I have been wanting to start a photo project about my rides with Boone up to the old cemetery a couple miles from the farm. It's a nice, easy ride, with lots of shade, good snack vistas and the added dimension of many worlds colliding right under our feet. Head stones go back as far as 1800's, up to present day. I'd say it's about 2 acres at most and it backs up to forest, and looks out on cattle ranches and coastal ranges.
When I first rode there a couple of years ago, I felt a lot of activity, as they say, in the back of the cemetery. Not to get all woo-woo, but I'm very open to feelings that are generated from energy floating around, and if you want to call it a ghost, that's fine. The first time I rode to the back of the cemetery a year or so ago, as I look back on it, I think maybe they were just checking us out, those that came passing through. I know Boone was very intent that day too, and while horses are much more in tune with sounds and smells than humans, I think we were on the same wavelength that day. It wasn't exactly a scary feeling, but more of a "I think someone is watching us" feeling. I didn't ride to the back of the cemetery again, until this month, partially because I feel more confidant as a team with Boone, and I figure if some cranky spirit is going to spook us, I'll just say, "Git' on" and Boone will head for the hills.
We visited several graves today. Wondered about the lives of those people under those stones. So many stories under that dirt.
So I have started this ongoing project for myself, with one goal: Take many photographs over the many months and years to come of my rides to the cemetery with Boone in hopes that one, just one, will somehow capture the essence of that ride, and that horse, and that place, as we are all together, alive. For that cemetery is alive. When I'm old, or I can't ride, I want to look at that photo and feel that moment. So I'll treat these photographs more like paintings, they might change after leaving the camera, some will, some won't.
See more here.
