Winter’s aching fingers pinched my ears as I hurried to the barn. My toes, cozy and padded by woolen socks in a new pair of work boots, bent with each chunk of frozen mud beneath them and sent fluffy, mindless snow bouncing away on my path. A shepherd amid his flock of sheep, or a farmer in a cloud of white chickens, might have centered himself in such a universe. I was on my way to the horses that had become the center of my life.