The Glittering Night

The chain clangs like a wind chime against the gates as I push them open, from where I stand I can hear the song on the radio in my car ending as the clock reads 11:57pm. I know they'll do the weather update at midnight. For now, it's clear and cool and dark. The gravel crunches under my feet as I head back to the car and look over the field as the glitter of the fireflies fills the sky. This is how I prefer the night, cool and quiet and dark, save for the glittering beauties.

I realize now that my chosen profession is odd. My college education and post-graduate studies seem wildly irrelevant most days, but none the less did satisfy my desire for a degree and some of my insatiable curiosity. The horses however, never get boring. No day is the same as the one before and there is never an end to learning here. While many families have a horse crazy kid that rides for a few years, maybe even gets a horse, and then slowly recedes from the horse life into something else, I just always fell deeper. Drowning myself in books about horses, horse care, horse breeds, horse supplies. Even after a hiatus from riding regularly in high school, I would hide in my room, away from the pressure of trying to fit in and doing all the things high school girls are meant to do, and re-read my books. I would sit on the floor in my walk in closet, safely behind two closed doors, and gingerly pick through the memory box of momentos from my first horse. I could still smell him. That scent, comforting and velvety, was my ocean, and it still is. 

As I make my way up the drive to the barn, I can see the silhouettes of the horses in the darkness. Together in their little bundles, two standing with a hip dropped, leg cocked and resting, while watching over the one laying on the ground with her long neck curled and her chin in the dirt. They are intermittently lit with the glittering fireflies, so very bright against the dark skies in the country. The glittering night of city lights does not hold my interest, it's overwhelming and lonely all at once. Here, this is how I wind down. My work is done and my soul is soothed all at once.

I park my car as close as possible to the barn doors and grab my bags. Quietly sliding the big doors apart, I am greeted by a few low nickers and the tramping of hay and straw as they rouse to see who's here tonight. "Hey mamas", I say quietly as I make my way down the aisle towards the low light in the wash stalls to put down my bags. The mare end of the barn is mostly filled with the sound of rhythmic chewing. Those ladies like their hay,  and as I glance into their stalls to make sure everyone is supplied for the night, a few of them approach to snuff me with their soft breath and get a neck scratch. The little one is flat out with his mouth open and his little short foal breaths huffing in his dream. His dam comes to say hello, carefully placing her feet in the straw around him so that she doesn't step on him, and I think, she doesn't want him to wake up just yet. She knows it won't be long until he's rooting at her udder, sometimes fiercely and loudly nursing, with no regard to being as careful with her body as she is with his. "You're a good mama", I whisper to her, and she rests her muzzle heavily on my arm and breaths into my face. Our affections and respect are mutual.

Down the aisle I hear a clang of teeth on a stall door and I know he knows I'm coming with more hay. He, as usual, would like me to get on with it and arrive spit spot. I open his feed door and there they are, those wet teeth; his lips peeled back in anticipation as he catches the flake of hay in the air on its way to the floor. He sticks his nose out of the door, presenting me with a mouthful of hay. My fingers graze over his nostrils and scratch a soft circle. He's really quite pleased with the attention, as I don't much trust putting my fingers near his mouth unless it's already full. The stallion end of the barn is quieter, two are down for the night, and only those shiny teeth, still holding a chunk of hay out of the small feed door, are visible in the aisle. 

What is becoming my ritual begins. I stack the hay bales four across and two high and take an open bale to stack the flakes higher at one end. Over the top goes a soft clean medium weight horse blanket, my flashlight gets hooked onto the blanket rack, and the chair next to my hay stack holds my purse, sweatshirt, extra blankets, and snacks. I settle onto the hay pile lounge, IPad, coconut water and clipboard in hand. Kicking my moccasins off I cover my legs with another blanket as the air cools quickly through the night. One of the pregnant mares groans as she goes down for a bit, her belly creating the mountainous landscape I can see through the stall door. They all sleep for short stretches, waking up to eat and drink or switch sides and settle back into the straw. I love to hear them sleep. Their stalls are too dark for me to see anything but their outlines, their sighs and snorts and wiggles indicate their state of rest. The mare on the end is a dreamer, small curdled whinnies and kicks erupt from her stall and I wonder what fills her dreams. 

The mare I'm here to watch for signs of labor is calm and quiet. Her milk test tells us she should foal any hour, and has been that way for four days. But these horses, they don't ascribe to our human habits of relentless planning and vigorous impatience. The mare decides when it's right- so I wait. Night after night I stay with them, traveling to the ends of the Internet and existing on coconut water and beef jerky and fresh peaches, with an occasional hunk of dark chocolate when I'm feeling sleepy. 

It will be dark and quiet until 4:30, when the swallows come in from hunting bugs and bring the spoils to their nests. Their chatter signals the end of my glittery night and the impending separation of the mountains from the sky as the black goes to navy and then to royal blue. The pink sun will peek above the horizon at 5:30 sharp, and the volume of the world will increase by the minute. The
stallions welcome their day with crescendo nickers and whinnies, and if they had mirrors, they would look approvingly into them and congratulate themselves on a night well spent. The mares, they wait for the barn doors to part again as the morning crew arrives to make their breakfasts. I will drive back out over the crunching gravel to sleep for a bit of the day and wait to hear if the mare has decided that daylight is her preferred hour of foaling. If not, I'll be here again- me and the horses and the glittering sky.