Blue Eyes Cryin'...

"I'll admit, my musical tastes have never been all encompassing. Which is to say I'm not one of those people who freely tells anyone..."yeah! I like all types of music!" and then proceeds to name off more than a dozen artists from blues, hip-hop, country or big band. In fact, once I find a dozen or so artists that I like it's relatively hard for me to branch out into uncharted territory and discover new artists. Perhaps I find a familiar comfort in artists I know so well, and have come to cherish their certain sound. Or perhaps...I'm just not as open minded as I first assumed I was!

Does it bother me? Yes, it does. Which is why after joining an Internet radio site called Pandora, I forced myself to create stations on artists I never heard a single song from, or were only slightly familiar with. The outcome? I now have a myriad of new favorite artists that I am quickly sequestering on my YouTube channel and hopefully soon on my iPod! Such new favorites include: Patty Loveless, John Anderson, Lorrie Morgan, Vince Gill, Bryan Adams, Suzy Bogguss and Kathy Mathea. I spelt some of their last names wrong, I apologize.

My point is, having an open mind, or in my case, prying it open with pliers and keeping it that way until new music has a fraction of a chance to seep in, will benefit anyone in the long run. After all, exposing myself to such music was how I came to understand that while I previously listened to only a horrid pop station based locally in Sheboygan called The Point and bought only pop albums, my heart truly lied in 90's country. I discovered this around high school, after a friend played the songs Holy Water by Big & Rich and Any Man Of Mine by Shania Twain. Just two songs can fuel a life long passion for a certain genre of music, as the two mentioned set fire to my obsession with country music, especially the 90's stuff. There was just a different sound to 90's music, in my opinion it was when every genre had it's been sound...country, rock and even christian music alike. I also like a scattering of 90's Christian music, which include artists like Rebecca St. James, Michael W. Smith and David Meece. All of these artists bring back memories of my past, especially the last one. While my Mom was driving me to my R.E.I.N.S sessions she would pop in a David Meece tape and we'd both sing along.

I think what I'm writing about ties into one of my old blog posts entitled That Special Song in which certain songs evoke emotions out of us that turn a gloomy day into a bearable one, or inject a sense of nostalgia in us like I experience. Anyone who tells you they just listen to the music and not the lyrics is blowing smoke. And even if a song didn't have lyrics, it would still speak words of sorts to you per se, conjuring up images in your mind, creating a story. I wrote a blog post about that too, songs creating images and entire short-short stories in the two to five minutes they play. I can't remember what it's called though! But this brings up another point that all of my blog posts are connected, no matter how scatterbrained they might seem.

After all this you're probably looking at the title of today's blog post and thinking. What do the above paragraphs have to do with blue eyes cryin'? The answer is...nothing. I was simply planning on tying the title into this post well in the first paragraph, but obviously that didn't happen. So now that all hope of a smooth transition between subjects has been recklessly abandoned, I'm simply going to insert it here!

I'm sure you've heard one, perhaps you have a favorite that mentions it, or specifically sought one out for a girlfriend, boyfriend, husband, wife...etc. Or maybe you've never been such a detail oriented person as myself and don't really notice such things. In any case, what am I talking about? Can you guess? I'm talking about the myriads of songs that mention two little words that seem to sum up so much, and hold so much within them it's become a world's obsession, and any artists' key to blissful song. The two words? Blue eyes.

You have to admit there isn't a time when you haven't come across a song that mentions the words blue and eyes. Right off the bat I can name at least a dozen, but for the sake of readers, I'll only list a few.
Sweet Thing by Keith Urban.
Well you're pretty blue eyes, they were drivin' me crazy.

And the title of my blog post: Blue eyes cryin' in the early morning rain.

Though it kills me to mention it, Taylor Swift also tips her hat to blue eyes in her song Tim McGraw.
You said the way my blue eyes shined, put those Georgia stars to shame that night.

There's also a SheDaisy song and albeit they don't explicitly state it, it's obvious they too tip their hats to blue eyes in their song Passenger Seat.
Then he shifts those ocean eyes back to me.

So far I've only listed five songs, but I'm sure all of you reading this are mentally checking the list in your mind, refrains to a dozen songs or more spinning against your memory like index cards falling from a tipped filing cabinet. Why is it that blue eyes are so much more mentioned and talked about than any other color? Now for any of you with blue eyes perhaps you could lend an answer. After all, with the way the world sees it, you have the most desirable color. God knows why, what's wrong with us brown-eyed, green-eyed or hazel-eyed people? Or even grey? Perhaps I should ask any songwriter why they choose to sing about blue eyes. Is it more poetic, more poignant? Does it evoke more out of the listener, reader...etc?

With all of this you may be asking, so Corrie, what color eyes do you have? I have hazel eyes. My Mom will argue that they're brown but...I see green in there too! It's funny, my Mom has green eyes, my Dad has blue and what did my brother and I get? Hazel! But that's a totally different blog post entirely. I'm also the only left-handed person in my immediately family. Did you know it's rarer for girls to be left-handed than guys? Okay, okay I'm digressing again. Back on subject!

It's no doubt that the media, and Hollywood's antics as well, significantly influence American culture as well as our ways of thinking about music, books, television, and even ourselves. Blonde hair was popularized decades ago, when Marilyn Monroe, apparently a natural brunette, died her hair a very light shade of blonde, thus becoming one in a thousand artificial blondes that trod the earth today. No, I have nothing against them, but seriously? I think they are way too many blonde heads bobbing around in Hollywood today, as well as on television.

So is it any surprise that Hollywood, and the media, would have a helping hand in popularizing blue eyes? Both in music and in television? After all, the ideal woman is blond and blue-eyed. Just another off shoot of the artificially created perfect image of who the supposedly perfect person is evidently supposed to be. Now at this point I'll admit, one of my own celebrity crushes has blue eyes, and yes, it is rather attractive I'll admit, but I also go for the whole dark and handsome thing. You know, a guy with dark hair and dark colored eyes. Although, God help me, that could be another media-generated cliche all it's own! What is happening to the world?

In closing, if I ever meet any of the artists of the songs I mentioned above, I'll ask them why they mentioned blue eyes in their song, and perhaps I wouldn't have all this speculation but straight up answers! In the mean time, as always, feel free to inject your own opinions. And if you happen to have blue eyes, even better! I could use opinions straight from the source!

Dreamin' My Dreams

Don't we all have that childhood dream? That singular dream that begins to take shape the moment we first start grasping who we are. What color we like best, what type of clothing we like to wear, what type of music we like, what interests us, what inspires us...etc.

It's a dream that embodies our maturity over the years. For example, say you like horses. When you're just a little girl, or boy, you might beg your parents for the latest American Girl horse tantalizing displayed just out of reach behind a pane of store front glass. When you're a bit older, say elementary school, you might pine for a pony...then on to junior high and eventually high school where it's 4-H, riding lessons, showing, leasing, buying, more showing, more horses. And on and on and on! Do you see where I'm trying to go with this? Your dream could either start off very simple and focused, like the little girl looking at the American Girl horse with yearning eyes...and eventually morph into a dream of owning a breeding or horse rescue farm. Or it could be a huge dream from the beginning, with a little kid's mind stretching as far as his imagination can go, intrigued by endless possibilities, tantalized by the future and what it holds.

Whatever your personal dream is, in this week's blog post I'm here to tell you about mine. Granted, it's always been one of my dreams to own a horse, a more dominant goal - or dream - in my life is to someday buy an old house that needs fixing up and renovate it while I'm living in it. There's something about living in a dilapidated, tired old home and bringing it back to life that inspires me in so many ways.

In my last blog post I talked about the horse rescue farm, Sunrise Horse Farm, that I volunteer at in Reedsville. On the side of the gravel driveway leading to the farm there's an old, paint-stripped, hollowed out house that's been abandoned for twenty years or more. The first time I went out to her farm I noticed it immediately, conspicuously blending in with the labyrinth of trees and fallen branches. Its tall, narrow window frames looked out at me with empty, black eyes and its frame leaned to the left, as if it were contemplating giving in to slumber which as pulled at its every rotted beam since nature took its toll.

Perhaps from how I described the abandoned house you already can guess why it is my dream to own an old house that needs restoring! If that wasn't proof enough, take my obsession with an indispensable site called oldhouses.com in which realtor's can post listings of old houses for sale to potential buyers specifically looking for them. The listings are open to the general public also, and you can sign up to receive new listings added to the website to be delivered to your email inbox, which of course I do! There are so many beautiful houses on the site, which you can keep in a feature called a scrapbook. In my own scrapbook are mainly Victorian style homes and early style Colonial's, with a few Dutch Colonial's and Antebellum's thrown into the mix.

While perusing the archived listings on the site, which are houses that have sold but still remain on the site for viewing pleasure, I stumbled across a Victorian home labeled old house story. That usually means that whoever posted the listing has a blog or story attached to it, how they renovated it, what it means to them...etc. After clicking on one such blog it led me to another one, which I immediately became engrossed with. It revolved around a couple of unknown age who had bought a late 1800's Victorian farmhouse and were restoring it while living in it. Not only that...they were blogging about it!

Instantly, while reading nearly every blog post, I thought that they were living my dream. Time and time again I've defiantly told my Mom that an old house is significantly more interesting than a new house. Even if you inject character and individuality into a new home, it is still blatantly lacking that inimitable character and history that an old home has. Each old home as a story to tell of all the years it's seen, and all the people which have passed through its rooms and doorways. It's a story that can only be acquired over centuries of existence and change. A story that can't be duplicated in newer homes, no matter how precise you try to replicate it. Again, like I've told my Mom many times before, I'd take the sagging floors, crumbling, under insulated plaster walls, outdated electricity, drafty rooms and windows, peeling painted siding, high heating costs and everything in between any day in favor of a new, perfectly functioning new home. I wouldn't want my home to be perfect anyway. Sticking doors, sagging floors and drafty windows are all part of its story, its character, things that make the house almost like an individual and coincidentally they're the same things that so palpably attract me to historic homes in the first place.

Adding on to any older home's fixer-up persona, so to speak, like I said before I've always found dilapidated, old homes intensely appealing. Take one of my poems I wrote recently and posted on my blog entitled Memoir of an Old House, in which a ramshackle, neglected old house finds solitude and common ground with its aging owner who is a forgotten man of divorce with nothing but the house for company. Whenever I write about houses I always receive strong mental images in my mind, and then work my hardest to transfer as much detail of each image onto paper. There's just something about houses in general, but especially old houses obviously, that inspire deeply and endlessly in my writing.

Once again, I digress, but getting back on track! Referring back to my passion for dilapidated - and also abandoned - houses - another one of my favorite magazines, unsurprisingly, is This Old House. Albeit I enjoy looking at the pictures and reading the articles my favorite section of the magazine is the one on the very last page entitled Save This Old House. Within this section readers submit a picture and story of an old house in danger of demolition, in desperate need of repairs or just in need of a loving touch. These are the houses that, to throw a trite phrase out there, pull at my heart strings. It also angers me when I read a story about a beautiful house in danger of being razed in favor of mundane condos or a parking lot. I won't get too much into that topic because I know I'll end up going on a rant!

To further explain how much I love dilapidated homes, take a short story I've been tossing around in my mind like a piece of sweet tasting candy rolling on my tongue. It's entitled The Healing House and was inspired by a certain late 1800's Victorian home I discovered within the Save This Old House section of the afore mentioned magazine a couple months ago. In one my former blog posts I'm sure I described how after viewing a singular picture of a historic home I begin weaving a story around and behind it, until a new short story is born and revolves around a house! Like the all the rest of them do. :)

In The Healing House there are two characters, who are sisters, Georgina (22) and Gwenyvere (16). Their parents, Dawson and Gillian Harding, were to celebrate their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary in Sweden for half a month, skiing, touring and a slew of other things. A month went by and still Mr. and Mrs. Harding hadn't returned. Georgina - who is the story's main character - called police from their comfortable, newly built home in New York's countryside and the search began. It wasn't long before the Harding's were labeled as missing persons, and an amber alert went out everywhere.

I won't bother you with too many details, but eventually Georgina and Gwenyvere give up the search and split up their parent's belongings, putting the four-bedroom house for sale. A lawyer plans to place them both with relatives but one thing Georgina and Gwenyvere both agree on is that they don't want to become a burden to any of them, especially seeing as their mother only had one sister and their father only had two brothers who lived in the Alaskan wilderness. Georgina barters with the lawyer, searching for a second solution. It's then that the lawyer discovers one of Mr. Harding's longest kept secrets. A secret, in fact, that he was planning to reveal to his family shortly after returning from Sweden. It seems that from his few and far flung descendants Dawson Harding had inherited a one and a half story Victorian Queen Anne home in the obscure, small town of Union Springs, Alabama.

Georgina of course, before asking for more information on this sudden and puzzling find, jumps at the chance to save the dilapidated home which had been left abandoned for five years, and drags Gwenyvere from their plush New York home to a rambling, drafty, paint-stripped Victorian home foreign to them in every sense of the word. Except for the undiscovered memories that lay hidden within its walls, within its rooms, and within its very core. Memories that will force them both back to the thought of their parents, whom they had both tried to distance themselves from because of the numbing pain. Georgina had given up hope along with the lawyers, excepting the facts as a sign to move on while Gwenyvere stubbornly stood her ground, silently wishing they would keep searching, they must still be alive.

Obviously there is major tension between the sisters after the move, but in all honesty, they never got along in the first place. Both of them are so completely different. Those differences are only amplified after the search was ended for their parents. I entitled this short story The Healing House because over time, while both of them restore the house and discover hidden, albeit painful memories to relive of their parents, wading through such dark waters will in turn heal them, both their personal scars and those ripped between them. The house will become both a connection to the past and a connection between each other, as well a connection to a new future. A future in which they no longer push the memories of their parents into a dark, shadow laden corner but keep them close to their heart, remembering what was, and how a series of unspeakably painful events brought them to an unassuming house which silently did so much for them.

I'll admit, though you probably guessed already I've never been one for brevity, but hopefully I didn't ramble on too long about one of my recent short story ventures. But I'm excited about it!

Old houses are a major part of why I write, if not one of the main reasons, and they will continue to inspire me. Both in my writing, and my own life. Like I mentioned way in the beginning of this blog post, I someday wish to own a dilapidated old home not unlike the one I described in The Healing House and live in it while I fix it up. Whether I'll sell it after I'm done restoring or simply choose to stay permanently is up for discussion! Knowing me, I'd become irrevocably attached with every single house I restored. It can't be helped though right?

A Picture's Worth A Thousand Words

Yes, I know, it's a overused phrase, but I'm using it in a different way. What I mean by that is. Instead of saying something like "when you look at this photo it brings back so many memories, ones that took place before it, ones that took place during it, and those after it. That's definitely a thousand words isn't it? Whether it's a picture with your Grandparent's taken exactly two months before they passed, the quirky snapshot of you with your boyfriend smiling next to his car that he crashed a week later and totaled...or that old, grainy black and white photograph of your Great-Grandparent's house perched upon the flat countryside of the Plains. You'd never been there, but had seen many pictures of it and a myriad of stories woven with mystery, love and nostalgia. With that said it would seem that each picture is worth a million words! Or perhaps an infinite amount. In any case, I believe none of us can look at family photos, present and past, and not feel something, whether it be good or bad.

There's another side to photographs, as well as paintings. The reason I bring up paintings is in lieu of my latest assignment for my online Creative Writing class. The assignment was to find a painting and write a short prose piece about it, or in other words, create a short-short story behind the painting. Prose is the ordinary language people use in speaking or writing. But before I get into that, let me for a moment talk about the relationship between photographs and my own writing.

Whenever I write a short story or novel you can bet that it's origins originated from a photograph. Which is most often a house! Take a current novel I started roughly last summer called Ties That Bind. It's a supernatural-based mystery that I based off of a picture of a c.1899 Victorian Second Empire cottage I found on oldhouses.com. Now with any Second Empire home, in my opinion at least, they give off that haunted house aura. Perhaps it's the curvaceous mansard roof, the elegant gingerbread molding or the mere fact that they stand out from the myriads of look-alike houses. Whatever the reason, upon the seeing the photograph of the house, with its own mansard roof and dark and light green paint job, my mind started concocting a story behind its historic walls. The story ended up being about a girl around my age who looses both of her parents in a horrific accident, only to be beckoned to her old Great Aunt's bed side where she unknowingly encounters the supernatural and is given a cryptic skeleton key and an even more portending warning from her Aunt's dying lips.

Agnes Blackwell, or Aggie, the story's main character, leaves her parent's modest bungalow in the quiet cul-de-sac she called home and arrived on the doorstep of the abandoned Victorian cottage where the threads of her past all come together to weave a web of deceit, lies, horrors, undiscovered sins...and at the heart of it...a century's old curse who has haunted every female member of Aggie's family since her 5th Great Aunt, Virginia Blackwell, started it all in that unassuming, dilapidated cottage. The curse began there, and it will end there...with Aggie. Can she break the curse and save future female Blackwell descendants? Or will she become another victim and bring everything full circle? Forever expunging the Blackwell name?

I'll admit, although that particular short story that I started was largely inspired by the c.1899 Victorian cottage on oldhouses.com it was also inspired by my favorite TV show, Supernatural.

As another example, take my current project, a short story series called Wide Open Spaces. In which five friends live in a fictional rural small town called Templeton located in Oklahoma's panhandle. The town is stricken by severe weather, mainly tornadoes, and the five friends have to learn to live in harmony with them. The town has never been industrialized. They are at the heart of Americana, clinging to a quickly expiring way of life. If you want a clearer picture of just what kind of life I tried to portray for them look up a song by Mary Chapin-Carpenter entitled I Am A Town. It perfectly captures the essence of Templeton, and that of the five main characters. The inspirations behind this particular story? For once, it's not a house I found on oldhouses.com but rather a fictional bungalow! Granted, yes, the bungalow closely resembles one of my favorite homes to ride my bike past in Sheboygan, but for the most part it came from my own imagination. Whenever I talk about houses they always take on human qualities, or what's known as personification. There's something about them that causes me to habitually put them at the center of my stories. Or it could just simply be my obsession with them!

As always, I digress, but as I've said many times before, even though I sometimes veer far from the tracks which I first set out on with each blog post, somehow the path I end up and the beginning path are linked. Whether that link be inconspicuous or obvious is up for discussion.

With that said I can return to my latest assignment for my online Creative Writing assignment. Just as I showed you I can create in-depth stories behind a single photograph of a historic house, so was I asked by my Professor to write a prose piece about a single painting we found online or in life. While first meeting the project with trepidation, thinking to myself...how am I going to do this? How will I create a believable story behind a singular painting? Most of all what I found most intimidating was the fact that I had to write in third person. Naturally - and as perhaps a direct consequence of reading so many books written in first person growing - I've always written my short stories in first person. For me, it seems the most natural and the best way to convey my "writer's voice" onto the paper.

Albeit, once I finished the assignment I realized my trepidations were ill-placed. I had no problem writing in third person, and in fact found it a refreshing change. Also, writing the prose piece wasn't hard either. It was basically like writing a condensed story which led up to the point of the painting. For my prose piece I chose a Norman Rockwell painting entitled Family Grace. I've always been intrigued by Rockwell's paintings, they portray such simple moments in life that appear to be amplified snapshots of Americana and favorite past times when captured by his brush and deft hand. Below I've posted my prose piece, which carries the same title as the Rockwell painting. I'll see if I can post the painting as well, so you can get a better picture of where my story is coming from.

I've enjoyed posting my writing for you all to read, and look forward to the comments you may post. My Creative Writing class has been one of the best college classes I've taken so far!

Family Grace

The look on their faces belied their words; didn’t they know he wasn’t a little boy anymore? “Thomas,” they had said, with voices overly cheerful, stretched like thread barren clothes on the line, “Daddy and I are going to take you to your Grandparents. Would you like that?”

On ordinary days, yes he would have, but not now, not when the sky is blotted out, or when pale, relentlessly moving drifts of sand roll across the land like prehistoric creatures. Through cracks in his shuttered window Thomas saw old Model A’s abandoned in those haunting drifts, some swallowed whole; while others were stripped clean by thieves.

Grabbing his hand, his mother tugged him along anxiously. They yearned to escape this place, he could feel it in their touch, in their words, even on their lips as they kiss him goodbye on his Grandparent’s doorstep. With what child-like youth that still clung to his bony frame he held his mother’s hand a moment longer, relishing the feeling of her smooth skin against his. Her green eyes lifted to his, cast in shadow beneath the tattered rim of her straw hat.

“Thomas,” she whispered, her voice reaching out to him like the sand-choked wind scrapping against the wooden clapboards of his house, stripping it of paint, trying to get inside. “You know Daddy and I have to look for work. We agreed a long time ago, before any of this began.” She flung a gloved hand behind her, as if to encompass the ubiquitous storm layered upon the Great Plains. “That we wouldn’t take you with us; it’s no life for a little boy. Shhh,” she whispered when Thomas opened his mouth to object, pressing a finger to his lips.

“You’ll have a good life here. I know I did when I was growing up.” His mother attempted a laugh but it tumbled from her lips like a hurricane lamp pushed to the ground by a gust of wind. Thomas feared his mother would dissolve into broken shards right there on the doorstep so he wrapped his arms around her, trying to ignore her trembling shoulders.

“Be good now.” Each word tickled his ear, but stung his heart like the particles of sand whipping against his face. “We’ll return for you, I promise, all of you.” With a rustle of muslin skirts and short sobs she was gone, pretending to fumble through her purse as the Model A drove out of sight, Thomas’ father at the wheel.

A gruff voice welcomed Thomas into the Colonial style home. The Palpable scents of dinner drifted to him from the kitchen, which was tucked into a nook at the back of the house. A rough hand fell on his shoulder, hardened by years of farming and working the land. Now the land is rebelling, Thomas thought. How ironic.

“We’ll wait in the keeping room for dinner,” his Grandfather said, steering Thomas into the small area off the vestibule. Crackling flames lit the fireplace, their heat reaching out, beckoning him to an antique Windsor chair near the hearth. According to the myriad tales his grandfather told about his beloved home, the keeping room was originally used as the main heat source since it was located directly off of the kitchen. Nowadays his grandparent’s used it as a parlor of sorts, a place to seek respite from the day’s grinding pace.

Everything about this house is comforting, Thomas marveled. His Grandfather sat down beside him on a pockmarked settee. As if all the years his Grandparent’s had lived in it the house had emulated their personality, or became a living thing.

Living, the singular word halted his thoughts. Just moments before his parents had been alive and well. What if they became another statistic, another victim of the pale, towering clouds that rose on the horizon to bury entire cities?

He was too young to be contemplating such things, his mother had chided him many times, but what was he to do? Even in the shelter of this house, in the protection of his grandparents, he could not escape from the tumultuous wrath of the dust storms. It was inside him, as if he had swallowed a handful of that dust.

The muted clank of dishes drew him outside his head. In the large chair he turned, looking up at his grandfather’s weathered face. “Time to eat son,” he announced, turning slowly towards the kitchen.

Ladderback chairs scraped, three pairs of hands folded in tandem. His Grandparent’s exchanged soft smiles. Their eyes sparkled, as if indistinguishable candles flickered within them. They had always lived simply, working and living off the land. It hadn’t given them much, and now seemed intent on taking it all away.

Still they prayed, to a God they loved dearly, and knew wouldn’t betray them. Grandfather’s rough voice spoke slowly as he prayed, as if walking a familiar path.
Thomas thanked God for this moment.

The Outside of a Horse is Good for the Inside of a Man

We've all heard that quote haven't we? Whether it came from an inspirational speech, a horse-loving friend, a book you were reading or any number of things. What does it mean to you? Obviously if you love horse - like me - you know what the quote is trying to convey, but if you don't like horses, what are you supposed to glean from it?

Like a lot of young girls I was bitten by the horse bug early on in life. It all started when my Mom brought my brother and I to Hardee's, I was maybe three or four. Upon going through drive-thru I found out there was a toy in the bag. As it turned out that toy was a plastic, white horse. To this day I still have that horse stashed somewhere in one of several toy chests scattered around the house, buried amongst other childhood relics like memorabilia treasure waiting to be discovered and remembered.

Since that day my love of horses has grown ten fold! For each birthday and Christmas after that little white horse my parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents and friends all bought me horses, and I couldn't have been happier! I'm sure while I was growing up my parents, albeit feeling joy watching me feed my obsession, also undoubtedly felt a trickling sense of trepidation. After all, horses are infamously synonymous with high costs. But despite that looming fact I still found ways to get up on a horse every now and then.

It started with a therapeutic program called R.E.I.N.S, and although I couldn't tell you what it stands for anymore, I can say that after struggling to balance my bike while riding without training wheels, after just a few short weeks of riding the horses in the program...I rode my bike with ease, no trace of the lack of equilibrium. The program was a huge help for me throughout my childhood years. All of the horses were extremely relaxed, therefore I felt comfortable around them. Perhaps too comfortable! Some of the horses would sense my confidence up in the saddle and want to take off at a trot. I still have a lock of hair from the tail of one of the ponies I rode in the program tucked away in my closet. I can remember what the horse looks like, but it's name? That's a different story. But I do remember a small pony I rode upon first entering RE.I.N.S who's name was Nugget.

I've come to realize that as I get older I remember things in freeze frame, like my mind's eye is a stuck-open shutter, always snapping pictures and storing them in towering metal filing cabinets where they sag against the floorboards of my memory under their relentless weight. Like I was discussing yesterday with the owner of the horse rescue farm I volunteer at in Reedsville, I also remember directions to certain places by landmarks along the way. For instance, for the right exit off of the highway to get to the horse rescue farm I recognize it not by it's name but by the fact that there's two red barns across the street. Just as on the way up to my Grandparents' house I know I'm getting close by the scenery becoming familiar.

Whether all of that is evidence of a photographic memory I'm not sure, but that's how I've always remembered things. This is what happens when I free-write, I get myself off track! But it all ties together in the end anyway, like I've said before. For how random my blog posts seem, and how varied their topics are, there is always a connecting thread between all of them like a bridge across every river.

After R.E.I.N.S I was involved in 4-H for a number of years. I dabbled in a program called Horseless Horse, which teams up people who have horses...with people who don't, and while the program wasn't all successful for me, I did get to spend some more time with horses and even show a few times! It wasn't until my senior year of high school that I really got involved with horses. At the high school I went to it was tradition that all seniors, in place of exams, would complete a nearly year-long project called Capstone. Since it was a Christian school the project focused on a problem based locally in Sheboygan - my hometown in Wisconsin - and how we, as students, could look at it through a Christian point of view and come up with solutions. I decided to do horse abuse and slaughter, since the issue of horse slaughter was up for debate in congress at the time. I garnered myriads of information, and visited a few horse rescue farms around Sheboygan, one of them being Sunrise Horse Farm in Reedsville, Wisconsin, which is owned and operated by Mary-Ellen Kiel.

When I first arrived she only had six horses, but as of current times she has ten. Just like the horses at R.E.I.N.S all eight horses are extremely docile. Mary-Ellen only uses six horses for the program she runs, the other three being owned by other people. The first time I'd stepped foot on her farm I hadn't been around horses for a while, but after meeting her and taking a walk down to the barn I realized that my freshly built up fears were senseless. I felt at ease around the horses, whether I was feeding them, brushing them or simply feeding them treats. Mary-Ellen herself is a very kind, unassuming and compassionate woman. Usually it takes me a while to warm-up to strangers, that is, to open up, but I found myself chatting amiably with her, perhaps finding comfort in her friendly disposition and that of the other people there.

Nowadays I try to make it out there just to help out with chores and such, as well for major events, such as the Christmas party or her recent Fall Festival, which took place last month. I am comfortable around all the horses and enjoy spending time around them. Take yesterday for example. It had been a cold day, with the wind gnashing its teeth in that all too familiar matter of Wisconsin winters, while temperatures tauntingly dipped below fifty-five degrees. Despite the biting wind and the cold stone walls emanating that chill in the barn I found solstice by brushing the eldest horse of the eight, a thirty-seven year old Morgan named Jubilee. Forgetting my gloves in the house I soon found my hands warmed by his body heat, not to mention his luxuriously thick winter coat. In turn I found laughter in the three barn kittens scampering around my feet, and Mary-Ellen's sole remaining dog, Shep, who was eager for attention.

There is something peaceful about completing a task as seemingly mundane as brushing a horse. While I listened to the sound of him methodically chew his food, the normal creaks and groans of an old barn and the scampering's of the mischievous kittens I let my mind wander like it always yearns too like a half-broken Mustang straining at the bit to run across the Plains. On the farm, in that barn, amidst the horses, eating a simple, healthy dinner with Mary-Ellen, feeding the horses hay, or playing with the kittens or petting the dog...life seems simpler. All of the complications, worries, fears, uncertainties and everything in-between falls away, as if only a few words are scribbled on that page, in that moment, instead of entire paragraphs hastily scrawled across it's surface in a dead panic as you rush from one thing to another.

Of course, I know for me it has a lot to do with the fact that Sunrise Horse Farm is located at the end of a secluded dirt road, removed from the bustle of city life. Mary-Ellen herself said she lived in the city for nine months years back but she hated it so much she moved back to the country. If any of you reading this blog post know me you know I despise the city. Its noise, its pollution, its hectic, haphazard pace, its complicated way of life...everything! Just as I wasn't born to endure Wisconsin's frigid winters so was I unequipped to live in the city. I can feel it from somewhere deep within me, perhaps from the well in which my resident writer at heart springs from, whenever I enter the countryside...this was where I was meant to live.

How can you be so sure you ask? After all, I've lived in the city my whole life, only entering the countryside every now and then. Like I said before, I can just feel it. Think of it as spotting that perfect dress across an entire store length. You haven't tried it on, haven't even seen it up close but yet you know...it's the perfect fit and style for you. Or perhaps you're reading a really good book and find yourself relating to the character in such a way you start experiencing the story along side them, almost as if you've entered the story itself. That's how it feels whenever I enter the countryside. If you want an even deeper picture of just how much I love the countryside and small towns read my blog post entitled Where The Green Grass Grows.

Well, this has been an interesting blog post! I varied with topics ranging from therapeutic riding, 4-H, photographic memory, the horse rescue farm I volunteer at...to my indistinguishable love for the countryside and horses! See what I mean? I could write all over the board when it comes to topics but yet there's that constant underpinning of connectivity. It's always there...you have to look a little harder to see it.

In closing, for anyone wishing to get around horses again, I strongly advise looking up local horse rescue farms, animal shelters or any other non-profit organization. Not only do they need help in any season, but you'll also become re-acquainted with being around horses and fall back into a plush comfort around them...just like I did! In addition, to loosely quote Mary-Ellen, it's during the wintertime that places like the one's I've mentioned, including her farm, need all the help they can get. Whether it's the holidays coming up, school, relatives arriving or just the fact that winter maroons us inside our homes...volunteer help becomes slack, shifting the burden of work upon those who remain. At Sunrise Horse Farm, the wind may be biting, the barn's stone walls may be permeated with a deep chill, your fingers may be barely able to hold a curry comb as you work burrs out of thick, winter coats but there's always a certain truth...the sweet, aromatic smell of a wood stove along with its welcoming heat and a steaming, warm cup of hot apple cider will be waiting for me. That, as well as the horses, the atmosphere and Mary-Ellen's inviting, amiable personality will keep me coming back through the winter.

Perhaps my next blog will focus on my obsession with apples!