Canyonlands
25 years ago, as I was strolling out of Central Park during my first visit to the city, I was stunned to see two horses and their riders in full English gear weaving their way in and out of traffic at the bottom of the canyon of concrete and steel. The pedestrian traffic light signaled me to cross, but instead I found myself with feet glued to the sidewalk, staring. Late mid-afternoon, the sun was slipping behind the towering glass edifices, shadows lengthening much like they do at the foot of our mesa at the end of each day. The horses’ copper-colored tails disappeared around the corner of a building that spiraled up into the small patch of sky, leaving me wondering if they were real or a mirage.
Many years later, I mentioned this experience to my then-neighbor S. I had a house in the Pojoaque Valley here in Northern New Mexico at the time. He was visiting with me and my appaloosa mare, Lacey, of whom he was very fond. She ruffled his hair with her polka-dotted lips and blew at him through her big nostrils. She liked him too.
A quiet young man who’d grown up in New York City, S. described to me the job he’d had as a teenager at the Claremont Riding Academy in Upper Manhattan, a couple of blocks west of Central Park and how much he’d loved the opportunity to be around the horses, any horses. He told me in great detail about the four-story apartment building for equines where grooms send mounts down to their waiting riders via ramps and elevators. His words painted pictures of gears, pulleys, fetlocks, hooves, pavement. I think that’s where those Central Park riders must have been returning to.
Shortly thereafter, S. became very ill and was diagnosed with AIDs. When he returned from one of his long hospital stays, I had a hard time hiding my shock at how the disease had diminished his already petite frame. His almond eyes were hollow, face gaunt. We were sitting together in my little barn on bales of straw surrounded by my ridiculously nosey geese, whose antics had just made us break into peals of laughter, when told me he didn’t know if he was going to live very long.
I had a dream about S. the other night. It’s been 15 years since I've seen him.
I was leading him once again on my appaloosa mare down the Pojoaque creek towards the Rio Grande. Sometimes when Lacey and I’d take him out, he was able to ride along behind me. But today S. wasn’t feeling too strong. So he clasped the saddle horn with his two dark, child-like hands as I led Lacey into the barrancas, up the deep sandy arroyo into the red-rocked canyons. Indian paintbrush bloomed miraculously from the cracks and crevices. The sun was going down in flames over the Jemez mountains, burning our shadows onto the canyon wall. I told S. about the small natural spring up there that some of the local kids had told me about and how I was hoping to find it. We talked about looking for it together.
But we never did.
Flickr photo credits: Skardhamar ; Caroline
