Blink and you'll miss it.

Too hot to sleep again. And I'm tired of maudlin. So I'm sitting by the window, blessing the slowly cooling breeze. And thinking. And writing. And I hear a noise and look up.

And there is a man on a horse, coming through the truck-stop parking lot at a nice clip.

He's riding English-style, very straight in the saddle, both hands on the reins. The sound of the hooves says “trot,” but the rider isn't bouncing.* Which means (to my limited horse-savvy) racking horse or walking horse. I've been to a few horse shows. I've seen rackers, but never a walker. So I can't say which this one is. Just that it isn't a generic horse.

And if it's a show horse, it isn't practicing for a show just now. No high-stepping, nothing ostentatious arch of the neck. It's just moving along. Fairly quickly, too.

I read once that the rack, like the walking horse's stride, was for covering ground while not shaking the rider to pieces. That both types were originally prized for long-distance travel in relative comfort. Kind of the Gold Wing's of their day. Seeing these two, I believe it.

He rode right through the middle of the parking lot and right out the other side. Never came back through. There isn't a road out of the lot on that side, but then my idea of a road has changed since I started driving these barges. Maybe there's a path or something he knows about.

I wonder what the story is, there. But not very hard. Too hot to think about it.

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*Oh, I beg your pardon. He isn't “posting.”