Do horses sleep standing up?

Having breakfast at the cafe in my hometown recently.

Was provided an epiphany by the farmers and ranchers around The Liar's Table.

The conversation started with one ole boy laughing at the stupidity of a question on the previous evening's episode of, "Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?"

"Can you believe they asked such a dumb question? 'Do horses sleep standing up?' Everybody knows they do."

Everybody but me. (I didn't volunteer that information that morning, by the way.)

If you grow up around horses, work them, ride them, sell them, buy them, you know that horses sleep standing up. And you understand why. As I have now learned by asking one of the ranchers that knows I'm a city boy idiot but won't tell on me, horses sleep standing up because they would vulnerable to predators if they slept on the ground.

Duh.

The providential design of nature continues to amaze.

The conversation then turned a bit more philosophical.

A man who farms for a living said, "You know, that's what's wrong with this world. People have gotten too far away from the land."

That statement still reverberates with me.

Mankind was put here on earth and the land and all it produced was put here for our nurturing and our caretaking.

Mankind was not put here on earth in a Ralph Lauren decorated birthing room.

Just observing and understanding the circle of life teaches so much uncommon sense.

Watching men and women work the ground to grow their own food, to feed their own animals, to make a living off of the land amazes a spoiled, sissified knucklehead like me.

I'm a domestic animal. Put me in the wild, and I'll be dead in a few hours.

It ain't supposed to be that way.

I should know how to find clean water from someplace other than the Brita filter.

I should know how to feed myself from the sea without going to Joe's Crab Shack.

I should know how to feed myself corn that isn't provided with fake butter flavor from Orville Redenbacher.

We are too far away from the land. We have forgotten our roots. We have forgotten how to feed ourselves. We have forgotten how this world really operates.

We have replaced horse sense with horseshit.