The belief is in my bones.

With a high in the fifties and rain enough to sog the ground, I'm seeing fresh sprouts of green grass and furling forms of vibrant moss on the trees.

Yes, I'm feeling springtime in my bones and the excitement is quivering there like a trapped beast who knows the doors about to be sprung. Despite the very mild winter we've had so far (and despite the fact that we have another month or so of the frigid cold (or should have) I'm already sick of it and the frozen ground (especially mucking the paddocks at work when the manure piles are frozen to the ground, that just sucks) and I welcome the rain and the warm and the soggy ground the way the farmer welcomes it, knowing we'll all soon be back in action.

I can't help but think back a year and remember, almost exactly, what last January was like.

It was like sitting in prison. I would wake up every day, sometimes with my then-boyfriend there, sometimes not. I would scrabble around the filthy apartment (filthy because A: We were lazy, and B : because we didn't have enough room for all of our stuff or the money for a storage unit, so everything just kinda sat in the floor or on the coffee table, or where-ever) and try to pull together a meager breakfast (Hello, slice of bread, how are you today?) and then I would sit on our bed and play on the internet, half the time crying because I was lonely. I had no car, couldn't go anywhere, no real friends who lived near-by. Just an empty, dirty apartment and no food. I couldn't get out to go visit my horse or do anything fun or see friends. Nearly my entire month of January was like that. That was the month that really started to shake me, made me realize I had to get out of there.

By March, I was free, and by April, so was Siaga.

I have to be honest, I really hate hauling water when the hose is frozen. But hey, at least I can. I can haul him water now, instead of sitting in that apartment alone, wishing I could see the winter fluffies of his coat, feel the coarse hair of his mane, pick up each hoof and pick it out, rest my forehead to his, and tickle his nose while I tell him his star looked like a funny and squashed version of Texas.

Now I can do all of that, and while I wait on the weather to warm up a bit more and his weight to return again after the initial winter loss, I look forward to the first ride of the year.