I don’t make New Year’s resolutions. Maybe it’s the fact that I live in New England, but despite Christmas and the changing of the year, the middle of winter (there’s a reason why they call it the dead of winter) just doesn’t feel like a time to make changes.
Living as I do, microwave-free, with horses in shedrows on the hill, two stoves that keep us largely off the grid (but busy tending the fires), and garages that store everything but cars, winter’s everyday obligations fill the hours and keep us fit. It’s the worst time to cross things off my “to do” list, that personal perpetual calendar that most of us keep.
So I tend to make my annual resolutions after Labor Day. Perhaps it’s a misnomer to refer to them as resolutions at all, since they’re less about changing me than they are about deciding what can get done before it gets too cold to do it. I have more in common with a fat-cheeked squirrel right now than the tipsy and contemplative singing Auld Land Syne.
When I was young, my mother often told me to “gather ye rosebuds while ye may,” quoting Robert Herrick’s poem “To the Virgins, To Make Much of Time.” Of course, at the time she was giving those orders, the very last thing I was supposed to do was gather rosebuds as Herrick suggested, so I interpreted the phrase as a more romantic version of what squirrels are supposed to do with nuts.
Reflections on Riding 