A Song for Two Warriors

Photo copyright Aji, 2017; all rights reserved.

December gets harder every year. 

There are now no fewer than four people whose walking on we have to mourn, all in the span of eleven days (three of them across a two-day period). There's also Ice, because even though his first anniversary will be next August, Christmas Eve was the anniversary of the day four years ago that he crossed over through the fence and came to us.

Three days before Carter Camp walked on.

If you've read one of the works by Carter's cousin, you'll know that a white horse figures in it in a very specific way. We always felt as though Carter sent Ice to us, knowing that the wild white horse, the warrior horse, would be safe here. It felt like a link to his spirit, too, unbroken by time and space and mortality.

Now Ice has walked on, too.

And neither is ever far from our thoughts. It's impossible to think of one without also thinking of the other. But four years on, it seems important to do our remembering in the open for this man who was elder, teacher, warrior, brother to us both. Wings and I don't do heroes, and we certainly don't do saints, but Carter was as close as it comes — no worship, just a profound and soul-deep form of traditional respect and honor for that rarest of men, the sort who speaks little and does much, who walks the talk even when he doesn't talk much, at least in the sense of wasting a moment's thought on cameras and microphones and cultivating an audience.

As I said at prayer this morning, Carter, we remember you, we honor you, we thank you, and we love you. The same holds true of the white horse you sent to find us. This day is a song for two warriors. 



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