That’s me!

Had a bit of fun yesterday over at the Old House.  (That’s what we call the house my grandfather built on the farm where my mom grew up.)

We were there so the MotH could put up a new light fixture outside the back door.  (If you know anything about farms, you probably know that the back door is the door.  Almost nobody uses the front door.)

While the grown-ups were making trips back and forth to my mom’s house (only across the road and around the corner) to find the right socket wrench, I wandered over into Rocky’s field.

Rocky’s field is the field where Rocky hung out when I was a kid.  Rocky was the stallion for the herd of Shetland ponies my grandparents raised.  Kind of a white stallion, he was, and he used to hang out there with Swift, the mule.  For a time, after Rocky was no more, the field was home to the emus, but they have passed on as well.

Now, once again, Rocky’s field is grazing ground for ponies.

The field looks different than it did when I was a kid—and yet, somewhat the same.  The barn is gone, the saddle shed is gone, the ring where we used to ride around in circles between a wooden fence and a center circle of old tires is gone.

The watering trough is still there, and the chickens roaming.  The big live oak tree is still there—although the carousel to which the ponies were tethered for the youngest riders to go round and round the tree is gone, and the tree limbs on one side have grown to touch the ground.  No babies can be seat-belted into saddles out there anymore.

But there are still a few ponies.

I’m astonished every time I see them now at how tiny they are.  They were so big when I used to ride them, and now they seem so small.

I was never a good rider, and I haven’t ridden in years, but it was nice to visit the ponies.  It was nice to have them follow me around the field—even if my Pied Piper-ness was due to their hope of a handful of feed rather than any equestrian enchantments on my part.

They lost interest pretty soon, but that snuffling breath on the palm of my hand brought a strong sense of déjà vu—enhanced by the cackling hens and the scent of the horses and the grass —and the blue sky and the gray sand —and who says you can’t go home again?