at rest

We were on our way back into Kamloops, driving on Long Lake Road, just after we parked on the shoulder of the quiet road for 10 minutes to watch a Great Grey Owl swoop over the road and perch on a tree about 50 feet away from us, anyway, we were on our way back when I said, Stop! Because two horses were so perfectly at rest in their pasture that I wanted to enter the field, their bodies, and just be there for, what, the rest of my life? Another horse was keeping watch off to the side so they could drowse in the weak morning sunlight.

And later, well, driving back from Paul Lake where we’d eaten the leftover pizza from last night and watched a joyous golden labrador swim with wild abandon, that was when I said stop again. Because there was one of those places you feel you know, maybe you lived there in another incarnation, the one where you raised cattle on the slope of Harper Mountain, grew sunflowers as tall as yourself, and kept a couple of horses who’d lie down in the grass on a late September day and show you what it means to truly rest. Magpies flying up from the fences, bluebird houses nailed to the posts. We’ll send people this photograph, I said to John, and tell them it’s our new home.