I want to cry when I think of the pain Pamela Rickenbach has suffered in the past days, but Pamela is not a person I would every pity. Maria and I both love her, she says we are her brother and sister, and there is something to that. Pamela is the spiritual and literal force behind Blue Star Equiculture, one of the special places in my world, and I think, of so many others. She is not a simple person.

This morning, she suggested I photograph the young people instead of her, and I said forget it. First of all, I said, she is essential to Blue Star, her voice is powerful and important. She is starting a blog soon, and I imagine it will be intensely popular, Pamela is seething with ideas. She is part mystic, prophet, animal lover, she comes from the other world, she hears and sees things I don’t hear and see, but which are very powerful.

She is the spirit behind the Blue Star idea, the place of compassion for people and animals, the place that works to restore the connection between humans and domesticated animals, while so much of the well-meaning but disconnected world is pulling them apart from one another.

And besides, I said, it doesn’t work when people tell me what to write or photograph. She smiled and said yes, of course, she would not tell me what to do. I love Pamela, she is  my sister, we are so very different and so very much alike. She loves the idea that the young people at Blue Star will imagine and re-imagine the place in the wake of her husband Paul’s death. It is a spiritual experience to see her with the horses, it has changed me.