The Ugly Season

I hate muck. My love of the green of springtime is dwarfed by my hatred of the gray/smoke/black/blah color of our wet season in eastern Virginia.

But even in this setting, even in this buffet of vile tastes, visitors love what they find at our horse lot. They love riding through slippery cut overs that weeks ago were vibrant and green. They love seeing weanlings slip and slide in a pasture where a few weeks ago they would prance and glide.

It brings home the simplest of truths--that beauty has nothing to do with appearance. Beauty transcends the season, the time, the place and even the age.

Beauty was in the appearance of Sarah Carter, nearly eighty years old, stepping up to the microphone for her last public performance and singing "Happiest Days of All" with Maybelle. Beauty is in the appearance of Huskinaw, a spunky, wide eyed weanling that approaches everyone to silently give the most important news of every day, "I Waked Up Again!"

But most of all, beauty is in the face of a muddy, Red Feather standing there, missing part of his ear, and without a sound saying, "You damn right I made it. I am still here. And you made it too."

There is great beauty in the ugly fact that to persevere is to win.