Get Back in The Saddle, Fool

It's been a little while, but I rode out on Tres this evening before Vespers. Tres is a horse of color who identifies with her biological gender as a mare. Tres is OK with people calling her "her" or "she", that's the kind of pronoun she goes by, at least for now. 

Tres also idolizes a white Stallion, called Whitey McPrivilege. Whitey feels, pretty aggressively I can tell you, that Tres belongs to him. Tres agrees and even seems to like it.

A Saddle on a Truck

I know. By now you're probably feeling a bit sick at the sheer spectacle of this heteronormative, self-imposed cisgender stereotyping. What's wrong with these horses, you're asking. Good question, and I don't know what's got into them, but I do know that Whitey McPrivilege wasn't there when we rode up on the herd.

Is Whitey Here?

They were all horses of color and Whitey wasn't there. Tres was pretty upset, no kidding, so we ran back to the safe space of the barn, fast. Maybe she'd find Whitey there, thought Tres. No, she didn't. Then we ran down to the big cow pasture. Was Whitey there? No, he wasn't. Maybe someone had shot Whitey for being a hate-filed, misogynist gender fascist. Whatever, he wan't there.

Where is Whitey?

Bereft of gender oppression, Tres posted back to the safe space, ate some grass and got turned out. So you see, readers, all six of you, everything turned out alright.

Ride on,

LSP

Don't be a Loser, Ride The Horse

It's been hard to ride lately on account of the floods but the waters have receded a bit, which means get on the horse. And that's what I did, after flying the flag at a cowboy church men's prayer breakfast. 

They're a good bunch of guys, the cowboys, with a pretty straight up kind of faith. Enlivened by that, I tacked up in the morning sunshine and rode out. Trace was eager enough and it was simply good to get out in the country on horseback. I find it clears the mind.

Gallop up The Hill

It's good exercise, too, provided you put some work into it, and we did, horse and rider, galloping along through the incredibly, for Texas, green countryside.

Ride over, I turned the herd out into their big pasture, where they can get up to mischief and eat lots of grass.

Trace

There's a satisfaction to all of this which is hard to put into words, but I will say this -- riding's good for mind, body and spirit. Unless you fall off and get killed, in which case it's a different story again.

With that in mind, stay on the horse,

LSP

Is This Texas?

The "tree guys" are still at it and will be for some time, so I rode off in search of Texas again. This time quite literally, on a horse, not far from Aquilla.

Is This Texas?

It was a crisp sunny morning and Trace enjoyed moving out across the weirdly green landscape. Was this Texas? It seemed too green. Not that I'm complaining, after all, Texas is a big state and it's only right to expect local variation.

Maybe This is Texas?

We came across an unblemished white calf. That seemed pretty Texas, in an Old Testament kind of way. 

Arthurian Legends, of Texas

Maybe the woods were Texas, the Arthurian legend part of Texas. I was hoping to spot some deer or pigs but didn't see any, just a rabbit being chased by a hawk. Texas style.

Two Horses Look at Texas

Ride over, two curious horses checked out the tack for Lone Star State credentials and I think they were pleased with what they saw.

So, did I find Texas? I certainly found a bit of it suspiciously green and lush after our heavy rain, and if horses and riding out across unspoiled country in Hill County counts as Texas, well, the search was a success.

Back at the Compound, the "tree guys" have unaccountably stopped work. I don't know if that's "Texas" or some other thing.

Ride on,

LSP

Get on The Horse

You can be a sad determinist or some variety of Calvinist and believe that everything is preordained. I chose to exercise my freewill and went for a ride. Don't be a fatalist, I muttered grimly to myself, get on the horse.

We started off slowly, trotting along in the clear air of a crisp, sunny Texan morning and posted off down a trail in the Mesquite. As I understand it, posting trot isn't very "Western" but so what, it's good for the horse's back and the rider's sense of rhythm, to say nothing of muscles. They got a good workout.

After a little while it seemed right to open up and off we galloped, not too furiously but plenty fast enough. It's a great feeling, moving at speed with a horse through the countryside.

We finished with some uphill galloping, Go on! Up that hill! followed by a brisk trot back to the barn. I say barn, but it's more of a walk-in with a trailer doing duty as a tack room, and what's wrong with that? Nothing at all.

Ride over, I drove the country route to Waco, down 933, cleverly avoiding the heinous I35, and visited the sick in hospital. One of them's made a pretty miraculous recovery. I thank God for that. And remember, God's knowledge is necessary but it's also eternal and simultaneous, or present tense. 

That doesn't contradict free will. Speaking of which, I'll clean some guns after Stations of the Cross. There's nothing, ahem, predictable about that, at all.

Stay on the horse,

LSP