A Brief Interlude
By Rod Stallings
Yesterday’s fire sits cold in dead embers. Once stoked with the day’s weighty matters, they now lay at my feet histories random leavings. Today will carry its own embers, least I be concerned about my life not having any significance.
The sky here is broad and as I ready my gear for a new day’s task the openness calls me. The herds I tend move more slowly and randomly than I prefer. The saving grace of such tending captured in a pristine morning such as this where everything is safely behind gates or in pens and the openness is mine alone.
Sun peaks its bright eye over the horizon as I sit astride my waiting mount. She too feels the impatience of the open ahead of us. But ever faithful, she awaits my cue to move out. The sunlight races toward us and the first ray is shattered upon my saddle’s bright work. Warmth radiates across my face and a light wind stirs in nearby trees. It’s warm, far too warm, for this time of year. The mornings chill will recede quickly.
Cares of yesterdays dead embers dissipate slowly in my mind. An old hand, such as I should be better able to put these things to bed. Yet, they continue to haunt me, ghost and demons of a life lived too quickly and years passing too rapidly. Such cares rarely have any meaning beyond the day they occur, and still we allow them to clutter the corners of our mind and seep into the warmth of our souls. And why so, do I not understand life now after so many years better than this? Am I a pup or yearling who scarcely knows the path before me? And yet, what is the path of an old hand if not unknown trails to be traveled. Herds to tend, strays to find, trail bosses to suffer. If not for the freedom what I sit upon affords me and a God to look forward to welcoming me home at the end of my trail, life would truly be desperate.
Distant thunder distracts me from my musings. No clouds in sight, yet the air is steadily and increasingly reverberating with the pulse. A tug on the soul, a call to my wildness is the nature of such things as coming storms. Once free to roam, and either a gift of life giving rain from above or the potential destructive force humanly incapable of being held back. Such are the analogies of life.
In the sun lit distance shapes begin to take form. Two shadows moving steadily toward me, mere spots on the horizon. Riders of the apocalypse, sheathed in shadows, blazing sun at their backs obscuring every feature. Death come to claim me before I am ready? Not so, just wanderings of an old hands mind too prone to rambling and contemplating the end of this worldly ride. Age’s sneaky hand stealing away youth quickly wasted upon the young.
Closer now, sun glints off bright work well remembered and savored from long miles of trails ridden together. Two compadres who view the openness as I do, an invitation to adventure and decompression from tending life’s herds.
The thunder continues to increase pulsing now in my ears, the shadow riders dark forms grow and my pulse quickens. I know they will slow their progress only momentarily as they pass so I spur my old friend to life, waking her from her musing and quickly fall in along side these two specters matching their pace. A nod and a look passes between us, knowing and practiced, acceptance of a standing pact that only riders such as we understand.
The world rolls beneath us, stretches out before us and recedes behind us. We care not where it takes us, and aside from the momentary stops to feed our hungry mounts, we soak in the gift of the trail before us and the openness we so enjoy.
The sun breaks free from its earthly bounds and blazes full across the landscape bathing us in light and warmth. In that moment three shadow riders burst into prisms of light, reflecting and flashing into dark recesses, driving back the darkness before us. Not riders of the apocalypse but riders of light thundering toward the glory of both the expanse stretching out before them and the wonder of what lies ahead in the beauty of a world that could only have been painted by God’s hand.
Old hands, messengers of freedom, into a new day ride together. Ever forward, ever seeking the next trail toward a distant horizon. Free.
