Risk
KoKo, my pughuahua. Up for any adventure.
Every night when I let my brave little dog out to pee, I’d open the door to the darkness where killing coyotes lurked. She drew herself up, big as she could, with hackles raised, to launch herself into the unknown. Announcing her presence to the enemy, she’d offer three of her fiercest barks. As if to say, “Here I am. I’m not afraid.”
It reminds me of when I rode my horses in the mountains. They’d cross any narrow bridge over whitewater or ford any river. With each trip, they’d lunge into the horse trailer without concern for where they were going, always ready for the next adventure. Unlike me. The older I get, the more I want to know exactly where I’m going. With whom? How far? How much? And, what’s the risk?
The horses never seemed worried and neither did my dog. They trusted. Maybe it’s faith. Sometimes, or maybe all the time, God asks me for the same kind of trust and faith. I try to hold my plans with a loose grip, making course corrections along the way. That loose grip requires courage to draw myself up and step into the unknown. It’s scary and the more times we explore and do new things, the odds of failure and/or injury increase. Once, when I drove the horses to a trail-ride and opened the trailer door to unload them, I was horrified at what I hadn’t noticed before. A softball-sized yellowjacket nest hung from the roof a few feet above the horses’ backs with angry bees buzzing and snapping. Somehow, they didn’t attack us as the horses backed out, but I was sweating it! There’s nothing worse than Arabian horses in a panic. What a disaster that could’ve been!
Risk looms whether we are aware of it or not. My little dog understood this. Apache and Vertigo, my horse companions for 30 years, have carried countless riders on their backs with willing spirits, eager for the next adventure. I strive to be like them.
In this new year, we can ask ourselves what risky, audacious new thing should we try? For me, it’s starting this website!
I came across the following quote by author Louise Erdrich as she describes Risk:
“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and being alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You have to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes too near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself that you tasted as many as you could.”
From her novel The Painted Drum
Photo by Lorraine Hamberger
