Going West

It’s been almost ten years since I’ve been out West. Last week, we went to San Francisco for my brother-in-law’s wedding, and I was lucky enough to spend a day in Point Reyes Station where a dear old friend of mine is living.  I was surprised that rather than grey, wet skies, we were greeted by dry, warm sunny desert air. The scent of the eucalyptus and the sight of those long open horizons were just what my soul needed to feel revived.

It’s a nice place to be a horse, and we saw many of them, grazing and running on the wide-open range.  I missed my girls, but I knew that they were being pampered and well-loved at home.  I fell in love with Toby’s Feed Barn, a place where you can buy hay, visit the art gallery, find fresh local vegetables and fruits at their farmer’s market, take a yoga class and sit on a bale of hay and listen to an interesting guest speaker or a band play.  It’s the kind of community spirit that I long for, and it was inspiring to see how well it works for everyone who lives there.

I came home to frigid cold weather in New England. My dear old mare, Silk, had a rough week, almost colicking from the abrupt temperature shift.  While I love the green and the stone walls and cozy fires in the fireplace in anticipation of winter, there’s a part of my heart that still lives in the West and probably always will.  It brings me to the edge, the frontier that is buried inside of me, and staring out at that big horizon makes me feel that everything is possible if I reach for it.

"All America lies at the end of the wilderness road, and our past is not a dead past, but still lives in us. Our forefathers had civilization inside themselves, the wild outside. We live in the civilization they created, but within us, the wilderness still lingers. What they dreamed, we live, and what they lived, we dream."  TK Whipple