(photo credit: APHA)
Someone from an email list I belong to wrote this on the subject: My yearnings are more for “place”….MY place in this world, my purpose. I wonder, if I ever find it, if it will be in some other city?
I think this is what I’m referring to more than for an actual physical place. I’ve always felt out of place, even when I lived up in WA so I’m a little nervous that actually moving up there is the cure. Until I find my place, my purpose, I will feel out of place even in my old haunts, when I didn’t know there were other places to live.
However, I have always longed for property so I could own horses. When I was a kid in Washington, I dreamed of moving to the West, the real West, which is east of Washington, like Idaho or Montana, where there were still open ranges and cowboys. Also, I imagined that there would be real purpose in owning horses, if one owned a ranch. Even though I grew up on a farm when I was a kid, it wasn’t that kind of farm. We farmed pigs. No large spreads, no rounding up the herd. We had enough property to own a horse but not enough to ride. Dad was certain the neighbors wouldn’t want me tearing around their cattle pastures on a horse. He was probably right. In short, I learned that horses were an unnecessary luxury, even though I was certain I needed them (yes, more than one) to be complete.
When I was in my early 20’s, I started taking riding lessons at my mother’s suggestion. We had been on a short vacation in eastern Washington. My sister and I rented horses at this trail riding place twice in the days of our short vacation. On the way home I dreamed out loud about moving to eastern Washington where there was space to own horses. Where would you work, a sensible adult asked. Work? Who needs work? I’d have horses. Then my mom suggested I keep my secretary job and take riding lessons. Well, why didn’t I think of that? Little did she know that that suggestion would lead to my quitting my secretary job and first working as a stall cleaner, then as a groom and assistant trainer. Eventually I bought my own horses y(es, two), which eventually lead to me renting a double wide trailer on 1 1/2 acres of land with a barn where I could keep my horses. I had found home, a place where I fit, belonged. There was money in horses. Not necessarily for me but I did earn a living.
Then I met a man, before I had recuperated from the last man. We got married. He was a non-horse person. I became convinced again that horses were an expensive luxury and we couldn’t afford them. That was the second time I believed that. So I sold my horses, believing I was doing the right thing. Immediately the emptiness set in, an emptiness my marriage could not fill. I tried to fill the emptiness with so many things: running, skiing, bicycling, skating, firefighting, writing, reading, cooking, kayaking, triathlons, lacrosse, marathon training, ocean swimming, climbing, moving, dancing, yoga. These things are still important but not enough. Nothing would fill the void but I didn’t recognize what I was missing until I perused a UCLA recreation catalog. There was a 6-week riding class. Surely I could afford that. The six-week class turned into two riding lessons a week. It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t just the riding that I missed. I missed the grooming and fussing about horses. I missed the comraderie, the gossip, the politics of the barn. I missed training for horse shows, getting up way too early to remove manure from the freshly bathed horse and braid manes. I missed the horse show nerves, the depression of losing, the temporary exhileration of getting a ribbon, any color.
So I’m about to embark on a 1/2 lease of a horse, which will eventually lead to the purchase of a horse, which will eventually lead to the purchase of property so I can have more than one to fulfill my dual interests of jumping over fences English style and chasing cows western style. Property is not affordable in southern California. Nor is it affordable within commuting distance of the Bay Area. That leaves Seattle and Portland. We need property to fulfill my dream; we need a large city for jobs. Well, Dave does. There are universities and NOAA offices in small towns all the way up the west coast. Dave needs a city that has large corporations with large legal departments. Well, what about inland, he asks. He doesn’t have any connection to the Pacific Ocean. An oceanographer in, say Houston, I ask? Yes, there are universities inland that need oceanography professors. Well, maybe. What about the east coast? I’ve lived in south Florida. No thanks, even though parts of Florida are growing horse-wise. Lots of people train there in the winter. Other than that I’ve visited D.C. Maybe the northeast. Just maybe I could be an oceanographer and a horse-owner with property there. There would be similar requirements as in Washington: a covered or indoor arena for riding in inclement weather, ways to keep watering devices from freezing, traction from house to barn to arena, pasture, manure pile. Even still I would miss the landscape of Washington: the mountains, the Puget Sound, salmon and dungeness crab.
Maybe the longing for home is about physical place but also about answering a calling. A calling, in this case, which is an expensive luxury but an important part of our economy. Statistics show that there are over 3 million Quarter horses in this country alone. The rest of the registered breeds make up another 3 million or so. Those 6 million horses need feed, stables, shavings, trailers, tires, trucks, fuel, tack, training, veterinary care, insurance, and in some cases, legal help. In heeding my calling or longing, I can both go home and not cave into a guilty pleasure but contribute to the economy.