Fall is coming on.

Can you feel the cold chilling your fingertips and fall wrapping around you?

The way it bites at your cheeks and tangles in your hair.

Can you hear it whispering through the willow trees down by the creek?

And see snow dusting the peaks? 

Like old lovers reuniting, missing each other all summer long. 

Is the cold air stinging your warm lungs, can you feel the change in your heart?

Does it feel like home?

Look at the shaggy coats on the ponies.

They were all slick as seals in the summer heat and their tallow thinning with use.

But they are beefing up for the winter now and getting all sassy in the brisk mornings.

Doesn't it feel so good to have a stingy horse wriggling beneath you?

Winter is coming on and I can feel it in my bones, no more careless jumping off of panels cause that cold feeling has coming shocking up our legs already. 

Are you pulling your wool caps off the rack and smashing your unruly hair down with felt instead of straw? 

Do you have thicker hides of leather wrapping your legs?

I hope you've felt how I have.

When you swing a leg over a frisky colt in cold weather and your gut turns a little.

You look over at your sissy and grin through your chattering teeth and a lipstick smile.

She's doing the same. 

And there's two braids blowing in the frosty breeze. 

Your collars are popped and wild rags knotted around your necks, cotton gloves on your hands holding mecate reins. 

With the wind making your mascara'ed eyes water and your nose and cheeks flushed pink. 

I hope you watch the sunrise between your favorite horse's ears and I hope someday you get him in the bridle and that every ounce of sweat you put into him was worth it to you. 

With your shivering body I hope you warm up trotting out over big country and I want you to feel the ups and downs in the splay of land. 

I hope you feel the conflict in yourself that I have and that you feel a horse coil up beneath you walking on eggshells. 

And by the end of the day I hope he's all sensitive and broke feeling and that you're not sore.

But I hope you're tired, the good exhausted.

Go sit by the fire place and have another cup of coffee. 

I wish that for you. 

Fall is coming on. 

Loves, Gussie Lou