12/24/2025
Something new taking up my time this winter . . .
1 - The First Tracks
No one remembers the first time they saw the Dawn Horse at Geitner Homestead.
They remember the morning after.
The sun hadn’t cleared the trees yet. The world was still blue and quiet, the kind of quiet that only exists before people wake up. Dew clung to the grass, and the air smelled like earth holding its breath.
That’s when the tracks were found.
They were small—too small for a horse. Too neat for a deer. Too deliberate for anything that should have been moving through the field overnight. Each print pressed gently into the damp ground, as if whatever made them didn’t want to wake the earth beneath it.
Someone thought maybe it was a fawn. Someone else said coyote. But no one could explain the shape.
Four tiny hooves. Perfectly formed. Light as a whisper.
The tracks crossed the pasture and disappeared near the fence line, where the grass bent just slightly, like something had paused there. Not long. Just long enough to look.
Later that week, I saw it. Just for a second. A shape moving through the mist as the sun began to rise—too smooth, too quiet. It was small. Smaller than expected. Smaller than reasonable. At first glance it could have been a trick of the light, or a shadow cast by something unseen. But it moved with purpose.
By the time I blinked, it was gone. All that remained were the tracks.
And the strange feeling that something had been watching back.
2 – What Watches Back
The second glimpse came three mornings later. The tracks appeared again.
This time they circled. Not in panic. Not in confusion. But carefully, as though whatever made them had been standing still, turning slowly, taking in the world from every direction.
There was something different about them now.
Between the prints, the dew was disturbed in small arcs—like the sweep of a tail. The grass leaned inward, not away, as if the Dawn Horse had paused long enough to listen.
That’s when I noticed the silence.
No birds. No insects. Even the wind had stopped.
And then—movement.
At first it looked like a shadow sliding across the mist. Too low to the ground to be a deer. The shape was wrong in a way that made my heart hesitate.
Small. Graceful. Intentional.
For the briefest moment, the mist thinned.
A curve of a neck.
The light reflecting along its back.
Eyes—dark and yet catching the coming sun.
It did not run. It watched.
Standing there I felt it—not fear, but the unmistakable awareness of being seen. Measured. Remembered.
Then the light shifted.
The Dawn Horse stepped backward into the mist, and the world exhaled. Birds resumed their songs. The breeze returned. Morning continued as if nothing unusual had happened.
Only the tracks remained.
