A night of anxiety, a morning of gratitude and rainbows

It began a week ago Thursday around 6:30 pm. It was a bright night under a brilliant full moon but a stormy night with a wild wind blowing.over a raging ocean. Clouds scudded across the moon and rain squalls punctuated the night as they had the day

Elaine: The afternoon rain finally died down so I left to ride Chocolate on the beach. As I turned for home, the full moon rose over the ocean, an amazing sight with the waves crashing on the beach, shimmering white as they reflected the moon. Powerful powerful mojo. I took the horse back home and called John. “You have to come to the beach!” I yelled. He came down with the dogs and got on the horse, which is where I wanted him to see this amazing beauty. We walked, rode down the calle and onto the beach.

John: Rnding on the beach under the full moon was magic, beautiful, amazing, spiritual, defying words to describe.

Chocolate was a little skittish when we first got to the beach but he settled down and we seemed okay. We rode off a gentle walk into the moonlight.

Elaine: I took the camera and started taking pictures as the dogs ran out and he walked the horse ahead of me. He was about 200 yards or so further down the beach

John: We stopped and turned to wait for Elaine (on foot) to catch up. Chocolate was alert but standing steady.

Then something spooked him. He shied. Then bucked, then reared. He threw me and bolted down the beach.

Elaine: The horse took off – stirrups and reins flying.

We both ran after him but he quickly disappeared around the point ahead and we lost him. After fifty minutes or so of searching in blowing wind and rain and still no horse. By then, I was frantic and none too gracious about it. After an hour or so of running and yelling on the beach and the dune, I went to our friend Tito and his family. Tito told me to stay at his house and immediately saddled his horse, Flicka, and took out onto the beach to look for Chocolate. His family – wife, Jolanda, and daughter, Jolanda, and son, Francisco, gave me water and tissue to dry my tears and reassured me that Tito would find Chocolate and that he would be okay. Tito searched for almost two hours; John drove in the car and looked on the road and I returned home, calling Chocolate as I walked. Still no horse. After John and I were both home, I then left again on foot to search the fields near the dune that separates us from the ocean. Two hours – still no horse. Tito promised to resume his search at first light and said he was sure we would find him.

John: None of us slept very well last night and at first light we were out looking again.

Elaine: John and I met met Tito on the calle to the beach at about 6:30 am. He’d already been riding and looking for almost an hour. Still no horse and the rain was beginning to fall again. The wind was fierce (about 30 mph). No one had seen Chocolate. We couldn’t imagine where he might be except that perhaps the reins became entangled on a tree or fence and he was stuck there. After another 90 minutes on foot and Tito on horseback – each of us going in slightly different directions – I was told by a man working on a construction site 2 miles or so from our house that he had seen someone leading a horse down the beach. This was all in Spanish so I couldn’t get all the details straight. But I immediately hiked out to the road and began to run towards home.

I called John on the cell phone. He said, “I was just going to call you. There’s a double rainbow and one end looks like it’s right at our house.” I said, “Yes, I see it” and I told him what the man had told me. He dropped to his knees out on the sand in thanks and I continued to run. I was almost home when another man – one I had talked to the previous night in my broken Spanish – stopped me and said that he thought my horse was with Tito. I turned around and headed back towards Tito’s house. That’s when I met up with Tito on Flicka. He told me that Chocolate had run farther than any of us had believed he would and that he had stopped and been caught and tied up in the yard of a family about 2 miles east of us sometime during the night. Tito had gone there, gotten him, led him back to our house, unsaddled and bridled him, rinsed him off and made sure he was secure before leaving to come find me.

Tito had spent about 5 hours on horseback looking for – and then finding – Chocolate. Many others, including fishermen on the beach and neighbors we barely know, had also expressed concern and helped us look for and locate him. There are no words for the gratitude that John and I both feel for these people. There aren’t enough words of gratitude for the thanks we have for Tito and his family for what he did. This man gave me this horse as a gift; today he gave me that gift again when I thought it might be lost forever. And a rainbow was there to mark the occasion.