Bailey's Blog

The Bare Essentials

Just down the road from me lives an old Quarter Horse mare named Bailey. She is drop dead gorgeous, and I never look at her without thinking of the movie Spirit. She could’ve been Spirit’s mother.

Like many people, and many horses, Bailey, at first glance, looks just fine and dandy. She carries her scars on the inside, where no one can see and ask too many questions.

While I’ve been told her story, I forget all but the bare bones. Her eyes tell the story of her life, for those with eyes to see. She was used, she was abused, and she was thrown away. She was rescued, she was mended, she found a home that honors her just the way she is.

Bailey

I know this because a few years ago I was asked to come to Trinity Haven Farm where she lives, in order to evaluate all their horses. The question I was asked to answer was - is it appropriate to expect anything at all of Bailey at this stage?

Bailey looked healthy, strong and not at all her age, but within seconds I knew her age and physical state had nothing to do with the question I was being asked to answer. To stand beside her was to stand on one side of a cool glass wall, reaching out to Bailey with curiosity but with no resonance, no warmth, no interest in return. Not even a hint of connection. When I slowly reached out and placed my hands on her, her skin quivered in trepidation, and her eyes darted with concern. I asked her to walk with me, and she complied, but more out of fear than willing compliance.

I cannot explain how, but as a wave of sadness washed over me, I felt her emotional pain, her fear, and her complete lack of interest in anything I might offer, however kindly. Her willingness and try had long since been sucked dry; her faith in humanity obliterated. The worst part was the sense that, despite her improved circumstances, she had simply surrendered any hope of restoration. Her exquisite amber eyes reflected back my gentle inquiries unanswered with a hollow stare that whispered why? Why are you doing this to me? What more can I give that I haven’t given already?

Bailey had been falling through life for some twenty years by then, a tumbleweed life that had left her little to show for it. Her body felt a near vacant shell, housing a broken heart and shattered soul, tentatively glued together with the affections of her new caretaker, like a beloved vase too broken to fix, to beloved to let go of. She had no thrills or frills left to offer; Bailey was down to the bare essentials. Live, breathe, eat, repeat. Hide as best she could, even if just from the shadows in her mind.

 I handed the rope back to her caretaker Christine and shook my head.

“She is done, and the kindest thing you can do for her is to let her be. Love her, take care of her, but please, let her be.”

Bailey is lucky. She found a soft place to fall, and now when I see her, I smile. Sometimes, I could swear she smiles back. I smile because not only is she safe, she is content, and she has found reason to give of herself once more. She gives of herself to the guests that she allows to caress her, that spend time in her gentle presence. She gives of herself as she lends her beauty to the landscape she inhabits, and gives pleasure to the eyes that behold her over a glass of wine, in the light of a setting sun. She gives as she chooses, and not a penny more. It is enough, and it is, perhaps, more than she has ever had before.

She is a safe port in the stormy life of a young gelding named Valor, who at four years old had already seen far too much of what this world can throw the way of a flashy young horse, while seeing nothing of anything much at all. The world outside of the barn and arena terrified him.

Weaned too young, isolated from his kind in stalls, and raised only by the varying degrees of kindness humanity may offer, at four years old Valor had no language with which to approach other horses. The geldings at Trinity Haven all but ate him alive, but Bailey took him in and showered him with all the kindness and affection she never got to give to her foals before they left her side.

Bailey and Valor live in a gentle peace in the back pasture, safe from the world outside, while submerged in the best bits of it. Quietly, she has taught him the ways of the natural world. How to be a horse. How to simply…be. His confidence grows by the day; his intelligence, curiosity and inborn cheekiness is finally on full display and growing exponentially in exuberant displays of playfulness, while Bailey watches indulgently, her warm eyes glowing.

And little by little, though she seemed to have nothing to offer, it is apparent to those of us who watch closely, that she has given him the world, while making him ready to enter back into it.

I smile because now she seeks me out for a gentle chat, and rests her head in my hands. I smile because she reminds me daily, that sometimes, when we are stripped down to the bare essentials, that is when we finally discover our true worth in the way of things.

I smile because the very people who think themselves broken with nothing to offer the rest of us, are often the ones people remember the best. They are remembered for a smile that lit up someone’s darkness, a touch that conveyed a gentleness never before known, a kind word that warmed a chilled heart. They can be the safest place for a soul in need, and the only ones who could hand us the world and never even know it, because they never knew it was theirs to give. I smile because some higher power knows, and will find ways to reward them, even if we don’t get to see it.

To learn more about Trinity Haven Farm, please visit https://trinity-haven.com/

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