Listening...........

Horse language is the language of the flight animal, you know, the one that gets chased and chomped as seen on the Discovery Channel. To really get horse-think it's a bit useful if you sit and watch horses at pasture, big horse herds, those kind of dynamics.......

Something that, initially, seems inexplicable may suddenly click a brain cell. What horses do loose they'll most definitely click into, under stress, when ridden. Obvious really, that one!

Like this morning here, when The Best, as alpha as they get, decided the back pasture (where the water is) was highly dangerous. The ferocious high-headed dragon's snort and her three companions cascaded to the very furthest eastward line of the corral's fencing around the back of the shelters and the old red wooden barn.

Watching through the kitchen window, I sighed, heaved on four layers, lumbered outside and filled up the ancient sliced-in-half propane tank (alias their water tank), tidied up a bit.

Nope, they weren't moving. Glued, high headed, adrenalin high, along the corral's ancient timbers.

Another sigh. Grab a halter and slid it onto the white girl and led her into the horse eating back paddock, a tad exasperated at how seriously she takes her herd guarding responsibilties at times.

The others followed, slid up, one at a time, drank deeply and then began picking, still a bit snorty, at the hay piles I'd organized.

She and I stood there, we've been together now a decade and more than any other, she's taught me horse-think subtleties. I breathed slower, my feet imagining they were tree roots and thought peaceful thoughts, idly drifting through why she was so revved up and guessing her one big fear factor, moose, were in the thick thick western woodlands nibbling on willow branches.

The raven couple, in their prime and stunningly blue-black against the hoar frosted trees, croaked their odd warning language and the white head went up again. Something, definitely in there, and the ravens croaked and cawed and flew around before, finally bored, circled away further up the valley for more morning amusements and diversions.

So, still she and I stood there, me waiting again for the white head to go 'level-headed' (see where the expression comes from?!) and then, ah, magic.

A huge bald eagle, really massive wing span this boy, flying straight up the Horse Creek Valley northwards, my first viewing this year of the earliest arrival perhaps pathmaker of their annual migration of bald and golden participants that's a documented 11,000 years old. They, hawks and many others, follow the ridgelines of the 'shining mountains' the far more appropriate name given by native people to the 'Rockies'.

The mare, finally, dipped her head, deigning to slither in a few morsels of sweet meadow hay. And then, with their ironic cosmic humour, the Land Gods said, I am imagining, OK, The Human's being a bit perceptive this morning so let's give another little gifting. In the far wood came a faint rattling drum of a woodpecker drilling but the mare, this time, twitched just an ear with a muzzle now deep in timothy and fescues .

And the very first of the young male ground squirrels popped his head out of a burrow, scampered across to the fenceline and, carefully perched erect atop the crusted snow, surveying the bright sparkling world of springtime-just-around-the-corner.