I just found hay in my hair, a memento from the time I spent in the horse field this afternoon lying on my back in what remained of a round bale. It’s sixty degrees. Just a few days ago, there was snow on the ground. Spring is like that here.
Unpredictable.
Fickle.
Unruly.
(Not unlike my hair now that I think about it.)
But back to the hay bale. I buy hay in 1200 lb bales to feed my horses. The bales are tall and round. I cover them with impossibly large nets that hold the bale together as horses slowly eat it down. The bales are made for eating, but sometimes I sit in them instead. Today, home early after having been haunted by the ghost of a migraine, I wandered out in the warm air and and made myself comfortable in the hay.
I am like a barometer, at least according to my chiropractor who has to adjust away the headaches I wake up with every time the barometric pressure swings wildly. A migraine crept in during the first part of this swing two days ago; I could barely walk without the urge to be sick. For the past two days, it’s lingered, just at the edge of my awareness, just enough there to make me fearful that it will crash back down on me the moment I feel comfortable. I wore sunglasses at the office today, and left as soon as I had the opportunity, anxious to be away from the buzz of the fluorescent lights and the glare of my computer screen. I drove myself home, walked up the lane to the horse field, and laid down in the hay.
I closed my eyes, listening to the breeze and the birds, enveloped in the smell of sweet grass hay, a smell that always seems to bring me back to my childhood. A few of the horses came up, and I kept a wary eye on them in case they set their mind upon mischief, but instead, they nuzzled and blew their warm breath onto my forehead, checking to see if I had shrunk I suppose, or reassuring themselves that it was me even when I laid down.
There is something about the change of the seasons here on the ranch that always seems to bring me back to myself, reawaken pieces of me that sleep for a time. In the winter, we rest. The farm. The animals. Me. Our numbers are fewer from the autumn migrations that call our wild, summer residents away. I buckle down, bundle up, and steel my mind to keeping all of us alive through the cold. Water unfrozen. Animals bundled in blankets or locked into barns as necessary. Everyone well-fed…maybe even overfed. And, at the same time, I also relax, putting projects on hold, contenting myself to spend cold nights cuddled up under blankets next to the fire.
When the Spring comes, I watch as all of us wake up. I’m called to the outside. I sit and listen to the birds with my morning coffee. (Sometimes I think that I should learn to identify them by song, a “get to know your neighbors” kind of thing.) I watch our bluebirds come home, and I wait anxiously for the first butterfly. There is a gentleness to it, but the to-do list seems to grow daily. Shearing, hoof trimming, vaccines–not to mention pasture clean-up, barn cleaning, and mowing–are about to be upon me.
From my spot in the hay, I couldn’t help but notice that the horses need a thorough grooming; they are blowing their winter coat, leaving the season behind them. They remind me that transitions can be messy, but that there’s a loveliness in the mess, if you’re willing to see it. The mess with always be there somehow; there’s always going to be a new thing to take of, another item on the never ending list. But sometimes, in the moments between the winter and spring, all you need do is close you eyes, listen, and breathe in the sweet smell that come along as things change.
I know. I know. That phrase usually belongs to Christmas, and I love Christmas, but whoever first coined that phrase and applied it to Christmastime obviously didn’t know the joys of springtime on a ranch.
