lot to do before Christmas.

Besides re-vamping my horse feed program and attempting for the first time to wean a foal from his mother's milk (is my life weird?), I am once again caught up in the insanity of making all of my Christmas gifts. This will be the third year.

This year, though, I've been away for much of the two months leading up to Christmas, so I've scaled back. If I didn't, I would go insane from the stress of frantically learning to be a better sewer, baker, candlestick-maker (literally). This year I've made sure to include at least one item that I hand-made, but have allowed myself to purchase meaningful objects to fill in the gaps.

Lately I've been missing the city. Probably for its convenience when running so many Christmas-related errands. But I also think about my neighbourhood, the familiar shops and restaurants. My friend's pub. Our group of friends. Drinking coffee in good coffeeshops, walking the dog to the store to pick up a few things. Our small house and its innate coziness.

But this morning as I walked from breakfast with my coworkers back to my house to get in my truck, the sun was lighting the treetops with the most beautiful golden, silver-edged light. The frost on the branches glowed and the stark outline of the forest softened into light. The moment was a gift.

I must learn to be content where I am. To stop constantly mining the past for better times. During the time that we lived in that little house, I thought constantly of the time before that. I miss the feeling of being swept up in the right now, a feeling I've only had three times in my life. Each of those times was when I was fully engrossed in a new community, when I was making new friends I knew would be part of my life for a long time, when I was growing and felt loved and felt important. I miss all of those times equally. And that's just the problem: what about this time?

I've been given a wonderful gift out here in the country. I will endeavour not to waste it.

winter weekend's eve

This morning brought a bright white fog. This winter is so tone-on-tone. White on white on white on grey. The inside of my farm truck frosts up. The farm dog's black fur was edged with white frost this morning when he joined me for our morning ritual of moving the horses out of the pens where they spend all night staying warm by eating hay.

It is cold out, but not too cold. Not impossible.

There are so many chores to do. Hay bales to be thrown down out of the loft into the back of my truck and distributed. An oat bin whose lid has blown off and has filled with snow. Beet pulp and molasses and new halters to be unloaded from the back of my car.

Today I received three wonderful pieces of mail. The first was a Christmas card and letter from dear friends who live in a house nestled into a hillside in southern Alberta. They are going about their daily life on their farm: caring for horses, collecting eggs from the coop. And then an envelope of two letters from a friend and past roommate who lives downtown. Her life is so different from theirs, but the common thread seems to be: we are all just trying to get our work done and be happy. And we've all got varying levels of success. But I worry about her, sometimes. The third envelope held gifts that same friend made me this spring. A small, handmade notebook and a handmade card that doubles as a coaster (I hadn't thought to use it as one, but she wrote, ps: you can also use this card as a coaster for your beer). I am so lucky to have such a friend. Her gentle skill with paper and fabric is such a gift.

Now I wonder what I will send to her. What handmade treasures I can find in my home out here in the wilderness to bring countryside to her downtown apartment.

Also, there's this: tonight my sisters and mom are coming to sleep over at my house. They are romanticized by my country dwelling. I am so happy to have them here. Their willingness to come assuages my fear that no one will ever visit me out here, that I will feel lonely and isolated, and so removed from the life I created in my busy city community.

I hold in my heart the kind of excitement kids feel on Christmas Eve. It's good to feel this way.

finishing projects and flying away

At one o'clock in the morning, I've just finished a major work project, and am squeaking it in just before deadline. I am always afraid to let these things go, always worried that they will not be good enough. Will it be good enough?

Now I have to pack for a work trip tomorrow morning, and I don't know what to bring. How casual will this conference be? In all of my years of being a professional, I have never felt comfortable with my chosen outfits for work. Always awkward, not-quite-right choices. Trying to make certain shirts seem fancier than they really are, wearing my one pair of dress pants three times a week, that sort of thing. Why do I never seem to have any nice clothes? Where are all of my cardigans?

When I next return home, I hope I will sleep again. I might just settle into my normal life. Go to work without any huge impending projects. Crochet Christmas gifts for my friends and family. Attend Christmas parties, drink mulled wine, and try to feel like a normal human being for a while.

ungratefulness

This morning I am heavy with exhaustion, disoriented with sadness.

No sleep last night. My head felt so heavy and full. Filled with lead. Insomnia is a plague that never leaves me. I can't remember what it feels like to feel rested.

And I received some upsetting news. I know I've been writing about horses lately; it's hard not to when they're right outside my window, and I interact with them every day. It has been enriching to get to know them, learn about their individual personalities, scratch their fuzzy foreheads and warm my cold hands on their warm breath.

We have one horse who is completely blind in one eye and slowly losing vision in the other. His bad eye has died and is shrinking back into the socket, seeping pus. I don't know how much pain he's in. It's hard to tell with him: he is just a doll. Even with his limited vision, he is never easily startled. He is quiet to work around, and often approaches me in his pen to be scratched. He has been here for as long as I can remember, carting kids around like a saint for at least a decade, probably more. I don't even think he's been off the property in all that time. The vet says that once his vision goes completely in the other eye, there is a great chance that he will panic, gallop terrified around his pen, running into fences and seriously hurting himself.

I want to call a vet to put him down. It's the most humane thing to do. I understand that animals are animals, and that all life has an end.

Instead of paying for a dignified end to his life of service, those in charge have decided instead to get some money for him by selling him at auction, where he will inevitably go for meat. He is old and blind -- no one with kind intentions is going to buy him. He'll get a per-pound price, and he will be loaded into a stock trailer with a dozen other horses and taken to slaughter. He will be terrified to the last second of his life. I cannot even bear to think of him there.

Last night I cried for half an hour, knowing that today is the day. This morning, I brought him an apple and stood for a long time in his snowy pen, hugging him. With my face buried in his mane and my fingers woven into his soft winter coat, I breathed in his scent, one so familiar. Horses smell like sweet hay, mostly, mixed with something else like smell of earth. He was ever patient, standing quietly while I clung to him. I thanked him for everything he's done for us, and told him I was sorry about how we were repaying him. Even though he doesn't understand me, I told him everything will be okay. He looked at me out of his good eye, breathed his sweet hay breath into my hair. Tears came to my eyes again.

Now I'm watching him out of my office window. I've left him in to free-feed off a big round bale all day. He goes this afternoon, and I don't know when his next chance to eat will be. I want him to at least be full and comfortable when he leaves.

I wish I wasn't here for this. That if it had to be done, it could have been done sometime when I was away. So that I wouldn't have to load him onto the trailer myself, be the one to send him away. The others think I am too sensitive. Tell me he is not a person; he's only a horse. I'm not a child -- I understand that he's not a human being. But he has a personality, he feels comfort and excitement and fear. He feels pain. He has the capacity to interact with people, to be sweet to kids who have hauled him around his whole life. He has the capacity to be afraid at the end of his life.

I wish I could be in charge of this decision. I would do everything so, so differently. Instead of ungratefully discarding him at some slaughterhouse, I would put him out of his pain in comfort here in his home, where he has spent most of his life and deserves a dignified end.

Afterwards, life will go on. I won't be upset forever. There are so many other horses. So much in my life to think about besides this one particular horse. But today I am sad, and so tired, and ill-equipped to deal with this one gruesome fact of death and money.

hinterland

Sometimes I forget what winter is like in the country. What fields of snow look like untouched by footprints and tire tracks, graders and gravel trucks. Just the delicate hoofprints of a careful deer. And even these marks will be covered by wind and fresh snow before the day is out.

The horses have grown their winter coats. This morning when I fed them, frost clung to their whiskers and eyelashes. I often worry about them, but then remember that they are built for this -- their coats are warm, they know where to stand to be out of the wind. The frost on their muzzles will disappear as the day wears on.

The land and sky today are white on white. The treeline at the end of the field looks silent and grey. Without it there would be nothing to distinguish snow from cloud. The barn looks especially red against this stark backdrop. There is a frosting on everything. Our dog is up to her chest in the yard.

In my office, I light candles for warmth. Coffee poured into cold mugs turns lukewarm. Snow on the floor by the door melts into puddles.

a lifetime's achievement.

Earlier this summer, I rode for days in the Rocky Mountains. We looked down at sunstreaked valleys and rode up into the grey mist of an alpine cloud. It was a wonderful experience to hold in my heart: the availability of so much nature, as far as my eye could see, and me in the middle of all of it, on horseback.

This morning, I galloped a horse named Mack full-out down a beach. His hooves splashed through the incoming tide at the edge of a crystal, turquoise sea. It was something my landlocked, prairie heart has always wanted. The whip of wind and sun and ocean spray on my face, closing my eyes for a few seconds to try to remain right in the middle of the moment.

I am so blessed to have experience both sides of this coin within just a few months.

And still, when we had dismounted our horses, given them those last pats and were driving in our campervan back up the road, I thought of riding my own horse, that animal who is one of my oldest, truest friends, down the sun-dappled lane out to the back pasture in our own home. It's something about knowing who I am. Knowing how to follow my desires and hopes, but being able to return to the place that I am meant to be in.