Songs of Freedom

This is about something a stranger gave me without her realizing it - a sense of freedom.

I was working at a telemarketing firm about four years ago and I placed a call to a woman who ran an animal rescue business in Wyoming for seven counties. Yes, seven. And we started talking about the services offered and she didn't qualify, but we kept talking.
She was in her late fifties. She had beaten cancer and still smoked. She had two grown sons, both married, who owned motorcycles. They also owned a business doing car alarms and stereo systems.
At this point I asked her if she rode and she said, "No. Well, not those things." She was referring to horses. She loved riding horses, had been doing it almost her whole life. She loved just going out into the plains for hours.
Then the coversation turned towards the freedom of doing just that. The stars being your blanket and freedom of doing what you want. She instead started telling me all of the difficulting involved in a life like that. You have a beat up pickup, your face is always windburned, your hands are calloused and you sleep outside every night.
Now from sitting in a cube for eight hours a day without getting much exercise this sounded unimgineable. The idea of self-direction and freedom was profound and something I had not thought of or experienced in my life at that time.
The phone call ended and I went outside and looked at the sunset. I thought to myself that if I didn't have the financial responsibilities I had, then I would drive out to Wyoming and say thank you to that woman for that gift. I still have the urge to find her although it would be impossible now.
But to taste that boundless possibility was the beginning of something that has led me down a road to find what I enjoyed and what freedom really means.