Riding Horses
2003-12-28 - 9:46 p.m.

As long as I can remember, we’ve had horses, but I never really learned to ride. I can sit on the saddle, and, so long as the path isn’t treacherous, I can maintain my perch. But, inevitably, the path becomes rough or the horse becomes restless, and I fall from the saddle to the soil, the ride becoming just another failure in a long series of them.

These days, everyone is riding. They pass me on the trails and the dirt roads, and ask why I walk while everyone else rides. I have no good answer for them. I shake my head, laugh, and make a light comment thinking all the while that I will someday pass the impassable, but that day has not yet come.

It isn’t long until I am not often passed. Not because I am faster than everyone else. No, it isn’t that at all. I walk these roads on my own two feet while others are carried on by tireless beasts, born and bred for the work that they do. Rather, it is that everyone who will pass me has already passed, and all those who are behind me, I will never see. I am not a young man anymore. It is likely that I will never learn to ride, likely that I will never move along any faster than my own two feet can carry me, likely that I will never reach any place that I cannot leap, run or climb to.

Life is full of things, some important and some not so much, but every thing takes up time. It was not that there was no time to learn a new skill. It is only that I chose to learn every skill but the one that would have been of the most use to me.

My body is going, but my vision is still good, and I see in the distance the rising dust of a herd of horses and riders far ahead of me. I cannot see them with my physical eyes, but my mind’s eye sees the majestic horses carrying the names and faces from my past. I see the white foam flying from the horse’s mouth as he races toward a brighter spot on the horizon, and I see the rider, a former friend or lover, sitting high atop the saddle, their mind on the future and it’s boundless possibilities. They are smiling and singing a song of triumph, for already, they know that their lives have not been wasted.

I envy their joy, for the trail behind me is much longer than the trail ahead, and I do not think I will be reaching my destination tonight.