**The name of this article came to me months ago. It had a certain ring to it, but for the longest time I couldn’t figure out why I wanted to use it, or what it really meant to me…until now. Coincidently, that’s exactly what this is about, learning what works in your life, where you fit in, and what’s most important in each season. My hope is that this influences others to find where they really belong, whether it be a physical location, job, relationship, or state of mind…. by Kate Sanchez
Sunrises and Sook Wagons
I’ve always wondered how they do it; how people master the skills to feel like they really fit in. How a common interest, certain hair style, or high-end brand of clothing can make a group of women seem inseparable. I’ve never been there. I’ve never been the girl who has several best girlfriends, and yes, I was homecoming queen in high school, but I wouldn’t have necessarily called myself the most popular. I never felt like I fit, not into a certain group, not into a clique, and certainly not into a “box”. It’s almost funny now, looking back, my yearning to fit in. I was a star athlete, honor student, and class president, but that didn’t matter to me. I never was labeled a certain way, and honestly, I’m glad for it!
Over the years, I would often miss school functions and sporting events to go to a horse show on the weekends, a life that literally no one at my upstate NY high school knew anything about, and I was glad for that too! On those weekends, we would load horses in the trailer, and enough belongings to survive just a few days away from home, to drive four or more hours to shows up and down the east coast. Those were the weekends I’ll never forget. It was in the little historic villages of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Connecticut, as well as the outskirts of a few big NY cities, that I soon learned exactly where I fit.
Those were the weekends that came and went from the time I was two until I graduated high school. Escaping on those days, 80’s country on the radio, homework scattered out across the back seat of the pickup (because it still came first!), and only visions of how my rides would play out, ran through my mind. They were the weekends when I, coincidentally enough, drove hours to be judged; this time by men and women in cowboy hats and boots, rather than my peers at school. Those were some of the best weekends of my life.
Times have changed and showing has taken a back seat, well, to everything, I suppose. I sold the last show horse I had about five years ago and haven’t stepped back into the arena since. But I’ll be the first to admit the nostalgia that I’m overcome with, every time I see a truck and trailer hauling down the road. I feel my heartstrings tugging, telling me that’s still a place I’d fit in, a place that sometime, I need to return to. For now, I’ll have the memories; watching the sunrise on the best little bay horse around in the humid Virginia air at the affiliate finals my last year of youth, or hearing friends and family erupt with cheers when I scored my first ‘70’, but mostly, receiving some of the biggest life lessons I’d never thought to be possible.
The good news is, I can always go back. I truly believe if it’s something that still makes your heart race, it’s not worth giving up entirely. I often find myself daydreaming of the moment when I return to that beloved place, whether for myself, or leading a little blonde headed horse-crazy girl into the pen atop a trusty gelding. It’s in that place that I feel whole. It’ll happen one day.
And until then, I’ll return to my ranch-wife duties, another job that has become a place of contentment for me. Feeding cows and cowboys, raising an outdoor-loving baby girl, and helping out where asked, it’s a pretty okay job if you ask me. It’s loading up with feed and heading out first thing in the morning to call cows and calves in. It may not be atop a horse in an east coast town, but if you’ve never seen a West Texas sunrise, sitting on a hill, watching wobbly-legged calves follow their mamas out of canyons, the rays of the sun kissing the tops of their backs as they move at a brisk pace to the sound of a siren, then you won’t quite understand. My hope is that one day you do; that one day you get the privilege to feel as fulfilled with something or someone as I have been blessed to do not just once, but a few times in my life. My hope is for everyone to find where their heart feels full. And for now, I’ve found mine; for there isn’t much better than sunrise in a sook wagon.
