The Gelding in the Fog

So I've been out driving the roads; something I do when nothing seems to make a lot of sense. I have a friend who does this late at night, or early in the mornings, around 2 or 3 am, which ever way you want to look at it...she is alone, out there on deserted city streets. Me, I just take off when I can and drive the backroads. Usually I come home when it turns dark because I like being at home then.

I drove out because the house got a really charged feeling, like lightning about to strike. So, I said I was going down to the barns which can take hours to work through. But I didn't stop there; I told someone that I was driving over to Ceilia's and proceeded out the gate and down to the junction and right on down 285.

I rolled down the window and breathed deep; the sun was setting, it was pretty cold and the wind started up.
Now I was driving toward Fairplay and thinking. I came to a cross road and remembered that someone had called me and asked if I would stop by a certain farm to look over a Gelding.

This was a horse she owned and no one had ever ridden him, so she said. She wanted to place this horse in training because he was: just so beautiful! He was 13 years old and had never been ridden! She thought he deserved more than living in a pasture.

Weird. Probably a lie too. But I had committed to looking at him if I got over that way. So, here I was, out for a drive in the dark, going that way.

I realized that it was fogging up; as I drove over a rise the valley around me was actually fairly hidden. And, as I drove slower and slower it got more and more dense, until my headlights were not doing too much good while I drove along in this spooky, closing down, grey ground covering: FOG.
SO, I decided to turn around; my weather sense was kicking in and I thought it best to go home now. I found a spread spot and began negotiating a turn around.

Then I decided to get out for a smoke. I occasionally smoked these hand-rolled dark brown tabaccoed cigaretellos. When I was alone. And thinking.
I got out, lit up and puffed slowly away thinking about going home to the ranch I had wanted all my life, had waited and worked for over many, many years and now it was not good. Not good at all. I was actually driven out, to hang out alone in a farm truck, in the fog. And now I heard something too. Something unplanned.

Thunderous hooves, pounding toward me! It was a BIG horse apparently. Might be my beautiful gelding! I turned toward the coming horse; he began to materialize , breaking the fog away as he galloped down the fenceline. He looked dark and managed to mark time in a rapid, yet completly off-hand sort of way as he raced toward my lights.
He slid to a halt, reared a bit,waved his head in a menancing motion; I was apparently not allowed into HIS fog! He tucked himself into a perfect turn around the quarters and cantered off to a hidden distance. I waited but there was no sound. He was hiding.
SO, I went home.

That's how I met the Horse which trained me for the Olympic trials: Achille's Revenge. I always called him Foggy. Only he and I knew why. Someone asked me once: why do you call that horse Froggy?