Good news: the photos from here on are Ben's. You're welcome, eyeballs. I will only bring pictures of Ben taking pictures and postcards from Billy, but I'll warn you in advance so you know what you're clicking into.
Yesterday we spent most of the day with Beverly and her big, hairy, crazy, smiling dog, and also her six mystical horses who heal people's spirits. I'm not making this up. Beverly, the innkeeper at our little two-day hideout in Westport, CA, rescues spiritually powerful but otherwise unwanted horses and together she and they give therapy to people who are grieving, healing, or in some way trying to get through it all (seriously, that could be anyone). You don't ride the horses and you don't even have to like or have ever met any horses. You just hang out and let them interact with you. Beverly is an interpreter of sorts, letting you know what the horses are saying with their movements and actions. They are highly perceptive, and very communicative.
Beverly let us come squish around in the muck and feed and chit chat with her magnificent creatures. Not having grown up around horses at all, I am typically frightened of them, and I believe this to be a perfectly reasonable fear, given that a horse weighs the better part of a ton, literally (oh yes, I really mean literally, and I promise to never use that word to emphasize the figurative, because I am super judgy [I looked it up, there's no 'e'] about this kind of thing, and also please excuse my typos and other grammatical faux pas...es).
Size and power aside, here's the truly terrifying thing about horses: they can pretty much see directly into your soul, kind of like dogs, except that they don't really need your love, so they can't or won't ignore whatever it is they find in there. I've always been afraid that a horse will see something in me that should have remained hidden (like grammar judginess) and freak out or get skittish. I have only ever gotten close to a horse with a bribe, like a carrot, and only once when I was in a particularly light and carefree place. Maybe that's where I am now, because it was incredibly good. The shyest one who is afraid of men came up and kissed both me and Ben. I'm still high from it. Some of the others played with us! They have rather funny personalities. Beverly said this was the first time she had seen some of them come out the way they did.
This may be one of those experiences that will only be diminished by me telling it without having fully processed what happened between our faces and Amora's, but the day was magical and outrageously beautiful, and so was Beverly. We couldn't tell how old she was (she is one of those timeless, classically striking women of flawless bone structure and indeterminable age who hovers somewhere between fifty-two and a hundred), and it seemed goofy to bother to ask. Despite her fine, mostly white hair and deep lines in her radiant face, her eyes twinkle a deep blue and I'm sure she is aging in reverse, becoming more pure, more trusting, more confident, more generous, sweeter with the passage of time. It is as though she gathers and collects wonder and scatters it around her everywhere she goes. However young or old she is, she does the hard physical work twice every day of feeding and caring for these horses, and it is possible that mucking around in horse poop out of pure love can keep you vibrant and gorgeous forever.
Now more than ever we are on a mission to find our little farm. First, dinner.
