Where the Arrow Points to the Rainbow: Finale

As a high school freshman, I had once dated a horsewoman.
Or horse-GIRL, to be more accurate. I accompanied her to horse-shows from which she carried home armfuls of colorful ribbons. I sometimes helped feed (they only had four horses) and when haying time came around, I learned what it was like to be hot, sweaty, itchy, sneezy and exhausted. Six tough dwarves out of seven.

One day, when I hitch-hiked over to her house I found that everybody was gone. Everybody except a neighbor.
Marilyn was her name.
Pale skin, brown eyes, straw-blonde hair, extremely buxom, the more obviously so due to her petite stature. She was dressed in dirty, faded levi's and cowboy boots. Plaid shirt. Cut-off sleeves.

I liked Marilyn.

She explained to me that a couple horses had gotten loose and had been spotted out near the beach at Lake Villanova and everybody was out after them before something awful happened. Lots of tourist traffic around there in the summertime.
She was about to take off and join in the search.

"You want to come? You could ride Sweet Sioux."

Sweet Sioux was Marilyn's horse but she boarded it temporarily at my girlfriend's place while her own barn was being partly re-built. She peered up at me skeptically as she asked, chewing on a stalk of grass.

Well, hell, I was a teenager and I suffered from all the signs of testosterone poisoning, including transient idiocy.
Maybe not so transient.

"Sure," I said.

In no time, we were in the saddle, crossing the back pastures in a straight line toward Lake Villanova with me pretending I knew what I was doing, desperately trying to remember and imitate everything I'd seen my girlfriend do on horseback.
I doubt Marilyn was fooled for a second. But the testosterone poisoning syndrome allowed me to believe she was. Forced me to believe it.

Fortunately for me, Sweet Sioux knew pretty much how to horse and more or less walked along with Marilyn's horse -- just as she would have done if I hadn't been there at all. But I got feeling quite good about myself. I was a natural.
At a WALK.

Without sighting hair or hoof of the missing horses, we emerged at Lake Villanova about a block from the public beach. We could see it from there. Crowded even on an overcast Tuesday. Even crowded, that beach looked pretty inviting. Lot's of bare skin.
I wondered what Marilyn was wearing under her jeans.
But I wasn't going to find out.

At that moment, Marilyn spotted the missing horses, both of them, far across the fields, maybe a quarter mile away, and she picked up a trot in their direction. Sweet Sioux, without so much as consulting me, did likewise.

Now, the trot is a more difficult gait than the walk.
More difficult than the canter, I'd say.
It's particularly difficult when a complete lack of balance causes you to bounce on your testicles a few times. My rugged cahones were veterans with their fair share of bumps and thumps, but there's nothing to compare with getting them between you and the saddle and landing on them with your full weight.
I believe that's how posting was actually invented.
In any case, nothing like it to teach you to sit back on your pockets.
The dizziness and nausea that accompanied full contact scrotum-squashing subsided just as we caught up to the errant steeds.

Usually horses will just join up and follow. Strong herd instinct, you know, But these two wanted to play.
Great.

One of them, the chestnut, took off to the left and the bay took off to the right, initiating the ever popular chase-me game. I wish I could take some credit for catching one of those horses, but I can't. What I will take credit for is hanging on and staying in the saddle while Sweet Sioux caught one.
Seems that somewhere in her checkered past, Sioux must have worked cattle, because she cut off the ring on that chestnut time after time until she finally got her to quit and stand still. Her halter was still on, so it was a simple matter for me to lean out and snap a lead rope on her and pony her along behind me. Marilyn had easily grabbed the bay and was lounging on her saddle horn, squinting at me as I approached in triumph.

"That was some pretty fancy riding," she said.

"T'warn't nothin' ma'am," I said. Ok, maybe that's not what I said. But that's what it sounded like. It’s the effect of testosterone on the tongue...


So back to the present.
Casey and I had about a 15 minute lesson with our host, Jill, long enough for her to decide we'd be safe on a trail ride, I guess. She was going out with us and so was another woman named Christina, who was a veterinarian and was married to a classical guitarist of some renown.

We were out about three hours, I think. Most of it through pine forest. It was peaceful there. Quiet. Hoofbeats muffled by a thick carpet of pine needles. Crossed trinkling steams. Up and down hills. Startled some wild turkeys. Yielded right-of-way a half-dozen deer sprinting across the trail. Somewhere a hawk screeching. Finished up with a nice hundred-yard canter home. It rained a little, while we were out. Just enough to cool things off pleasantly after a string of hot muggy days.

We dismounted and walked along the access road between the paddocks, past horses grazing, rolling, playing. I felt completely at peace and would have been content to stay there with them forever. There had been times I’d come in contact with horses before in my life and I wondered why I’d never been touched by their power, their nobility before.
They say “when the student is ready, the master appears.”
I guess I hadn’t been ready.
I was ready now.

As we reached barntard, we happened to walk through a few puddles and in one of them something caught my eye, just as Moonshine stepped in it.

"Look, Jack!" Casey was pointing skyward. A rainbow stretched from horizon to horizon, one end disappearing into the forest we'd ridden through.

I suddenly realized that that's what I'd seen reflected in the puddle.
But there was something else, too.
When Moonshine stepped in that puddle, he left behind a clear hoofprint. Part of the arc of his hoof lay perfectly along part of the arc of the rainbow. The impression of his frog was clear, too. Looking just like an arrowhead.
An arrow.
Pointing up at the rainbow.

It hit me like a jolt of expresso.
"Go where the arrow points to the rainbow," I mumbled.
"What?" asked Casey.
"Nothing." I said. But I knew that something had changed in me. Or been discovered. Or re-discovered. From that moment, horses would become my closest friends, my mentors, my family.

I could have sworn I heard my old Dream Indian cackling with delight.