I’ve been spending a lot of time at my parents’ home in rural Idaho.

Soul searching. Loving from a distance. Finding myself again. Giving each other space. Taking a break. Taking care of myself.

People call this process all kinds of things.

And in being here, up here, away, in my own head, I have a lot of time to think. Cogitate? Basically, it amounts to me looking out the window at the mountains and the yard for a couple hours a day. I read, I play guitar. I drink lots of tea. I’m writing my book; you’re in it, and I hope you will be in the final chapter. I miss you, a lot.

And out the window, there’s a couple of horses in a large pasture.

They’re lovers; not really, but for right now, they are in my mind. This morning they were chasing each other, nipping at each other’s flanks. Kicking one another. And right now as I write, they are nuzzling, kissing, breathing.

But most of the time, they are apart—on different ends of the pasture. Feeling the sun on their faces. Looking at each other, not whinnying or snorting. Just being. 

Later, they’ll reunite and whinny to each other; they’ll talk about how their days went and what their plans are for dinner. Someday I want to be faster, and you will chase me. Sometimes I will chase you. Someday we will graze in a field—that famous field—and our eyes will twinkle with wonder:

“Be kind to yourself, dear – to our innocent follies.
Forget any sounds or touch you knew that did not help you dance.
You will come to see that all evolves us.”

~ Rumi

They’re like the heron that I used to watch on the river all the time. Still in the wind, and free and flying in the calm.

I hope we can do that someday again…share a view of the same mountains and breathe the same air and eat from the same trough. But I will give you your space, as I did before and will do again, because I’m watching the horse lovers do it right now and it is working. I will live my life and you live yours. I will run on trails and through pastures and you will run too. And maybe when the time is right we will run into each other, utterly perfect and utterly free.

But right now, we must feel the sun on our faces and run alone.

I love you. 

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Photo: Inkom, ID