A Story of a Woman and a Horse: Part 1

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Set the Scene:

A beautiful remote Panamanian indegenous community, an hour's 4x4 ride to the nearest road. An early morning, a young Canadian woman thrilled to pieces that she is starting her journal home to her husband who is thousands of miles away. She has all her gear stuffed into her red backpack he bought her, and she is trudging down a mud path from the tent she camped in the night before to the local make-shift store where she is to meet her guide and noble steed that will be bring her closer to home. She remembers the bumping 4x4 ride in, she was one of the many that were left to hang-on-tight in the truck box, atop all belongings, research equipment, boxes of questionnaires, camping supplies, boots, pots, bug nets. The hired driver runs the route once a day, on days that he feels like it. This morning is not one of those days, hence the $10 guide and passenger horse.


The squishing and sloshing sounds of her rubber boots in the mud below build her anticipation of trekking home. Every few steps she nearly tumbles, as she is weighed down, top heavy, and sinking into the mud. Stumbling and sweating she turns the last corner and sees the meeting place.

And one lonely horse.

[Mix of Indigenous-Spanish and English-Spanish]

Guide: Have you ridden a horse before?
Young Woman: Why, yes I have! (All proud of her 1/2 hour experience with friends at a woman's retreat.)

Guide: Excellent, you will go alone.
Y.W: ALONE?? DOWN THE MOUNTAIN? ON A HORSE? ALONE???
Guide: Yes. I have to work the store today; there is no one to take you. If you go, you go alone. The horse knows the way.
Y.W: Oh, the horse knows the way.
Guide: When you get there, tie him to a tree.
Y.W: Tie him to a tree?
Guide: Like this.
[Precedes to swiftly and elegantly tie a cowboy-horse-to-tree knot.]

Now, Young Woman realizes that if she doesn't take this blond haired beauty of a horse down the mountain, she cannot catch the bus, that will take her to the city, that will lead her to the bus, that will take her to Costa Rica, that will get her to the plane, that will take her, eventually, to her husband.

She takes out her camera, takes a picture of the knot, and agrees.


Y.W: How the horse get back up the mountain?
Guide: My wife will come from the city today and she will bring it back. Here, please give her this sombrero.
Y.W: Um, ok. How do I know if it is your wife that is taking the horse when I am still there?
Guide: I will show you a [very fuzzy, very old] picture. Now please, go on the horse and try riding.

Y.W. musters up all the confidence she can find, knowing that she has to pretend like she knows what she is doing in order to convince this man to give her his horse to take on a few hours journey, down a mountain side with known poisonous snakes, and hope to get there before the monsoon rains start in the early afternoon. It is 9:00am.

She climbs aboard (surprised her shaking legs didn't fail her).

Left.
Right.
Stop.
Back.
Good.

Guide jams Young Woman's stuff in a rice bag and fastens it to the horse; breaks a stick off of a nearby tree hands it to Young Woman, asks for $10, and slaps the horse on the tush, which sends it trekking down the road.



Young Woman: The horse knows the way, the horse knows the way, the horse...I can't believe I'm on a horse...



Yes, the horse apparently also knows the way to the school, the neighbor's yard, the hunting path, the other neighbor's yard....

Strong willed and bold headed, the woman steers the horse back onto the road she believes leads to pavement, flushable toilets, and running water. Then, oh then, the horse realizes where they are going. Not to the nearby school, a neighbor's yard, or the hunting path, no, no, they are taking the 2 hour long journey down the road. The horse slows to a painstaking speed. He doesn't want to go to that far today. He doesn't want to go at all.

Knowing it is too late to turn back, and knowing she is hours from the road where she must catch her bus and the guide's wife will eventually be waiting (or be picking the horse up from the side of the road tied to a tree), Young Woman urges the horse to continue. Horse pins ears back.

This is the beginning of their long day together.

To Be Continued...

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