09/02/2026
I wanted to share one of my favorite chapters from "They call me The Horse Lady" about a dear old friend đŠˇ
The book is a complicated story, with moments of magic and helpings of hope that made it worth the heartache.
Enjoy!
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Elk and the after life
If you were to ask me what I hope dying is like, I could tell you exactly because one night, beneath a December moon on top of a mountain, I lived it. But to do justice to the experience I was about to undergo, I need to tell you first about Lew. A name Eric had given him and had stuck, short for âLittle Elk Weirdoâ.
Lew was a young elk who didnât quite fit in. He started showing up early on in my second year working on the mountain. He was an odd thing. Lanky and scrawny, more llama than elk, with antlers that resembled dead twigs more than anything and the only grace he had was an awkward one.
Over time, he began trailing behind the herds, seeking the comfort of numbers though he couldnât yet speak their single-hoofed language. Some herds tolerated him and allowed him to graze among them, though his strange presence always seemed to rattle the mares. Others wouldnât tolerate him at all. Mostly he stayed alone along the edges of thickets, ready to dart into cover at the sound of a side by side at a moments notice.
Over time he learned, like the horses, that I was not there to harm him and he would merely lift his head to assess me whenever I came across him, before going back to foraging. He remained ever vigilant, but accepted me as just another part of the wild.
One evening just as dusk was setting in, I was unloading the last selenium blocks of the day in a large open range surrounded by a thick brush line that eventually gave way to a cliffy pine forest on all sides. It was late fall and the air, already heavy with the chill that was setting in, began filling the valley creating the type of perfect silence only nature could manifest. The sky was just beginning to cast its purple hue across the mostly bare leaved ridges, when suddenly a huge clammer of chaos erupted at the far end of the clearing where the open area turned into a cove of sorts before turning down into a steep valley land.
Little Brotherâs herd came crashing into the far end of the range out of the tree line. He charged a head a few yards to ensure they had no obstacles before stopping, furiously pawing the ground, rearing, turning in air and landing at a dead gallop back to the brush line where his herd was now bursting from the trees and into the open as well. When all the mares and foals had appeared to be in the clearing and heading my way, Little Brother crashed back into the tree line with great purpose.
From the k**b I was perched, I could see the tree tops sway and crash as he moved back towards the valley. The mares had formed a tight circle, putting the foals and youngsters in the middle waiting for Little Brother to return. They took turns snorting and all took up positions to watch every direction, waiting for whatever the unknown threat had been to appear at any moment.
While I was marveling at the maternal herd behavior I was witnessing, another great crash from the tree line and a small black yearling filly flailed her way into the soft evening light, now shades of pinks and indigo, with Little Brother in the rear. Driving her forward like a storm straight from hell was on their heels.
He swirled around the mares and together, the whole herd took off across the range. One last crash from the brush line and it all made sense. Bounding along behind them, eyes wide and head high, was Lew.
Poor soul. He had likely startled them in the pine forest and hadnât realized the terrifying creature the herd was fleeing fromâŚwas, in fact, him.
The herd made a wide circle on a small k**b where the mares and foals stood clustered at the highest point. Little Brother stood between them and Lew, ears pinned, body coiled, livid with the strange intruder disrupting his mares in this way. Lew danced and pranced, snorting and tossing his head, trying to sound the alarm alongside his herd mates, only he wasnât one of them. To him, he was helping. To them, he was the threat.
Neither was wrong. But language, spoken or silent, can be a cruel barrier, particularly amongst the wild things.
As time passed, he was loosely accepted by a few of the herds and wandered with them as they rotated through the site. That meant that not only had Lew gained the herd safety he so longed for, but also direct access to all the minerals and selenium there was in his new found friends diet because of the block intervention on the site.
Time passed, he grew stronger, he grew into a much healthier animal, though the bigger herds of elk still wouldnât accept him. His crooked twigs grew to branches, but one point always jutted sideways at a ninety-degree angle before turning downward like a shepherdâs crook.
He came to know me more closely too, but in that unspoken way wild things assess the world. I was judged, the birds and rabbits serving as the jury, to be found a natural part of the wild and separate from my fellow human species.
The Bringer of Blocks, the Quiet One Who Sat Among the Herd.
I would sit for hours among the horses, trying to earn trust, watching, listening, translating that silent language that fascinated me so. Lew would be there too, hovering nearby, half-curious, half-cautious but always aware I was there and taking the lead from the horses he had come to travel with and allowed me to walk respectfully among them all.
That October, just before I returned with Redford to the mountain, Lew was killed. A hunter had been tipped off about an elk that stayed with the horses and had a strange rack. I would find his hideless body at the edge of the range I had seen him in the day before. Antlers sawed off and with that, the mountainâs gentlest spirit silenced.
Thereâs a bit of old Appalachian lore that says elk are messengers between worlds. That they can cross over, unseen, and return to guide the dying safely home. I had always liked that thought. And I would come to believe it.
Because the night I was sure I had died, I saw Lew again.
The camp was set back in a cove of trees where there was no cell service. Eric was at camp that weekend helping do a resupply and had filmed some training footage of Redford that day. I had stayed up late editing a short update video to post but there was only a single bar of service in the meadowâs center. I parked the truck there for the night, sitting the phone on the console to get the best signal and let the video upload as I drifted to sleep nestled into my sleeping bag.
It was a breathtaking night, crisp, and stilled with frost. Winter skies have always felt more honest to me, more brilliant. The silence they create feels as though sound is absorbed instead of echoed. The stars were sharp as blades, the moon nearing full and casting silver across the meadow grass as it danced in the wind and fog.
I fell asleep watching the Milky Way shimmer behind drifting clouds.
Sometime after midnight, Bear stirred. He never woke me unless something was wrong. He pressed his throat to mine, growled low, and I jolted upright, hand reaching for the revolver instinctively.
ButâŚ. what I saw couldnât be real.
Nose pressed to the driver-side window wasâŚ
âLew?â I whispered. My breath cutting its own cloud of frost into the fridged air. It couldnât be, I had seen him, back strap cut out, twisted antlers gone, hide ripped from his body, the little white scar below his right eye from another valent attempt to join Little Brothers herd still on his cheek. Hell, what the hunters and coyotes left of his skull was in the bed of the truck.
No, Iâm sure he was dead.
Yet, there he was licking frost from the windowâs edges, staring at me through the soft curtain of fog. I rubbed my eyes, gave Bear the cue to stand down, and just stared.
But how could it be? Then the thought crashed like a wave through my mind: Maybe I was dead.
It was the only rational explanation to what I was seeing. That had to be it, someone had come in the night and shot me where I slept and here was Lew, now a great spirit of the beyond, to lead me to the other side.
In that moment, I was certain: this was the crossing place.
These were my spirit guides. The peace I felt was bone-deep, and otherworldly. I thought of my family, of all I had lost and a deep sense of warmth washed through me and I allowed it to take me over. I felt the comfort in the possibility of reunion, of going home to them all.
Bear grumbled again, breaking me from my trance and shifted his gaze to the rear window. I turned slowly to keep Lew in view as long as possible, scared if I looked away or even blinked my old friend would be gone. Only allowing my eyes to follow my head once it was fully facing out the back window, I shifted my gaze and was even more be wildered.
Blinking hard once more to adjust to the thin silver moon light filtering into the meadow. There was another elk peering over the truck bed through the back glass, another blink and there was another, then another, a whole herd.
They were moving window to window, licking the frost and salt from the glass. A few had bedded down in the fog-ringed circle around the truck, the young nestled beside their mothers. The frost had set hard, and the moonlight bounced off every crystal, painting the scene like a second sky fallen to earth. The silver light danced across every surface and the collective breath of the herd hung in the air like fistfuls of glitter and smoke.
I had never seen anything more beautiful, more sacred.
I turned back to the driver-side window. The elk was still there, putting my fear that he was merely an apparition to rest. But this wasnât Lew. His antler didnât have the crooked bend. He was older, broader, wiser, no little white scar. Still, I allowed myself to cling to the idea of it and let myself believe in the reunion a moment longer.
I thought of Uncle Dave then. Hooked up to more hoses and tubes than a deep sea explorer laying to waste in ICU. How he pulled me close and with all his might tried to tell me of his regrets and how he wished he had done more, tried harder, been better.
I thought of the look in his eyes that he was barely able to keep open for longer than a flutter, when I leaned down and whispered my thanks to him for being a father to me since mine had gone. I asked him to give everyone a big hug when he got where he was going. I told him he was the best man I knew and I walked out the door.
How broken I felt then, leaving the hospital. Here was one of the strongest men I had ever known, the bravest and he lay dying thinking of all the things he wished he had done. He thought of all his faults, his vices, his drinking. Not of the incredible presents he had in so many lives.
Softly, I let out a small laugh slip from my throat and the puff of frost blended into the still frozen air, then sat up a bit straighter in my sleeping bag, back pressed to the truck door.
âHow silly,â I thought. âHow ready I was to go.â
And yet, even in that near-departure, I felt lucky. This was real-life mountain magic. This was what the old-timers talked about in whispers and yarns by firelight. The spirit herd, the watchers, the ones who come when you're closest to the veil and in the places where it is the thinnest.
I also felt lucky that in that moment when I thought my life had been over, I didnât have a single regret in how my time on the earth had been spent. There were no, what ifs or âcan I just get 5 more minutesâ there was only immense comfort in knowing each moment had been spent with purpose and allowing the magic in.
I sat and watched the elk for what felt like an eternity under the frosted moon. The star light reflecting from their deep black eyes as if they were an extension of the galaxy itself. Tendrils of smoke thin breath from their nostrils was the only thing keeping track of time.
After what could have been hours, I tapped my phone screen. It flickered to life, the light illuminated 4am.
I called Eric, who was sleeping across the meadow in his truck. Groggy, he answered. I asked him to shine his flashlight toward where I had parked.
Moments later, a beam of light cut through the fog.
Twenty or more elk froze in place, as still as the air around them. All at once they bounded off, vanishing out of the light and into the tree line breaking the vail.
My phone buzzed with a text: âWere those⌠elk surrounding your truck?â
While that night I believed I had come to the end of my life and the elk were my spirit guides to the great meadow in the sky, I now see that it wasnât an end at all. The mountains had sent them not to signify closure, but instead to represent a beginning and to give me strength and protection for the years to come. For that very meadow in which Redford and I danced in the winter rain, and the elk visited under a December moon, would be ripped apart in the near future.
I think of that night often, perhaps more often than I should. The magic, the frost, the eyes of the elk as they peered in at me, the circle of protection they created as I slept. It has been a core memory engraved to my very bones that I draw on for strength.
I also know, with full certainty, that when it is my time to leave this earth, I hope it is just like that fridged night: Softly awakened under a cloak of frosted moonlight, I simply saunter into the great beyond along side an old friend.
