I Gallop On

The trail riders wall :: Flickr photo by Don Bailey

We’re at Jack’s creek campground in the Pecos Mountains. It’s my first time riding horseback in the high country . Every evening after the horses have been taken care of for the night, dinner dishes washed, campfires stoked, the horsemen and women stroll from trailer to trailer to swap stories of the day’s rides. Their voices carry over the alpine meadow and linger in the increasingly cool mountain air like the last few rays of sunlight. Some endurance riders from Tennessee excitedly describe their ride along The Wall. People gather around to listen. Camp dogs sit on their haunches and yawn, pink tongues unfurling.

For a flatlander like me, the trail riders’ description of the high-altitude path along the spine of the mountain range makes me imagine my surefooted horse stepping right off the edge and the two of us free-falling into space. I don’t tell anyone that when my Andalusian mare Caprichosa carries me and my 5-year-old son down off the mountain to the campsite each afternoon, I am relieved to still be among the living.

I keep this to myself, because riding the mountains is something I’ve wanted to do all my life, and once you’ve had a taste of the high, wild places, you can never look back. Eventually I expect courage to well up in me like the Pecos River headwaters and become part of the landscape. It’s a matter of exposure, I tell myself. My husband has known this country most of his life, and look how comfortable he is, I think. However, I make up my mind that I’m not riding The Wall this week.

the trail riders wall :: Flickr photo by sosidesc

Some evenings, a cowboy from Oklahoma delights our children with hummingbirds who perch on his rough fingers like raffish ruby and emerald rings. Occasionally, the old gentleman smells of White Lightening, and Dennis and I are even talked into an eye-popping swig or two. Once, J. and C. each get to hold a tiny hummer in their hands. I’m not quite sure I approve of this, but don’t want to hurt the former bronc rider’s feelings, and the hummers flit away unscathed. I can almost feel their hearts beat, diminutive percussion instruments. A Rufous peers at us from his perch on a wildflower stem.

My colleague had a heart attack in the ER this week, which, I guess if you’re going to have a heart attack, is a good place to do it. His heart stopped beating, and he had to be resuscitated.

the trail riders wall :: Flickr photo by CAZASCO

He said that when his heart stopped, the entire ER tipped sideways like a black-and-white television set turned on end, and he found himself walking in a golden field of wheat with friends he knew but whose names he couldn’t quite remember or say. There was no more pain—he says that a heart attack is excruciating—and in the wheat field he was ... content.

Far off in the distance, he could hear the ER doctors shouting, making a lot of noise, and he was very annoyed that they were disturbing him so and wished they would go away and leave him alone. He was having a good time in the rippling waves of wheat until suddenly, he found himself back in the ER, chest searing with pain, bright lights blaring in his face, with a lot of people very glad to see him. He’d been just a heartbeat away.