I Have No Idea

My mom called me this evening. After a brief exchange, she said, "You didn't go to work today."

"How did you know?" I asked.

"Because you sound happy."

It was true. I'd spent the entire day shoeing horses. I have to say I was incredibly moved by the experience. That may sound like an odd thing to say, but it has affected me in some expected ways and quite a lot of unexpected ways as well. On the snowy hour and a half drive home tonight I felt like I wanted to cry. I didn't, just for the record. But I felt an upwelling of emotion and I don't know why. I didn't feel particularly happy or sad. I just felt like I needed a release. It was such an intense day, physically and mentally.

Shoeing horses is seriously hard work. It was a lot harder and infinitely more frustrating than, say, bucking hay. I didn't actually put any shoes on, but I pulled a lot of shoes off and clinched or finished just as many. I don't have the skill to do the shaping or the shoeing, so I'd clean out the hooves and pull all the shoes on the first horse, then move to the second. The farrier would then shoe the first horse. He'd move to the second by the time I was done, then I'd move back to the first and finish each foot by clinching the nails, filing them off, then shaping the hoof with a rasp to ensure a perfect match with the shoe. And so this was our routine. We did eight horses in 9 hours with no actual stopping for lunch (we grazed on our sandwiches between horses.) The only reason it took us that long was because it was a busy day at the barn. I must've met a dozen cowboys who all had business there, and every one of them wanted to shoot the breeze. One was the manager of the entire equine facility. He was a huge, older man with giant hands. He was a close talker and one of those who likes to grab your shoulder and lean into you every time he says something or makes a joke. I welcomed the breaks, but the farrier didn't welcome the delays.

He's an interesting guy, that Masterson. When I arrived he was all smiles and hearty handshakes, and he immediately set about showing me how to pull shoes. "Now this isn't a contest to see which cowboy has the biggest wiener," he sad. I wish I'd had a way to inconspicuously write down all the phrases he said that made me cock my head. I don't know about wiener size, but I do know it takes some serious strength and technique to wrench a shoe from a hoof. And you have to do it while holding the hoof between your legs and bent over parallel to the floor. And of course the horse will generally humor you for about 30 seconds before it decides it's done. Horses are immensely powerful. I cannot overstate that. It is our good fortune that horses are so amenable to our controlling them. Human history would have been very different if horses had the attitude of, say, bison. Anyhow, my legs muscles were on fire before I even managed to finish pulling my first shoe, but that was nothing compared to how my lower back felt by the time I left.

I didn't talk much today. I was focusing heavily on what I was doing, and any intermittent down time was spent on deep inner reflection. So much was racing through my mind. I was thrilled to be there, soaking up the experience. But I have to admit one low point. I was standing with the back leg of a particularly grumpy old horse wrapped around my waist, his foot squeeze tightly but precariously between my two legs, and my face in his foot. I was trying desperately to get a shoe off. The horse kept wiggling and fidgeting and I kept having to drop the foot, or else he'd just yank it away from me. If he'd decided to kick, I'd have flown across the barn. There's no telling what kind of condition I'd be in upon landing; anything from seriously injured to dead, I suppose. My legs were like jelly. My lower back was screaming. Steaming horse shit was falling past my ear for the fifth time, and the one next to me wouldn't stop farting for more than five minutes (and let me tell you, a horse fart could fill a hot air ballon.) At this moment I was seriously asking myself what on God's green earth was I doing here? I could be sitting in a warm office behind my perfectly safe Macintosh sipping a latte, pecking leisurely at sterile keys and earning a lot of money. And that's when I started pondering perspective and its incredible power. Depending on your perspective, you can justify (to yourself anyway) anything from exterminating millions of Jews to leaving a posh office job to stand in horse shit wondering if the day would end before you were kicked to death or threw your back out. Perspective. It's important.

I also had a lot of incredible flashbacks to my past while I was in the barn and on my contemplative drive home. Masterson is 25 years old, has a master's degree, and has a 3.8 GPA. He just applied to vet school. Another gal in the barn had also just applied to vet school, and the two of them had a conversation which I paid close attention to. For whatever reason I started thinking about my early college years and how excited I was by all of it. I had such big plans to become a scientist and go change the world. Even my original plan to go to vet school was so that I could specialize in marine vertebrates, move to a tropical paradise and do research in a lab. I thought heavily about those days and the excitement and emotion that carried me along. But somewhere along the way I opted for an easier, more certain career path and forgot all of my plans. I suppose today I was ripe for this foray into long forgotten dreams in no small part because of Gerard. Gerard is studying ecology and evolutionary biology, which was my major when I first started college and was aiming for vet school. His excitement about all the things he learns has been stirring up old feelings lately. A few weeks ago he actually got to hold in his hands the fossilized bones of Australopithecus. How freakin' cool is that? He just happened to peak into a lab at the university and saw someone in a white lab coat poring over something in a box. He stepped in and the scientist excitedly let him hold some of the bones (with gloves on, of course.) It reminded me of my days taking science classes and all my big dreams.

It all got me thinking that, despite the specifics of how things turned out for me, I'm still saving the world inasmuch as any average Joe can. The secret to success, to mastering anything, is to focus on that thing. Bodybuilders get those grotesque bodies by obsessing over it. Scientists get prestige by obsessing over their field of research. Greenpeace saves the whales by literally throwing themselves in front of the harpoons. But what do you accomplish if one day you want to be a vet, then you want to be a cartographer, then you want to be a cowboy, then you want to be... Get the point? I sure did.

Maybe subconsciously I'm just trying to ensure I always have an antelope to chase. Maybe subconsciously I want the world to be like a Disney musical. Maybe I just have a hard time focusing. Maybe I'm trying to define myself. Maybe I'm just never satisfied. More questions that have no answers. I'm good at coming up with them.

What I do know is that I had a fantastic experience today and I wouldn't trade it for anything. I needed it. I'm planning to go back for more. I also know that, despite the host of new questions, I actually feel a whole lot better about my current career. In fact, today anyway, I'm not even dreading finishing my coursework this semester. Isn't that funny. I guess more than anything, today was a big satisfying bite that helped satiate my ravenous appetite to answer, "what if?" It's too early to tell, but maybe farriery will indeed help me with a career change: maybe it'll help me realize that what I've got is really what I need after all - just as long as I continue to let myself explore new things.

Maybe I should either delete this blog or start writing all of my mental crap on an anonymous blog. Maybe I should save this one for short, fun writing and pictures about mountains and the farmer's market, which was what I originally intended.

Ever wish you could just go to sleep for a few weeks and wake up with a clear head and a fresh outlook? Yeah. Goodnight.