The Faraway Horses (2 of 2 free samples)

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COPYRIGHT
The Faraway Horses by Buck Brannaman. Copyright 2001 by Buck Brannaman and William Reynolds
All Rights Reserved. Sharing not permitted.

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1
GROWING PAINS

I'M ABOUT HALFWAY THROUGH a year's worth of giving horse clinics around the country. I love what I do, but I'm away from my family for long stretches at a time, and that's tough. My wife, Mary, stays at our ranch with our three daughters doing all the things a working ranch demands. Leaving them is hard. My youngest daughter still asks, "Why, Daddy, do you have to go and ride the faraway horses?"

So off I go for three to four days at each stop, meeting people and their horses, helping them get along and get things done together. Then I leave. I'm always starting, but I'm always leaving. When the expressions of the horses and the people start to become more pleasing to the eye, I have to say so long.

It's hard to explain how other people's horses could save your life, but that's exactly what happened to me. I've been thinking about this quite a bit lately.

Today my horses and I rolled into a clinic in North Carolina. It's a fall day, and the sun is just up. It's just past that time in the early morning when you can close your eyes, turn around, and pinpoint the first fingers of the rising sun. I love that time. Everything starts fresh from that point on: the day, the horses, and the people. It's a quiet time, as well.

I talk all day for a living, so I do appreciate quiet. I get to feed and saddle horses in the quiet. The only sounds are those of the horses as they eat. There is a wonderfully predictable sameness to this scene, yet there is a newness that seems to permeate each first day of a clinic. I can feel the possibilities. It's a reassuring constant. The idea of constancy is something that I've valued ever since I was little, because it wasn't there much then.

I was born in 1962, in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, but I grew up in Idaho and Montana. My family lived in California for a little while, but by the time I was two years old we were living in the house on North Fourth Street in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.

Given all that happened when I was little, the geography probably saved me as much as the horses did. The populations of Idaho and Montana are about the same as many small cities in this country, so you can imagine how small some of the towns in these states can be. Those stories you hear about towns being only "a bar and a post office" are true in many cases.

My dad, Ace Brannaman, was a talented man who had many jobs. He was a union cable splicer, and he worked on construction crews building steel towers carrying power lines from the hydroelectric dams that were being constructed across the West and up in Alaska. He had a saddle and boot repair shop, and he was a private security cop for a while. Then he worked in a sheriff's department as a deputy, which is kind of ironic when you look back at some of the things he did later on in his life.

My mom, Carol Alberta Brannaman, worked for General Telephone and Electric in Idaho, then as a waitress when we moved to Montana.

I went through a bunch as a little guy, and I can tell you there were times when I wondered if my brother and I would make it. I can remember looking up at the sky and, however simplistic it may seem now, wondering if there was a God up there. I'm sure at times we all ponder whether or not there's a God. I find myself asking "big" questions when I'm driving or riding alone on horseback, and I'm here to tell you there is a God; if you don't want to call Him that, call Him--or Her--what you want.

I was thinking about this quite a few years ago when Mom was still alive. She had diabetes, and it was real serious then. Medical science didn't have much luck controlling diabetes in those days, and even though she gave herself insulin shots, she'd been in and out of the hospital a number of times.

Dad was working in Alaska, and my older brother, Smokie, and I were at home in Coeur d'Alene with her. I was five years old, the same age as my daughter Reata is now. Late one night, Smokie and I heard something that woke us up. My mother was having a diabetic reaction, going through the stage of delirium that typically precedes a coma unless treatment is given right away. We ran into the bedroom, terrified. Mom was having a hard time. Smokie was only seven, and as he was trying to settle her, he hollered for me to run into the living room and call an ambulance.

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