Are you ready to meditate with Kori?
Lay down in your bed,
Get comfortable.
Make sure that everything is just right in your room.
It's time to relax your body and let go of your busy day.
Casey had had quite a rough day at school.
He'd had a test he didn't do too well on.
He was upset.
He was tired.
He just wanted to go to sleep.
He wanted to go to that other place that made him feel so much better.
His other world.
He turned on his cowboy nightlight and laid for a second just staring at the light reflections on the walls.
And as they spinned around in a circle he followed them with his eyes.
Travelling on wall to wall around his bedroom.
Cut outs of cowboys on horses.
He took three deep breaths.
This is what Casey did whenever he wanted to visit his past life in his dream.
His past life when he was about 17.
He was a cowboy and he lived on a farm in the cutest house and he had all these awesome animals.
He wanted to go there and just get away from this place.
This world.
In 2010 having a rubbish test and just feeling like heavy and depressed and sad.
By the time Casey had finished his third breath he was already fast asleep.
In his dreams he was riding his horse Meadow.
It spent most of the day transferring the livestock from one field to another.
The cows were happily grazing away on the grass when he did his final count.
There were supposed to be 31 calves.
There were 30.
One of the young cows was missing.
That meant Casey had to go back out.
Back on the route that they'd just come crossing over the prairie to try and find the missing calf.
He was hungry and he was tired and it was late.
He was dusty and sweaty and all he wanted to do was take a bath and eat his supper.
But this had to be done.
A calf's life was in danger.
That calf needed to be found.
It could hear one of the livestock crying out this awful sound as if she was screaming,
Moaning,
Crying so loud it was haunting.
He knew that that was the calf's mother.
She was missing her baby.
This gave him the urgency that he needed,
The extra boost of adrenaline.
He tapped on the side of Meadow with his heels and she zoomed forward.
He started along the track,
Backtracking from where he started his day.
After about an hour,
A long,
Tiresome hour,
He spotted something dark in the distance by the wire fence.
He knew instantly that that was the calf.
He thought,
I bet it's got trapped in the wire.
The closer he got,
The more confirmation he got that he was right.
The calf was trapped in the wire.
He was heading in that direction and all of a sudden,
Meadow steered up onto her back legs and made the loudest noise.
He went flying off the back of Meadow.
He wasn't expecting it at all.
Meadow had been scared by a rattlesnake.
It was there in front of her on the field.
Casey was that busy trying to eyeball the calf and find out what was happening before he got there that he wasn't paying attention to the grass in front of him,
His path in front of him.
That was a mistake.
He fell hard on the ground.
It felt like he banged the back of his head.
All he had on was his cowboy hat.
In this time of existence,
They didn't wear riding hats,
So his head wasn't really protected very much at all.
He banged his left elbow and he banged all down the side of his left hip,
His left leg.
He crashed on the ground really hard.
Luckily for Casey,
There wasn't any large stones or anything on the ground,
So he didn't hit his head on anything like that because that would have been super serious.
He was so far away from everyone and everybody,
It would have took them a long time to find him.
And with a bang on the head that could have possibly been bleeding,
That would have been life threatening,
Just like the calf.
But as it was,
He banged his head hard enough for him to feel like he was seeing stars,
And then he heard the sound.
The familiar rattlesnake sound.
He instantly froze.
Registered in his brain that that's what Meadow had reacted to,
The rattlesnake.
Horses do not like rattlesnakes.
And rattlesnakes do not like anything really.
He didn't know where the snake was.
He just heard that haunting,
Horrible sound.
Just this slow,
Methodical,
Shaking,
Rattly sound.
That warning to be careful.
He just laid as still as he could.
But he was also concerned about the calf and he knew that time was against him.
What if the calf had got trapped around its neck in the barbed wire fence?
What if the calf was struggling and the barbed wire was making things more and more dangerous every second?
He was so stressed.
He was stressed.
He was in pain.
But he did the right thing.
He stayed so still.
At one point,
The rattle got louder and he knew the snake was closer.
Jimmity Cricket,
He thought.
This could be bad.
He took long,
Slow,
Deep breaths,
Trying not to move a millimeter.
He tried not to blink.
He tried not to breathe.
It felt like the longest moments of his life.
The sound got further away,
But he still didn't move.
And then the sound dispersed as if it was just falling into ground like rain.
It disappeared.
And he knew that the snake had retreated and gone somewhere else.
He leant up onto his elbow and felt his head screaming inside.
He rubbed the back of his head.
There was definitely a big bump there,
But he wasn't bleeding.
That was good.
He'd have someone check out his head when he got back to the ranch.
For now,
He needed to get back on Meadow.
Meadow hadn't run off or anything.
She wasn't that far away.
She was just a few feet away,
Far enough away from the snake.
In case he managed to get up onto his feet,
He brushed off his shirt.
He brushed off his denim jeans.
And he jumped back onto Meadow.
He got to the calf quite quickly.
He assessed the damage and he noticed it wasn't that bad.
The calf had got trapped and the wire had got wrapped around one of her legs,
But it wasn't digging in too deep.
There wasn't that much danger or damage.
He went to his saddlebag on the side of Meadow and pulled out a pair of wire cutters.
He cut the wire and freed the calf.
The calf instantly burst forward and ran away.
She was scared.
She wanted her mom.
Now Casey knew he had the long job of guiding her and steering her all the way to the field where the rest of the livestock were.
It took him over two hours to get back.
The calf kept wanting to go in the wrong direction.
The mom was still making her haunting noises looking for a baby.
And when they reunited,
It was like they kissed noses.
The calf was so happy she went instantly to feed.
And the mom went quiet.
She was okay.
She had her baby back.
Casey put Meadow in the stables.
He unsaddled her and brushed her down,
Made sure that she had lots of hay and water.
And then he headed to the kitchen.
On the table was stew.
A big bowl of stew and lots of big chunks of bread.
He devoured his meal.
He showered rather than bathed.
The shower was outside.
It was like a basically a very rudimental outside shower that was hooked up to a big drum of water.
It was cold,
But it was refreshing.
And he stared up at the night sky and looked at the stars while he showered off his dusty,
Smelly body.
And then he fell into his bed.
Like a ton of bricks.
Exhausted and tired.
Really tired.
And he slept.
The next morning when Casey woke up and he was in his cushy,
Nice soft bed,
His blue bedroom,
His 10 year old body.
He took a big deep breath of gratitude.
What he thought was a bad day yesterday was definitely not a bad day.
Casey the cowboy showed him that.
Now that was a bad day,
He thought to himself.
He hopped out of bed and started to get ready for school.
Quite chipper and happy.
Feeling very very refreshed.
Until the next time.
The end.
