I pulled my body weight in weeds today. I won’t tell you how much I weigh — a lady never tells — but it was a monstrous amount of weeds.
I don’t have anything against weeds either. Weeds are just outcast plants. I actually love dandelions!
The problem with weeds is that, when left to spread, they choke out the nutritious grass that feeds my horses year round.
So I manage weeds while I manage horses.
If you told me five years ago that I’d spend my days happily pulling weeds from my ground instead of training horses over it, I’d tell you to go have another glass of wine.
— Either that or ask you where you found the time traveling DeLorean that led you to this weed filled look into my future.
I said earlier that I “happily” pull weeds and that adverb is true.
It took me a while to get there, though. My dreams for this farm were way different than the actual dream I imagine now.
I unhappily managed weeds as I bitched and moaned about what a pain in the backside they were — how much time managing the farm takes away from the important part; the “important” part was making money through training animals for others.
Training horses to fit certain standards is a high stress pursuit of both physical and mental types. It wore on me.
But, like — what did I expect by buying my own horse farm?
Farms don’t manage themselves. Bills don’t pay themselves, either.
As I corralled the weeds, I noticed the property begin to really take on a character of its own. I began to fall in love with the land.
I started popping lily bulbs into the ground and letting the lemon balm and Jewelweed spread.
I settled into the role of groundskeeper and found that I enjoyed nurturing the landscape as I realized its beauty acted as my own personal writer’s retreat.
It became that creative place which led to my most recent detour of writing.
I love theme parks, or any themed experience for that matter — and what I was doing around the farm felt like I was creating my own custom themed experience.
Carrot flowers bloom into other-worldly like orbs so I began using them as decoration versus just roots to chew. Sometimes I stare at them and think what other fantasy world I could see them fitting in to.
It’s a great inspiration for creativity.
My dream of this horse farm becoming the home of myself, as a “big name trainer” (as we call them in the horse world), began to settle into more of a holistic one.
I went from strictly training for the show world to studying horse behavior, human nature and the greater schemes and nuances seen in relationships between all carbon-based-life forms. The first was a melting pot of different stressors whereas the second just felt right.
I took a detour that I thought was an inconvenience but ended up realizing the detour is actually the dream. I just hadn’t even realized I wanted to pursue it as I didn’t know it existed as a road to follow.
My time now is spent down in the dirt and it’s not just from getting chucked off a green horse, I’m happy to report.
So I guess if I had to fumble these words into a neat and tidy bow, I’d say that sometimes the dreams we imagine for ourselves only scratch the surface of what each of our unique motivations really want.
The weeds — my detour — were the literal turning point to understanding the inner workings of what I actually want. They’d largely eluded me until then.
It really gives new meaning to “being deep in the weeds.”
All of this to say — not every detour deserves an eye roll.
-Elle