When I was a kid we had horses despite the fact that we were poor. I've always had issues with my mother's decision to have so many animals while we struggled to feed and cloth ourselves. But regardless, we had them and as a kid I enjoyed every minute of it. We found ways to help pay for the horses care by taking on odd jobs. One of them was to do horse transport. We had a two horse trailer and I remember one instance where a woman had bought two Mustangs (A mare and her foal) from the Bureau of Land Management. I remember the lady telling us that it was about 50 miles to her house, and that her drive was long and up a steep mountain. Boy was that an understatement. By the time we arrived at her farm it was pitch black outside and the "drive" was a one lane gravel road at a 45 degree angle up a curving road. Both sides had a good 50 foot drop off. We took it slow but found ourselves stuck at a corner that we needed a better angle to clear. Which meant my mother's boyfriend (Named Butch) needed to back down the driveway to take a second shot at the turn. With it being so dark my mother got the bright (Read dumb) idea of getting out and signaling Butch on when he was getting too close to the edge. All of us were nervous by this point but after about 20 minutes of backing up, moving forward and backing up again we eventually got around the corner with everyone intact. Since Butch had a running start at the steep incline he didn't want to stop, but I looked at him and reminded him my mother is night blind. How she helped with that turn I'll never know. We both thought it a bad idea she walk the whole distance in the dark. I'm so glad I convinced him to let me out so I could walk with my mother. She wanted to continue walking in case he got stuck again.
Not 5 minutes after I joined my mother, I was stopping her from going off the edge. She was just one step away from going down the 50 foot drop. At the time I didn't really consider I did anything special. But I do remember my mother thanking me all the way up that drive and later it kinda sunk in that the feeling of unease I felt was my inner warning telling me something horrible was about to happen, and I could stop it. Ever felt that (For a lack of a better term) "spidey sense"? It's served me well over the years. Of course there's no solid proof that anything bad would have happened. But I remember more than once slowing down for a traffic light because I felt something was wrong and then someone running it moments later. One of my biggest lessons has been to trust my instincts. They are rarely wrong.
Do you trust your instincts? Have you ever saved a life?
