I am sixty-six years old. I have had many jobs in my working life. For all of those jobs there was a commute. On a few occasions I have lived close enough to my job to walk to work. Those were times I lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts and my walks to work were city walks full of the sights sounds and smells associated with city life.
I once lived in Brookline also in Massachusetts and had a job as a landscaper in Newton. I rode my bike to work to that job. For this commute I had to stay very focused on my surroundings as I shared the road with many cars. That wasn’t as pleasant as my walking commute but it was still outside and I still was a part of the world around me. As such I could still see, hear and smell what the world had to offer.
For a time here in Maine where I now live, I commuted to work on my motorcycle. This still allowed me to be a part of the world I was passing through even though I was now traveling at the same speed as the cars around me. On a motorcycle the rider can still smell and hear things that would not be possible to experience while traveling in a car.
Then of course for years I also commuted in a car. In a car the driver is passing through the world and is not as much as a part of that world as one would be on foot, bike or on a motorcycle. Now at the end of my working life, I have a job that involves horses. My mare is an active participant in the work that I do. I now commute to work by horse.
I live in rural Maine in a town of under five thousand people. The town is New Gloucester. All of the roads around our three hundred acres are dirt. I have seven miles of trails on my own land. I work at an equine assisted psychotherapy practice at a farm approximately one mile from where I live. If I am short on time, I can ride on the road and be at work in about twenty minutes, fifteen if I ask my mare, Cyra, to trot and canter part of the way.
When I am efficient in doing my morning chores, I leave between forty-five minutes and an hour for my commute. This allows me to thread my way through the woods and fields between where I live and where I work. This alternate route puts me on a road for only about fifty feet. My favorite back-co
untry commute takes me deep into our woods. I cross a stream, several stone walls, slog through muddy stretches of trail, over a wooden bridge I built with my son and then pick up an old abandoned county road that gives us multiple opportunities to canter if we so choose. The forest looms over us forming a green tunnel through which we pass.
We occasionally see deer on these rides as well as wild turkeys, ruffed grouse and many squirrels and sometimes woodchucks. We have heard coyotes talking to each other off in the distance. We are always serenaded by numerous birds whose homes we are passing through. At the end of our ride, we come out of the woods and pick up a trail that takes us along the edge of a fifty acre hay field that is now lush with soon to be harvested grass and clover. Here we exchange a green canopy of leaves for a blue often cloud studded dome of sky. These rides are rich in sights, smells, sounds and tactile stimulation as we frequently brush by and under branches of trees. I ride Cyra bareback and so am in intimate contact with her body as it moves under me. She has a very full mane and I frequently grab two handfuls of her hair for stability if we are cantering or going over rough terrain or up a hill.
For a lifelong horseman, these rides are a dream come to life. It never gets old being on Cyra deep in the quite peace of the forest. In winter, our work keeps us at the farm after dark. On moonless nights we make our way home either under a dome of stars or on cloudy nights in darkness so black that the road is a barely discernible gray line stretching out in front of us. On nights with a moon we slide into the woods in the gray moonlight. In the woods, the ethereal light is just enough to find our way. In the fields I feel like We are bathing in light so different than that of day that magic always seems close at hand.
I have to close this reflection with praise for my equine partner. We have been a team for over ten years. She trusts me. I trust her. She knows the way to work and often I will drop the reins of the rope riding halter I made for her (no bit in her mouth) and let her take me where she knows we need to go. I sometimes ride with my Native American flute, playing tunes from my heart to the world we are passing through. I know that I can do this and trust that we are OK with her on auto-pilot (who needs a self driving car when one has a self driving horse?). With Cyra I have come to a place in my life that fits me so well that I have to pinch myself at times to know that this is real. I am a very lucky man.
Michael Fralich