For Olivia

It's started early.

For years now, I have had insomnia in this season. I used to draw late into the night, smearing pastels and charcoals across cheap paper and calling it art. I would wake in the morning, having forgotten I spent the night creating, with colors faded across my hands and face. I drew a man, the type who has not seen boyhood for a long while but is not, in any respect of the word, old. I drew his beautiful eyes in shades of black, I drew his too-long nose which my mother attempted to correct me for. "Noses aren't supposed to be that long." But his was.

Underneath his portrait, I wrote the words, 'Fire burns the hand, but smites the darkness.' I completed this at the age of twelve, signing my grandmother's name in the corner.

I am a day less than a week from my eighteenth birthday, and I believe my summer insomnia has taken an entirely new energy source. Oh, god, how I don't go a single day without breathing for the two weeks spent in New Mexico, where the mountains provided the only possible backdrop to a place where children were changed to heroes in all of our eyes. There was magic in that place, raw and powerful, born of entering an arena with a group of peers knowing that one will be named the Champion of a Nation. Knowing that ten will receive honor as being the best in this country, knowing that one will forever be just a mark off from perfection, while another has captured it completely.

Yes, we do this for the love we have for the animals who make our lives worth living. Yes, we do this for the hard adrenaline rush we all feel as we're entering the ring. Yes, we do this for the support and the cheering from the friends and fans. Yes, we do this to keep working to have the best ride we possibly can have...

But above everything, above the rider and the horse and the trainer and the outfit and the dance that we all strive to master... above all of it is glory. A shared glory between all of those it takes to achieve the red rose blanket, the silver statue, the red-blue-yellow ribbon. We do this for that one moment, and in that one moment, "we were infinite."

I am going to have a hard time sleeping this summer. My mind constantly falls back to everything about Albuquerque, for the color of the Mexican brick and the smell of the dust and the eyes of the horses watching you through the barn aisles. I think of the girls who fell, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, onto the necks of their horses as their names were called as the 2006 National Champions. I think of the years they have spent working towards that one single moment, what they have put into this game to be rewarded so greatly.

I think of them, and I realize that I truly stand amongst giants, with dreams that only those red mountains can fence in.

And most importantly of all, I stand beside one woman (for it would be an insult to call her a girl in this context) who will be defending her National crown this year, who will certainly be an even fiercer competitor in 2007 than she was in 2006... and who I am glad to recognize as the best in the division I compete in because she does so for one reason: she believes that her best friend, her horse and partner, deserves the title and the honor more than anything in the world.

(I believe the same, and my belief in Prism, the most glorious creature God has ever put upon this earth, is unwavering and profound. He will have his nation.)