And So It Is...

Ana sat beneath the sprawling oak surveying the expansive California hills, the air crisp and hazed in the winter light, colors vivid, yet muted, blending hills into the horizon. She coiled her long black hair around her fingers and tied it in a messy knot held together by her pencil. In her lap, she traced the cover of her notebook. Its worn, dog-eared pages told the tale of the years of stories it contained. A perfectly, flat paper wrapper floated from the pages with carefully handwritten rows of text across its width. Ana recalled with a distant memory that the wrapper had held chopsticks from her favorite sushi restaurant on the corner of Seventh Avenue and 23rd Street. A lifetime ago she had scrawled words of hope and longing, a wholly different human had sat at that teak counter, with nothing but glistening eyes and naive hubris.


Reading those vapid words brought her back to the counter. Perched on a swiveling stool, her square-toed Prada pumps balanced on the foot rail beneath, she had written: I believe in my ability to create my life, I will never doubt my place in the world. It read like a fortune cookie prophecy.


Snapping back to the present, she reached into the pocket of her faded denim jacket and grasped her hand around a coin. Emblazoned on one side was a rearing cavalry horse carrying a soldier, on the other, a profile of Queen Victoria. Dusting off the lint, Ana glanced down. She had found it many years before, walking on a remote stretch of beach not far from here. The coin’s gold finish had dulled with time, the text unreadable; she fingered its flattened indentations: 1872. Surely good luck, she went nowhere without it in her pocket.

She had not seen him yet today but it was usually when she had grown impatient with their seductive waiting game, ready to pack up her pencil and journal that he appeared, almost by summons. Today she heard a loud snort, followed by silence as she surveyed the hillside searching for him, then another before she locked on his coal-shaped eyes. Ana had seen him every day for almost a year yet somehow he managed to take her breath away each time. The wintry sun was hitting his coat at such an angle that he looked like gleaming obsidian, his long unkempt mane spilling down in matted tendrils, nostrils flaring. His tail pitched high, flagged in a crook told her he saw her too as they began their interspecies courtship.


Ana reached for the knobbed limb overhead and placed her journal in a safe nook so she could slowly begin her daily, coy tango of earning the affections of this mystical beast. He was alone today as he was quite often. As she’d noted in today’s entry, the horse was like the hunting scout who traveled solo as lead surveyor of the landscape looking for game and opportunity. Brave, strapping, fiercely independent, yet strangely serene, he would typically move out ahead of the herd to assess the day’s offerings.

The vast country was almost impossible to describe - in complete contrast to the cliched imaginings of what California was. Mostly it was a patchwork of flaxen-hued grasses patterned with the tender shoots of new freshly birthed seedlings if the rains had been generous with perhaps a glimpse of the moody Pacific in the distance if the day was clear. Sprawling oaks speckled across the rolling hillside held the secrets of generations, defying gravity in their reaching limbs that held more horizontal than vertical formations. Rain was not promised here so preservation of resources was integral to the great oak's survival.


The horse snorted again, his ears upright with a gentle focus, impossible to ignore. Horses are silent souls, their safety is in numbers and, their keen, otherworldly understanding of energy. Although there was instant recognition, he still studied the form before him making a second-by-second determination as to whether he would flee. Ana moved slowly, gathering her gauzy skirt from her ankles and toe walked from beneath the oaky canopy that had given her cover.

"Hello, handsome stranger, do you come here often? "she almost whispered.

The horse’s dinner plate hooves crossed over one another adjusting his posture watching her direct approach. Pulling some gangly dandelion stalks from the ground, she continued her approach with her earthly offering extended. This seemed to be the daily moment of submission; the horse reaching his long neck like a rounded bow toward her outstretched hand. He now would allow her childlike hand to gently stroke his neck.


It was tempting to break the trance, to grab for her book to document this poetic dance they shared, to sketch his silhouette and etch the detail of his otherworldly spirit. He was like a warrior, yet a statesman, a lover, yet her best friend. Instead, she burned its detail into her mind, willing herself to remember each move of their courtship to write of it later in the crowded pages of her life.


The story she’d imagined was that he was a descendent of a warhorse whose ship had wrecked upon the sandy shoals of the New World, leaving the animal cargo to swim ashore and inhabit the barren cliffs above this stretch of beach. They brought their secrets with them and began their complicated relationship with the inhabitants of this distant land. Ana imagined he would have carried a gallant uniform-clad Spaniard galloping courageously into battle. God smiled on him then and granted him asylum to run at the boundaries of freedom all of his days.


Ana remembered the words she had written as she stroked the stallion's neck, whispering to his lowered ear, "I believe in my ability to create my life". She knew today was different. She assuredly turned foot and returned to the cover of the great oak. The horse didn’t flee. He softly moved one foot at a time, neck outstretched, and followed her. Her skirts flowing, she glanced back coyly over her shoulder knowing he was following a few paces behind. She climbed onto the gnarled horizontal limb and waited for him. He cautiously approached as Ana invited him with her thoughts, When you believe it to be, so it is. He positioned himself with the limb and waited for her to throw her leg astride his wide, warm back.

They stood there, joined as one, for longer than she would have expected, neither wanting to break the spell. Ana was first to suggest it’s okay to move. one ear twitched back to hear her, his other perked forward and he moved out from beneath the shaded perimeter. With each step forward, they sunk into one another, a tangled hunk of mane served as her handle, her skirt tucked up beneath her. His ears flicked forward, eyeing the horizon, always a fearless, reckless spirit. Ana had melted into the flesh of this muscled mass and they moved as if choreographed. He seemed intent, focused on a point ahead, still in a collected walk as if waiting for her permission to move out more briskly. She glanced across the lonely hills, hawks dotting the sky, soaring in their midday airborne meditations. The rest of the herd was strangely absent, perhaps he signaled that this was a solitary pursuit preferring to keep Ana to himself.

Moving her leg closer to his body, she whispered "it’s okay to move." In a single smooth motion, he collected into a gentle canter, cautiously assessing her comfort with their speed as he found his rhythm. They cantered across the grassy meadows, his hooves thundering with power and protection, her shrieks of laughter and audible joy were untethered by any limitation of time and possibility. Her senses were overwhelmed, the crisp winter air filling her lungs, her body in sync with his stride, her legs tightly wrapped around his warm hide, her fingers coiled into his brushy thick mane. They moved together, his breath deepening as he carried her into the distance. Ana snapped from her rapture and they slowed back down to walk. She again soothed, “it’s okay to move", to remind herself she could break from the magic they had created.


As her senses emerged back to the present, she scanned her surroundings. The bronzed colored grass had been replaced with a lush sea of meadow flowers; white sage, poppies, and Indian paintbrush formed a watercolor of texture and smell. Ana heard the unmistakable sound of running water, formerly a drought-ravaged river bed now held the slightest hint of moisture trickling through draining to the distant Pacific. The oak trees were closer together, lining an obvious pathway toward an uncertain point. Her steady mount walked assuredly over the river bed, ears flickering forward and back listening for sounds of danger.


The horse paused at the opening of a rutted-out canyon. Beyond it, green rolling hills extended in every direction. Ana was entranced, seemingly transported to a different world on the back of her obsidian stallion. A sprawling oak guarded the canyon, this one more majestic than the others. There in the shaded umbrella of the oak was a rustic, splintered wooden bench. Her eyes strained to see there placed on top of the slab seat was the object she had rarely known life without – her book – the weathered black cover open, the pages moving slightly in the breeze, the carefully crafted letters linked together to form words. Ana jumped from the horse and moved to the bench, convinced her eyes deceived her. The book had fallen open to a page with her sketch of the Spanish coin she had found while walking on that beach many years before. 1872. He stood sentry bearing witness to the miracle she was experiencing. She reached for her pocket and pulled the coin out to look at it, questioning her mind and looking frantically around for answers.


Ana sat gingerly on the bench searching pages of her book, reading her entry from that day with the detailed sketch of the coin.  The horse remained silent, watching her closely, then reaching toward the nearby tufts of grass, nibbling. Another snort – he had snapped to attention again. 


Ana turned her back focused on a mound nearly covered by the roots. She saw a jute cloth that gave way to her fingers as she traced over it, a string pulled away revealing a bag filled with a familiar shape and form, the golden coins gleaming in the dappled sunlight. Startled, Ana reached into it and discovered the worn image of a rearing horse carrying the armed soldier, 1872. There were hundreds of coins packed to the jute bag, now spilling onto the dirt. Pushing her hand in deeper Ana felt a folded piece of parchment:

Sir,

As a token and offering of my dedication and sincerest gratitude for your service, I gift you my best horse. May he serve you well and offer protection to you in battle. In all the events of your life, when you believe it to be, so it is.

In gratitude.

Ana breathed deeply, transfixed by the words she read repeatedly, lifting the heavy tote of coins to her lap. She leaned back against the trunk and closed her eyes.


Where the horse had stood there was nothing. He was gone, the nibbled tuft of grass chewed down. Ana breathed deeply again, picked up her worn book, opened to a fresh page. There between the crisp pages was a check. Pay to the order of….. Amount $20,000. She reached for her pencil and neatly scribed, When you believe it to be, so it is.