Finding the Gift

[magical thyme]

9. my gift, when I lost Algiers, is Dahli

I had wanted to respond to this thread earlier, because the timing was so perfect. I had come to the realization that she was here to fill the "hole" he left in my heart just days before you posted this. I had intended to give her back to her breeder, who had never wanted to sell her, and give up. But when I contacted her breeder, I learned she has since gotten cancer and is trying to rehome all of her young horses now and stopped breeding a couple years ago.

Now I can add that Algiers lives on through Dahli, in that everything he taught me is guiding me in teaching her.

Since you have written in here about the coming end of civilization, this seems like a good place to state what I have accepted as my "big" assignment for the final third of my life: I will be helping to save the true arabian horse. I 'saw' myself in my old age caring for a herd of arabians some years ago. I have had a recurring interest in the Bedouin breeding of the "asil" (pure, with bloodlines traceable back something like a thousand years) arabian. The Bedouin believe the arabian was a gift to them from god, and that it was their assignment to care for and maintain them. As their region continues to decline and their way of life is destroyed, they have increasingly lost their ability to do that. In fact, sadly in Syria right now their horses are being slaughtered and eaten. I am keeping my eyes open now on the US preservation groups. One of the groups I watch is headed by a Syrian economist who works at the world bank. He reported a few weeks ago that a stallion he'd been watching to breed his mare to was slaughtered. He has lost family members there and keeps saying he won't cry for the horses. His home town of Aleppo is now being destroyed...one of the oldest cities in the world. Anyway, here in the US there are several young mares and a stallion or two that I am interested in. I don't know exactly how it will play out, although I have spotted what I believe is the real Magical Thyme Farm a few hours to my north: a small, 4-room cottage on 10 acres with a spring-fed stream and mixed pasture and woods. I suspect the 2-car is really a barn, which is the case with many antiques around here. I will be trying again to put my current minifarm on sale, although I realize that things will play out in their own way and time.