I’ve been back from Harding County for almost a week. Just long enough for the dust to settle. Just long enough to look over the pictures taken during the trip. Just long enough to decide that the above picture is indeed worth a thousand words.
Why?
Because the 3 1/2-year-old little girl sitting on the great, big horse isn’t taking part in a horse show, demonstrating what she learned during horseback riding lessons. She’s heading out with her grandpa, her mom, and a neighbor to move a herd of cows from one place to another. Her grandpa was so proud of her, he thought I’d like to snap her picture.
He was right.
Come dinnertime, her grandma said the tyke stuck with the task for several hours. Once it was done, she laid down on the hired man’s four-wheeler and took a half-hour nap while the adults finished up. By the time I sat down to eat dinner, the pint-sized cowgirl was raring to go.
She’s spunky, just like her uncle.
He was in my classroom for first, second, and third grade way back when. He began each day of first grade by driving an old car down their long lane to the road to the school bus stop. The summer after his first grade year, he once drove a pick up with me, his teacher and passenger, up a hill to show off a windmill and stock tank he’d helped his dad install. On the way up the hill and on the way down, he asked me to climb out of the pick up, open the gates, wait for the truck to go through the gates, and then climb back in the truck. Which I did. Until he reached the last gate and drove off without me.
I am not making this up.
My former student died of viral encephalitis when he was 28. Family members left behind included his young wife, a 2-year-old son, a sister, and his parents. The loss left a gaping hole in their lives. One they, and all who loved this young man, feel to this day. And yet they, like so many in Harding County, encourage their children not to shrink from the dangers of this world, but to conquer them. Instead of saying, “You’re too little to get on a great, big horse,” they teach them how to ride. And when the kids are ready, they say,
“Ride ’em, Cowgirl!”
