The sun was shining and the heat was on. This summer would give me one week at the beach with The Rock Star. On the jet ski we went, we zipped here and we zipped there and sometimes we met a sand bar or two, only to step out and push our way back to deeper waters. This day would be Cape Lookout - a beautiful light house whose general direction we sped towards only to turn a sandy corner and to see it suddenly looming and old and stoic and straight. The little bay there was like a pond and the swimming was, despite the tourists, calming and warm. It was a beautiful historical spot and one I'd never been to.As we headed home, sunburned and sticky, The Rock Star weaved around the grassy sound and oyster ridges. Constantly trying to discern between the shady waves that meant deep water and the creamy shapes that meant shallow trouble - we stayed distracted and alert.
Almost before we could understand what we were seeing we came upon the three tall shadows dancing on a little island nestled in the grassy paths. They wavered in the dying heat and our tired eyes became alive with the vision.
These three horses seemed to be floating on a layer of oyster shells, chewing the ground, delicately crunching the sharp bits beneath them. They did not mind us, and even as we beached ourselves in our scramble to get closer to them, they did not mind us. I stepped upon the island too and there I was, so close that I could hear their grunting and crunching and stepping. Their long manes swept the ground beneath them, uneven and untidy like happy children who run home laughing with Fall leaves in their hair. I could almost touch them and they were so carefree.
Even as we pushed and heaved to get out off the sand bar, their long necks stayed curved downward in a quiet, sleepy way. Our life, our struggle, even our joy, did not matter in the least to them. They lived with the sea, like the egrets that lazily watched as our loud motor sped by or the dolphins that surfaced almost within reach as the jet ski skidded on the surface noisily, their grey supple bodies perfection in comparison with the waverunner's manmade curves.
We were just two people passing through that hazy beauty all around us that day, we did not enhance it, it was bigger than we were and it didn't need us, strands of them blew by, glimpses, gifted memories that stuck to us long after we had passed.
Behind us remained those three sleepy, brown ghosts, beautiful and wavering in a setting sun or floating on an ending summer; horses dreamily galloping through the green and the brown and the brown and the green.......
