Friday, September 08, 2006

Let the moon shine in



There is a full moon tonight, and she is absolutely amazing to see. The screech owl in the woods is making noises, scary noises. Screaming like a banshee noises. When I first heard him/her, it sounded like something out of a horror movie and I knew for certain some one-legged, jagged fanged freak would come gimping out of the woods to rend me into bite-sized pieces. I will admit to momentarily feeling the urge to rush back inside, lock all the doors and crawl under the covers with a butcher knife snuggled under my pillow, just in case.

Then I recaptured my senses, stuffed them back into my head and got over being a pussy.

The moon is so bright it's easy to imagine how brigands and thieves were able to make their way through the medieval countryside and woods in the wee hours to relieve maids of their trinkets and baubles.

It also reminded me of my teenage years and the countless summer nights spent riding my horse bareback over the Kansas prairie and through the Flint Hills. Kansas summers are comparable to an oven (but it's a dry heat, man!)and typically the only comfortable time to ride was at night, long after the sun had gone down and the restless wind swept the heat from the cracked, baked dirt. My bare legs, tanned and scratched from tall grasses, brush and barbed wire fence, gripping the coppery sides of Sundancer, her sweat and mine mingling, the cuts and scrapes burning with the salt of our sweat. Feeling fantastically free without a worry in the world. Horses have always been my best therapists: they listen without judging, hear without commenting and love without conditions. They just are, and they are nothing less than a fistful of warm southern wind, a pinch of fierce northern storms, a moonlit night, a thunderclap, a sweetly blooming mountain meadow, frothy ocean waves crashing on a rocky beach and an eagle soaring, free and proud. If there are earthly messengers from whatever higher power you believe in, I have no doubt those messengers take the form of the horse. There is no other creature more noble and proud.

I wish I could recapture that feeling from so many summers ago and bottle it up to save for the days that don't go so great and the times when all the world's watching and I'm the motley fool. Those blissful moments of quiet peace under the whitewash of a full Kansas moon are memories I keep to myself, secreted in that place that is mine and mine alone, because no matter how I try to explain, no one will ever truly understand.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Children of the Night....Owl hooting/screeching always sends shivers down my spine...Gotta love it!!
-Owl-

Jenn said...

Lately, I've been becoming quite the night owl, I can't 'splain it. Up until all hours, writing...writing...writing...