It is amazing what horses get you to do. I am terrified of heights. I always have been since I was a kid and I heard the story of a woman jumping off the Coronado Bridge with her baby. I had so many dreams about that story, and it created my fear.
Horses. Taking care of horses requires you to get over those fears….at least in the moment. I stacked a bunch of hay recently by myself. I don’t have a hay barn, so I get to cover it all with a hay tarp. To do that, since the hay stands over six feet tall, I have to climb up a ladder to get on top of the hay and drag the tarp across it. It doesn’t help that I tend to be a little klutzy as my mom always loved to remind me of.
I look over to the horses and exclaim, “The things I do for you guys!”
I place the ladder up against the hay, take a deep breath with an excruciatingly long exhale, and I take my first step up. I take the next step, and then the next until it is finally time to depart the ladder for the hay. Instead of stepping on to the hay like a pro, I climb on like a little baby. I sit on the hay realizing I did it again.
This is when I see my cat Squirm easily climbing the ladder. Once at the top he does a Baryshnikov leap on to the hay. He rubs against me, and then he runs down the ladder as if it is nothing.
“Show off,” I say.
After I get the tarp on, climb down (The first step is the worse, because I never know if I will topple over.), tie it down, and then I load up a bunch of tires on the tractor to place on top of the hay. Time to get back up there.
Once up there, Squirm flies up the ladder as if he has wings. He roams around the top of the hay stack as I look around at the mountains. Sometimes we have to shove our fears aside and take that first step. We have to stop thinking about ourselves solely and think about the whole issue. The needs of all far outweigh my fear. Horses first.
As I look around, I think about the Eagle I see flying around from time to time. He can see the entirety or up close and personal. We tend to look at things to closely when we need to fly like the Eagle.
“Time to get down Squirm,” I say. I start crawling down the ladder. I look up, and there is Squirm one step up above me wondering why I’m so slow.
Reenchanted Thoroughbreds 