The Age Of Imagination

Rachelle and I ran wild in Blewitt BC. Our parents were not too keen on our friendship but that didn't stop us. We spent every day together, rain or shine, living in a vivid world of imagination.

We rode our bikes and played horses. Sometimes we rode our bikes to visit other people's horses. Those days were exceptionally special. Like private field trips we took, just the two of us, into the real-life versions of our fantasies.

Our imaginations were steeped in the equine world. Not having horses of our own didn't stop us from living rich equestrian make-believe lives.
5 am adventures to the Huckleberry Patch turned into creative horse adventures, full of imaginary wildlife and fearless stallions. We lived and breathed horses.

Mimicking their gaits or the motions made by riders. We rode, galloping, chased by the wolves of our own invention, from dawn to dusk and beyond.
It was in this time of fantasy I fell in love with the idea of raising a foal. Sometimes I was the mother, other times I was the foal. On occasion, I was even the human.

These games consumed our lives. They planted the seed of adventure deep in our subconscious. Then that seed sat dormant as the world of my childhood changed once again.

We moved, this time to the house I still refer to as the Castle Block. The tiny plaster house looked like it belonged on a castle tower in a fairytale. It was five hundred square feet of plaster cube, plunked beside a Cotton Wood Creek.

To my delight, Rachelle moved to a house just down the road from the Castle Block not even a year later. We didn't gallop as wildly as we had in Blewit. Our friendship, however, remained strong, as did our love and passion for horses.

We weren't there long before I had to say goodbye to my best friend once again. I moved again. This time farther away, but to a farm.

The farm was wild and overgrown. When we got there the fantasy of having our own horse had started to become a possibility.

The farmhouse was still small, although bigger than the Castle Block. Many people made a point of telling us it had once been a store, or maybe a gas station. We didn't care. At least not in the beginning. It was and always will be about the land.

The large lawn was knee-high with the fresh yellow blooms of dandelions. To us, the front yard was a giant field and bigger than any lawn we had had in our lives. Each of us kids took turns pushing the electric mower over the brightly colored ground.

In my mind, it took several days to diminish the small field we called the front yard to proper lawn height. During my turns to push the mower, I faded into daydreams and back out again merely to avoid running over the cord.

My imagination drifted back to the fantasy horse world I had lived in with Rachelle. I thought about how much easier this would be to just let a horse eat all this grass. I mentioned this to my mother who laughed and said "We'll see."

After all, Ben, a real live horse that had belonged to a friend of ours in Blewitt had enjoyed eating dandelions. I tried to explain this to my mom, who assured me that many horses enjoyed dandelions.

It was nice to know that I was right. This would be much easier with our own horse who enjoyed eating dandelions. But it didn't seem to help hurry the process of bringing home our first horse.

I continued to wish for a horse and miss my best friend simultaneously. I wished as hard as I could and before long Mom came home with the news.

We had been given a pony.

His name was Sparky.