Retrospect: the stables

Self-tutoring about people and events from the past: the tutor reflects….

In the village I lived when I was 10-13, there was a little one-room rec centre. Next to it were tennis courts.

Land usage is different between growing places where it’s expensive, versus rural places where it’s cheap. The rec centre had a driveway: you could turn off the road and park in front of it. Yet, as I recall, there was a gravel, yet somewhat grassy, patch that extended along the road, reaching far back from the rec centre, on which many cars could’ve parked. That land lay “unused.” However, it would likely have a small plaza on it, were it on the West Coast.

Another interesting fact about that driveway: it continued somewhere else, though you’d never realize where if you didn’t spend time around there. You’d drive into the parking lot as if going to the rec centre, but could continue driving forward, passing in front of the tennis courts. The throughway was informal, but apparent: it had two tire beds and a grassy patch between, like a retired logging road people still use. It proceeded past the tennis courts, then, after about 50 feet, into an alley among buildings that had always been there, but I knew nothing of.

One day we were playing tennis when a pickup truck headed by on that “road”, past the tennis courts, then disappeared among those buildings. I think we stopped playing to watch, not knowing where the truck was going. We never thought to follow that road because the buildings it led to looked old and unwelcoming. I forget if we saw the truck return.

One day I was alone at the tennis courts when a girl I knew from school suddenly appeared. Her name might have been Megan; she was nice but we hadn’t much in common.

“Jack…want to come see my horse?”

“Sure…where?”

“This way.”

She led me down that mysterious road, among those foreboding buildings. One of them, to my surprise, was stables.

She led me into the building through an open barn door. She might have taken me by the hand because she could tell I was reticent; reality was changing too fast for me. Moreover, I’d never been in a stable.

“Come on…it’s fine,” she said.

Being someone who spent time around horses, she could obviously read animals’ body language – including mine. Therefore, she sensed my reservation wasn’t because of her, but rather the (to me) surprising situation.

We passed several stables then she opened hers and brought me inside. There was her horse, of whom she was humbly very proud. I’d never been that close to a horse, nor had any idea how to behave around them.

“Give her some hay,” she said, pulling some from a square bale.

Once again I followed her lead: the horse ate the hay from my hand. I think I got a second and third handful for the horse.

Megan brushed the horse and groomed its mane, if I recall correctly. Next I think she picked its feet. It allowed all this to happen very calmly; clearly this was routine. Megan talked to me, herself, and the horse, half under her breath, while she tended the horse. I think she was explaining to me what she was doing. Then, just like that, Megan gave the horse some final strokes along its side and on its forehead, then led me out and closed the door. She brought me into another horse’s stable – this was a bigger one. I stood back.

Megan picked up one of its hooves and pointed: “its feet need to be picked,” she commented. “Most of these horses need that done, too, but I don’t have time to do it for them. Anyway, let’s go.”

Megan brought me out of the building, then back out from the mysterious driveway, to the tennis court where she’d found me.

“See you again,” she smiled and waved, then walked away in a direction I’d never followed from there.

Even now, it’s somewhat wondrous to me that, hidden at the end of that mysterious drive, was a stable building. I tried to see it from the other side, where a road also passes, but couldn’t. Moreover, I don’t recall seeing Megan ever again.

Jack of Oracle Tutoring by Jack and Diane, Campbell River, BC.