🐴 Lugan & Lumi
The Beginning
Look closely at their noses.
Hearts.
I don’t know whether Lugan and Lumi will ever know that I noticed.
I don’t even know yet whether they will come home.
But these two Icelandic horses have been part of this story
since almost before there was a story to tell.
Before I knew exactly what I wanted to grow.
Before I knew who would live there.
Before the gardens,
the Apothecary,
the Mountain Companions
and all the little details began finding their places.
There were two horses.
Lugan and Lumi.
And somehow,
it all started with them.
🌿 The Life I Imagine
At first,
I thought I wanted horses to take hiking into the mountains.
As the vision has become more real,
that has changed.
Haldor the Llama may turn out to be the companion
who walks the rocky trails with me.
That leaves me with a different question about Lugan and Lumi.
What would our life together actually be?
I don’t want horses simply because horses belong in a beautiful picture of country life.
If they come home,
I want them to have a place in the life we are actually living.
🐴 Horsepower
There will be work to do.
Fence lines to check.
Things to move.
Things to haul.
Trips around the property to see what needs tending.
And eventually I will have to decide how much of that work
I want to accomplish with machinery
and how much I might want to accomplish another way.
Perhaps Lugan and Lumi could learn to pull a lightweight cart?
Perhaps we could make our rounds together?
Maybe,
where it is safe and practical,
they could occasionally carry me farther than the boundaries of home.
Or perhaps I’ll discover
hat machinery makes more sense for the land I eventually have.
I don’t know yet.
And I don’t think I need to.
The land gets a say.
Lugan and Lumi get a say.
And the life itself gets a say.
❤️ Why They Are Still Here
There are practical reasons not to have horses.
They require space,
food,
shelter,
care,
training,
money and time.
So I am willing to discover that they aren’t meant
to be part of the life I ultimately build.
But I’m not ready to erase them from it,
either.
Because it all started with them.
They were there when this life was still only something I could see in my imagination.
And sometimes I wonder whether they were ever meant
to tell me exactly what the finished picture should look like.
Maybe they simply showed me that another kind of life was possible.
A quieter one.
A more deliberate one.
A life lived closer to animals,
land,
seasons and the work of my own hands.
Perhaps someday I’ll stand between those two heart-shaped noses and think,
There you are.
We finally made it home.
Or perhaps their place will always be here,
at the beginning of the story.
Either is all right.
But I will always remember where the first roots grew.
And two of them had noses shaped like hearts. ❤️🐴🐴
Return to 🐈 Milos
Continue to 🐾 Mountain Companions
