Home

Not to sound weird, but…you know you’re in love with your horse when you leave off working with him, but you don’t want to wash your hands, shirt, jeans—or anything that still has his smell. 

We’ve come to that point. 

When I look back, it is the smell I remember most about them. My heart horses. The memory of it transports me through time. Way back. To my happiest of happy places.  

And now it is Tumbleweed who I’m learning. 

Awww, love. 

****

This post is going to be random thoughts. 

Let me start on our most recent trip to Arizona, where we took to the road to scout out potential winter places. 

First, Sedona. 

I love the red rocks. 

There’s a scripture in The Bible where Moses asks God what he should be called, and he answers, “I am that I am.”

When I see the red rocks I feel like I’m seeing the fingerprint of the Creator. Evidence left behind. Proof that there is a divine being, and all it requests of us is that we first recognize  its existence. 

I am. 

You are. 

Everything else falls in place. 

How does it happen? I do not know. But it happens to millions who go there every year. 

I ran into a “local” at a trailhead to the Birthing Cave, a recent transplant, and she told me it is the work of the vortexes. I told her I don’t believe in them. 

Oops. 

Don’t question the vortexes. 

When I got back from the walk, she had put a card on my car door, and wrote:

Vortexes = spiritual energy amplification. 

Okay. Maybe. 

Yet,…does this need amplification?

I don’t think so. 

Here’s another caveat. 

Another local transplant commented that she liked my hat. 

Then she said that I “played the part well.”

Cough. Cough. 

No honey, it is Sedonites playing the part of me. What you see is what you get. 

But I get her point, she thinks everyone visiting Sedona is a caricature of either the western theme or the metaphysical crystals, psychics, vortexes—seeker. 

The town has 10,000 residents, yet hosts 3.5 million people a year. On weekends, the traffic is backed up for miles and miles to get there. 

Is it worth it? Yes! But go in the off-season. Live there? Well, they tell me that there is a thriving community and they learn to exist around the tourism, but it’s too much for me. 

I will remain a…caricatured tourist. 

Our next stop was Prescott, Arizona, which proudly boasts “The World’s Oldest Rodeo.” (And Whisky Row.)

There was a whole street of old saloons, like this one. 

We really liked Prescott, but it’s kind of out there, and the winters, though warmer than Spokane’s, are still too cold. 

Next stop, Wickenburg, AZ, also a rodeo town, and the winter roping Mecca for horse people. 

Wickenburg was the only place we saw people out riding the trails. 

It was a very cute town, and checks all of our boxes, but to live the way we’d want to live there would require making it our primary residence, and that isn’t happening. 

All roads lead home to Spokane. 

A place where wearing a straw hat and cowboy boots still isn’t playing a part. 

A place where you can dust off those boots, put on a clean pair of jeans and shirt, and attend a world class symphony. 

Or drink some world class wine. 

Our place. 

A place we often see fingerprints of the divine eternal, …

But no vortexes.