The Red Barn

 

The first thing that struck me about the stable where I currently board Ransom was the large red sliding doors at the barn entrance. They were nearly identical to the doors of the barn where I grew up riding, even down to the black horse decals on the doors. For a split second, I was thirteen and sliding those big doors open at 7 am in the morning to clean stalls before my lesson. It was there I tossed hay bales down from the loft, rode in the wide barn aisle on rainy days, and watched the resident artist paint those black horses on the wooden slats.

In college, the Red Barn was where I competed against the Stanford University Equestrian Team. Their gleaming, old-style buildings were a far cry from the weathered barn that I loved back home. The Stanford Red Barn was where I won a blue ribbon on Jesse, the smooth paint gelding, and rode a sluggish, crowhopping gray Arab, “Nipper,” to second place. It was where I waited in the parking lot with my teammates for nearly five hours, waiting for a bus to come replace our broken down one.

Ransom now has a new red barn to call home. A few weeks ago, I moved him from his hillside pasture to the flat paddock of the small north barn for the winter. It was here he stood beneath the roof, hanging his head over the tall red divider. Here his eyes fell in its shadow, while his nose glowed golden in the bright afternoon sun. Here he made a new red barn memory.