Source: tolackcolour
We both ate so much at breakfast that we ended up laying down in the isles of this bookstore like overly ambitious pythons that swallowed a couple of really robust gazelle.
Source: tolackcolour
Going on a road trip with someone is a good test of how compatible you really are... you never know how much you like or dislike someone until you're holed up in a car and tent with them for an extended period of time. And Ash, I would go on a hundred million road trips with you. :)
Source: tolackcolour
When I first met Peyton I was a horse. In middle school my best friend Paige and I played horses everyday at recess in an elaborate soap-opera-esque game that involved a prestigious race track that conveniently hid a portal to a magic underworld full of winged Andalusians and fanged Arabians. We were very imaginative children. So, when Paige first introduced me to Peyton, a girl she new from her neighborhood, naturally it was in horse form. Peyton, though a year or two younger, was about a foot taller than me with large, excitable eyes and a penchant for loudness. But she too loved horses so she was immediately okay in my books and accepted into the game. Years later she told me that she was afraid of me when we first met, though how anyone could be afraid of someone pretending to be a winged horse in plain day and whose head only comes up to your clavicle, I’ll never know. Or maybe I was one of the fanged horses that day, that would explain it. She was hyper and enthusiastic and people-pleasing and I was overly calm and sarcastic and horrendously stubborn and yet somehow despite being each others opposite in almost every way at that age, we became best friends. Attached at the hip, if you will. Regardless of the altitude differences of our respective hips. I remember the first time Peyton spent the night at my house. I couldn't wait to show her all my favourite places; my canyon, my A-frame room above the tack room, to introduce her to my horses. I remember we got home and I took her to meet Cloud and we both got on her bareback to ride out to The Point so I could show Peyton the poppy covered hillsides and view of catalina. And we rode out laughing like hyenas at who knows what and stood on the hill overlooking my home and everything was just so, so good. But the outstanding memory from that day is not the one of us serenely taking in the view and basking in the glow of youthful friendship, it is of standing precariously on stacked cow patties trying to get back on the horse. Peyton gave me a leg up back onto Cloud, but we could not figure out how to remount Peyton. The only remotely mounting block resembling things present being cactus and thorned bushes, and me being unable to preform that Legolas-esque trick of pulling someone onto my horse from the ground (I have noodles for arms) we were left with the only feasible option our 12 year old minds could conjure: stack up the dry cow poop into a stepping stool. (no pun intended) Cloud being the most patient horse imaginable stood quietly and resiliently (although not without judgment) while we imbeciles tried to make a poop step between bouts of gut wrenching laughter. But that’s the kind of friendship I have with Peyton; free to be the stupidest, weirdest versions of ourselves and laugh about it until you physically can't anymore. And then laugh some more. Its over 10 years later now, and not much has changed, even though everything has. We are completely different people than those dissimilar 4th/5th graders, and we’re also not so different from them at all. We’ve grown side by side into the people we are despite often times having hundreds or thousands of miles of physical separation. We’ve held on through the ups and downs in each others lives and can still communicate entire conversations in bird noises or total silence while both devouring respective pints of Ben & Jerry's ice-cream just as easily as plain english. This past year Peyton moved to Thailand. To traveling, to everywhere and no where. She had a hell of a year and instead of throwing in the towel she abandoned her life as she knew it and stepped into the unknown. She’s spent the past few months backpacking around South East Asia living in hostels and meeting new people everyday, and right now she’s honestly the person I’m most proud of in the world. A few days ago she asked me to draw this bunch of poppy flowers for her like the ones from The Point so she could get a tattoo of them like we always talked about doing. She got the tattoo last night and it looks amazing and now I’ve written this long sappy post before properly waking up which is never a good idea, but oh well. I’m embracing the unedited sappy this year. I love you Peytes. From gangly, excitable middle schooler to badass world traveler and everything in between and yet to come.
Silent conversations sometimes say the most.
Pictures taken by Nina m. Baker after we finished taking pictures for her photography class final (she had contacted me and asked if she could use Osiris and I as her models for the project) and had taken to just sitting around in the paddock talking and hanging out with the horses. She took so many great photos that day but I love these especially, probably because I wasn’t aware she was taking them. Thanks for capturing this little silent conversation between Sie and I, Nina. :)
She's absolutely insane. But that good kind of insane, you know? | coyotecries