Hoof Blogs

Time Travel

Yesterday afternoon I brought a tape out, which I made for my husbuddy, Normie, years ago when I was still living in America, and set up the recorder. I had thought I had everything prepared and I was excited and anxious to take myself back in time to a place I loved and the people I left behind four years ago. I connected the main line to the extension cord and plugged it in the wall outlet. Then I pushed the play button and soon learned that there couldn't have been anything I could have done to prepare myself for what I was about to hear.

The first thing that flew across the room was the sound of the South Dakota wind. Not just any wind. This is 'vacation' wind that combed cottonwoods until they rustled and swept canyons and carried the cry of coyotes across the wide open plains and cooled the waving prairie grass that baked in a desert-like sun. This wind pushed cabins and shoved hocks and stuffed tumble weed into my room. It whistled and howled against wooden corners and into the cracks and crevices of cabin windows, screeching down chimney flues, counting wooden fence posts on its sky-blue fingertips.

Next, as I snuggled under covers and cuddled in my clothes, the tape brought the voices of a long-lost summer day. Hearing the inflection of cowboy Grant Shearer's deep voice and his daughter, Chelsea, and the names of horses I've long forgotten, allowed my mind to wrap its memories around lips and tongues until the faces, the hands, the bodies began to take shape and emerge inside my head. Soon I felt that wind in my hair and manes and tails in my hands and the incipient hint of an August sun rising above the North Dakota plains.

Tape by tape I will take myself back in time again and again. It's a marvelous trip and I wouldn't miss it for the world even if it does leave me a bit numb for a while afterwards.

Aussie ya tonight after leaving a well-carrot-fed Flossie.