WHERE DID I GO? THE HORSES CALLED...

Has it really been twelve weeks?  That is difficult to believe. 
 But (ah there is the excuse) but, life changes then we change--then things, incidents, places, people and even purposes and directions change.
We take a deep breath and--go on.
In these weeks I have moved to my Mother's house which I inherited, moved my 'things' here; painted, cleaned, renovated and settled in, close to a farm, so that I may take up writing more directed to telling my 'real' story.
Yes, the actual story of the horses of Aspen Ridge Ranch.  I knew this day was fast approaching when I began to disclose, in this notebook, the stories of some of the individual horses and some of the people who loved and worked with them. 
This is a story that I thought might not need to be written.  It seems that was wishful thinking and the day has arrived when I am responsible for writing the truth of the matter.
Thus:  the departing from the past and the arrival in the present. 
I find that I am content to tell it and now I have time.  None of the horses in the near barns are mine; all belong to students and friends.  I supervise teaching and the workings of the Lessons and enjoy the company of close companions.
I have time to remember and to write about how it all began.
You see, I had a ranch in Colorado.  It lay along one of the high valleys running behind the front range of the Rocky Mountains, sixty miles or so to the West of Denver. 
The highest point was located at 9,500 feet in the Spruce and Pine forrests.  The meadows rushed down five hundred feet cascading into aspen groves miles long.  Those groves turned soft chautreuse green in the Springs, golden in the Falls and naked white in the snows of Winter. 
The wind whispered through them the secrets of the deer, mountain lions, occasional moose and the herds of horses ranging through the glades.
From the highest point on the ranch I could look out across the rolling parks of the South Range where the wild Iris bloomed so thick the bogs looked like purple carpet. 
The wind raged over the Parks in the cold months, blowing snow well above the snow fences placed to define the highways; the passes closed with every storm; the sun burned cold-cold to blind people who dared to ride out without hats to shade their eyes.
We bought four hundred acres backing onto government land of three thousand acres, my husband, my daughters and I. 
I had waited fifteen years to purchase property for a home.  I designed the house (everyone who knew it called it : the High House) which sheltered us. I helped build it with its contracter, Sven Keirkgarte, a man who usually built church altars and baptismn founts, an Artist friend who fell in love with the site and asked to build our home. 
I drove the highway miles, with and without my children to paint and nail and hold the other end of boards. Sometimes we slept over in the rough cabin on the property for back to back workdays.  The daughters slept in hammocks , one to each corner of the front room, while I slept in piles of bedrolls on a short mattress by the fireplace.
Sven moved a trailer onto the area, lived there for two years and then, one day-simple and just-like-that, it was finished. 
We left our rented house, drove the narrow roads up and up with the moving vans, settled beds, each daughter to her own room, to sleep in the country-quite under the brilliant, bright, close to the ground stars.
That first night I sneaked down to the house front, half finished balcony, to lie in blankets and dream under the stars, changing positions in the dark, deep skies.
And so it began: my life with Horses.
Beautiful, private, free; I never thought to question what that perfectedness would cost, not in the beginning.