Winter

It’s a time of both quiet reflection and fierce winds pouring over the Continental Divide from west to east. It’s a time of sparkling sunlight on fresh snow. A time to scale back training and enter inter deeper relationships. Horses strengthen their herdmate bonds, while humans recede a little more to the background. When I show up on particularly cold or windy days to throw a blanket over Samwise, he lumbers through the deep snow to greet me as if asking to be bundled up. Pax may get blanketed once or twice a season, but if the blanket stays on for too long he is itchy, uncomfortable, rolling in the snow as if to cool himself off. I call him the Wooly Mammoth; he has no need for extra insulation. I am trying to coax a good winter coat out of Spirit. He dapples up in the fall, just as his winter coat is coming in–I’m not quite sure why, but it’s gorgeous.