Believe (free sample)

COPYRIGHT
Believe by Buck Brannaman. Copyright 2004 by Buck Brannaman and William Reynolds
All Rights Reserved. Sharing not permitted.

BELIEVE
A horseman's journey

by Buck Brannaman with Bill Reynolds

In memory of two who mattered.
Of two who cared.
Of two who lived with grace.
Tom and Bill Dorrance

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
http://www.dailylit.com/books/believe/acknowledgments

FOREWARD
http://www.dailylit.com/books/believe/foreword

INTRODUCTION

It would have been about mid-morning on that winter day in 1968, in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. There had been a wet snow--not much of it, but the kind that has so much moisture in it that everything is frigid, right down to the core of every rock, tree, and miserable warm-blooded creature. It was the kind of cold that takes all night to shake off, and by that time you have to go out and brave it again.

On this one cold day, a little boy walked out the door of his house to do his morning chores. As he did every morning, he found himself fighting mightily with about three hundred feet of half-frozen garden hose. There were no outdoor water lines; in order to fill the water tanks for the family's livestock, an enormous hose from the side of the house had to be drawn out for use and then coiled up again.

The horses would cluster around the boy as the seemingly endless stream dribbled from the crunchy hose. After watering the horses, the kid manhandled the hose across the yard to water a handful of small-bagged, pitifully poor milk cows, standing at the ready, mooing and grunting for his attention. Every morning, the water had to flow, frozen hose or not--even if it meant he had to beat the hose with a hammer. Every morning before he went off to school, that kid knew what was ahead of him.

Meanwhile, an older boy--the little kid's older brother--would head toward the huge milking barn where his own chores awaited him. (Seen through adult eyes, he would be surprised to realize that the family's huge milking barn was actually only slightly bigger than a one-car garage.) The older boy would swing his milk cans to urge the cows into their stanchions, anxious to get through the morning milking. As he worked, he would occasionally glance through the barn doors to see the hose lurching past, or watch as it got hung up on the basement windowsill. This would invariably be followed by great invisible tugging and whipping about of the hose, accompanied by muffled grunts and curses from his younger brother. The kid was a pretty sensitive youngster, but nevertheless became quite accomplished at swearing, especially when the hose wouldn't cooperate - something that happened roughly every fifty feet or so that he tried to drag the darned thing.

While slow in coming, success was eventually achieved, and the kid would finally get the hose out to the last water tank and the water would begin to trickle out of the hose and he would wait and wait and wait. Just standing there waiting, shaking and shivering in the snowy, cold air, waiting for the water tank to fill up. Well, like any six- or seven-year-old would, he'd get a little bored and would start looking around, inspecting and exploring. On this particular day, he looked up at the far end of the meadow at this Ponderosa pine tree that was sort of two trees in one. It had a deep cleft in it, about three feet off the ground. He saw something in the cleft of that tree, and really thought he should investigate. After all, he did have a little time while waiting on that water tank to fill up. And even though he could have perhaps walked on over to the milking shed to assist his older brother, he was sure that his brother would get along fine without him.

Adventure seemed more important at this point, and he walked to the end of the meadow to investigate this thing in the cleft of the great pine tree. It had snow all over it, so he looked underneath the snow to find a tiny flicker. Now, a flicker is a woodpecker-type of bird found in the northern parts of the United States. The flicker may be found all over, and there were certainly plenty of them around the area in the summertime, but this was the middle of the winter. You didn't often see birds in the wintertime, not like this.

The bird was obviously very cold and very sick. The boy thought he'd bring the bird to the house, hoping his dad wouldn't think it a waste of time and fall into such a foul mood that he wouldn't let him warm up the bird. He picked up the poor, frozen thing, and as he did, the bird, which seemed more dead than alive, let out a horrific squawk and flapped its wings. Naturally, this surprised and terrified the boy, and he dropped the frantic creature to the ground. His immediate instinct was to strike back at the thing that had so startled him, and without thinking, he stepped on the bird and killed it. He instantly realized his error--that in spite of his good intentions to save a sick creature, his instincts had caused him to kill it. He stood there quite a while, thinking about what he had done, thinking about actions versus reactions, and the shame poured over him, just as the water started to spill from the overfilled stock tank in the distance.