I was at the local hamburger/live music hangout last weekend, and someone came up to me and said, “You live in a sanctuary.” It took me a second or two before I replied, “Yes, I do.” She went on to explain that she had been at my place with my cousin when she brought her two horses to live in my pasture. “You have a sanctuary,” she repeated.
It’s not the first time someone has told me how peaceful it is here, or how lucky I am. They don’t have to tell me – I wake up every single morning with a sense of gratitude that I live on this particular spot of ground, just a few miles out of the small town where I have spent my whole life. Sometimes I feel guilty at how lucky I am.
When I used to travel every weekend to horse shows and return home late at night, I would look forward to turning “off the main road” for the last short leg of my trip. As much as loved the horse shows and the fun I had, it was still a relief to end long drives in the dark in front of my barn. When I came home after a frustrating day at work, I looked forward to feeling all the negativity slip away when I reached the shady lane that means home.
It’s not that everything is always calm and peaceful. An assortment of dogs, horses, cats, wildlife and resident cows and pigs insure plenty of excitement and more than a little frustration. Chasing horses in my bathrobe, being startled awake by a cacophony of barking at the wildlife I mentioned, chasing pigs back where they belong and occasional encounters with the skunks that live under the barn are common occurrences. But those things are trivial compared to the nights spent with dogs sprawled in front of the fire, the sound of horses munching hay and snorting softly in the dusk, the sight of deer browsing the edge of the pasture, the flight of a hawk, and the sound of birds welcoming the dawn.
I’m not sure how I feel about the existence of ghosts, if you are talking about the common idea of gauzy creatures that appear and disappear in the night. But I do believe there are energies, good and bad, left behind that permeate certain places. This place has seen its share of bad times – death and disappointment, hard times and broken hearts. But on the whole, the good has outweighed the bad and the atmosphere has a spirit of contentment. I joke about my front porch being a magic place, but I am only half joking. Sitting in the porch swing can cure what ails me quicker than anything I know. I spent lots of time on that porch with my grandmother and my mother and I think their spirits are still there. Friends tell me they feel it too.
My barn is another special place – perhaps it’s the memories it holds of my childhood. I spent hours there, brushing my horse, braiding his mane and tail, saddling up to go for a ride. So many adventures we shared. In my back pasture, he could be a race horse, a cowboy horse or Robin Hood’s horse roaming with me in the Sherwood Forest. Stories tumbled out of my head and we acted them out before I ever thought of putting them on paper.
Maybe a big part of the feeling I get here comes from the fact that my parents taught me to be happy. I have just now really put that thought into concrete form – it wasn’t something I ever thought much about until now. It was something I absorbed - wildflower walks and blackberry picking with my mom, music with my grandmother and my daddy, reading by the fireplace in winter or under the shade trees in summer. I remember so many of the books my mom read with me. The Thornton Burgess West Wind tales, Wind in the Willows, Uncle Remus tales, and the Laura Ingalls Wilder books.
My grandparents read me Raggedy Ann and Andy – I remember my grandmother giggling with me over Ann and Andy’s silly adventures. As I grew older, I graduated to The Hardy Boys, The Secret Garden and every horse book I could get my hands on. And I can still lose myself in a book for hours.
Granddaddy taught me to love the land and to appreciate being in a farm family. He shared stories of his family’s history here, and he shared his philosophy of stewardship and giving. “The service we give is the rent we pay for the space we occupy,” was his motto, and his example taught me to find happiness in giving back to the community. I don’t do as well as he did in that area, but I try.
My family gave me a lot of opportunities, but even more importantly, they let me have a lot of experiences, watching over me without smothering me and letting me find my own way to adulthood. In light of today’s obsessive protectiveness, I am thankful that I was never told not to read a certain book or watch a certain movie. I played with the lambs, kissed puppies and let them kiss me, rode horses all day and jumped out of the hayloft.
I learned something important from every single one of those things. And I learned to be happy.
Somehow, I figured out that you don’t have to depend on another person to bring you happiness. You can find it within yourself and your response to what’s around you. The last two years or so have been tough, but even during a pandemic, I found joy in things like music, books, walks in the woods, playing with dogs and looking up at the stars.
There are hard times, disappointments, lonely times, blue days and mornings when I feel like covering my head with a pillow and staying in bed all day. But my sense of home always brings me back to a feeling of gratitude. And there’s always my magic porch swing, where troubles drift away with the breeze. My friend was right – I do live in a sanctuary.
