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I still don't own a mounting block.
So my smart-alecky nine-year old asks me last night, as I'm trying to get Toby to stand while I get on board (we're still in the early schooling stages) ...
So, Mom, are you going to take that bucket with you EVERYWHERE in the mountains this summer?
No comment.
I don't remember in the history books where it said that Lewis & Clark's mother trailed along behind them at a respectable distance ...
and they were wrangled by had their very own wrangler.
There's nothing like drinking an ice cold Corona with your beautiful Arabian gal after a long ride.
Should I be jealous?
Only if she starts doing the dance of the seven veils ...
I look at her and wonder what it must be like to be 9 years old, sitting on a white horse on the edge of a mesa where you can see for hundreds of miles into a cerulean sea of potential.
The land of Haybarn has been overtaken by a five-pound despot who rules with an iron claw.
In her first official act, she sends Matilda-the-tenacious-heeler a'waltzing. "You are hereafter banished from Haybarn along with all other dogs!" the calico dictator hisses. "And that bumbling Percheron friend of yours too!"
Matilda mutters as she trots up to the ranch house, "I shall miss my soft straw day bed." Then as an afterthought, she barks over her shoulder, "You, Madame, are fortunate that I don't consider your unfriendly kittens to be hors d'oeuvres."
Sometimes, in the wee hours of a clear black night, when the moon is nearly full, you can hear the bourgeis feline autocrat and her progeny frolicking about in the hay, giggling, laughing hysterically, holding their flea-bitten sides as if they are about to burst.
Matilda scratches, wriggles, woofs, rrrrrruuuuffffs, from her cushy, fleece-lined bed beneath the big open window in the master bedroom, "Damn barn cats."
I keep a close watch on this heart of mine
I keep my eyes wide open all the time.
I keep the ends out for the tie that binds
Because you're mine,
I walk the line
~ I Walk the Line, Johnny Cash
Nearly three weeks of antibiotics and no more coughing or runny nose from Piñon. Looks like we've cleared up the bacterial infection. (It wasn't strangles.) Her fibrinogen level is high (possible indication of an internal abcess?), but the vet says that this is probably due to the respiratory infection. I'm going to keep a close eye on her and have it re-tested in a few weeks if she has a lapse. I've managed to put about 25-30 pounds on her, but she's still under 1,000 pounds (964 to be exact). When I separate her from the rest of the herd to give her her meds and Triple Crown Senior, she eats and walks up and down the fence line. Eats a few bites and walks up and down the fence line. She's nearly dug a trench.
I'm concerned she's going to walk off every extra calorie I'm giving her!
Every day for the past two-and-a-half weeks ...
you've had to make it past this 1,350-pound dude
with a bowl of Piñon's apple sauce and antibiotics.
Twice.
Once in the morning. Once in the evening.
You'd never think that anything this big could sneak up on you as quiet as a cat while you're fumbling with the gate latch. (Most of the time, you would not describe Toby as very surreptitious.) But he can. However, he usually gives himself away with all of that loud smacking and licking as he stretches his muzzle ever so slowly and delicately towards the bowl over which you're hunkering.
A stern, "Toby, quit!" sends him scurrying away with his feelings hurt.
The Big Boo still doesn't believe it when you tell him for about the hundredth time that he's not going to get any.
Found over at Of Horses and Art─
I saw a child who couldn't walk, sit on a horse and laugh and talk. I saw a child who could not crawl, mount a horse and sit up tall. I saw a child born to strife, take up and hold the reins of life. And that same child was heard to say, thank you God for showing me the way.
~ John Anthony Davis
We actually managed to show up at school for Show and Tell on Friday with a sparkling clean white horse in tow ...
As my 9-year-old daughter gets ready to introduce her Andalusian horse Caprichosa to over fifty of her schoolmates out on the sandy schoolyard, I can almost see the words she’s been working on so hard during the week come spiraling up out of her head and evaporating into the ether. She looks to me for help, speechlessly imploring. I do my best to maintain the attitude of groom and horse handler instead of M-O-M and smile at her encouragingly, as if to say, “This is your day, remember? Come on. You can do it!”
Sparkling white Caprichosa stands quietly beside me, ears pricked forward, tail swishing, expectantly eyeing the horde of little children who are eyeing her back from a respectful distance. (Pre-Show-and-Tell, she is rushed by five kindergarteners who escape the group and hurl themselves headlong at her like a scene I'd imagine from The Lord of the Flies. The Andalusian’s white-lashed eyes widen in fear, and she shrinks back from the onslaught in one whoosh of breathe onto her haunches, sitting down like a gigantic dog until the teacher gets the little heathens rounded up.) I wonder what the mare is thinking.
One of J.’s teachers jumps in to help. So, J., what is your horse’s name? she asks.
After J. tells her schoolmates everything she can possibly think of to tell them about Caprichosa, prompted by her wonderful teachers, who have come through just perfectly, I ask the mare to move out onto the longe.
The original plan was that J. would longe her some at a walk and a trot to let her schoolmates see how the horse moves, and we’d talk a little about the gaits. In fact, J’s been practicing her technique all week, and she’s very good. But she tells me as we’re unloading Cap that she doesn’t really want to. I’m surprised─this is the kid who is in every single school play every Friday and who has the audience cracking up at her clowning (complete with a red plastic nose) at summer circus camp─but from where I'm standing in the trailer dressing room, I can almost feel her butterflies. The big, turning- somersaults-in-your-stomach, 9-year-old girl variety.
Somehow this is different.
Our 20-meter circle is filled with silence punctuated by the sound of Caprichosa's bell-shaped hooves eating up the sand. I've got to say something to fill up all of that empty space, because that's how I am when I'm nervous, and, as most people who know me would most likely tell you─I can talk about horses for days.
Longer: (forging ahead ...) OK. Who knows what I’m doing right now?
Kids: (Hands shoot up.) Driving? Longing?
Longer: That's right! It's called longing. This is an example of the classical training of the horse. We first control the horse from the ground then from their back. Do you guys know what gait this is? What this type of moving is called?
Kids: A trot! A run? A pace? A gallop!
Longer: It's called a trot. How many beats do you hear in a trot? Can you count it? Count with me... 1-2. 1-2. See how her legs are moving diagonally?
Kids: (Some counting out loud.) 1-2! 1-2!
Longer: That’s good. How many of you are right-handed?
Kids: Show of hands.
Longer: Left handed?
Kids: Show of hands.
Longer: (Amazed that kids seem genuinely responsive to this.) Did you know that horses are mostly left-handed?
Kids: Silence. Funny looks.
Longer: Explains. Demonstrates horse working on left and right rein and how you have to teach each side separately. Explains that Andalusians are an ancient breed. They were used in warfare and are very brave (hence their ability to sit back on haunches and not run away when rushed by a wild gang of kindergarteners). Explains that Andalusians are called The Horses of Kings because of their gentle, noble bearing.
I look to J. to see if she wants to add something. Please. Help me out here.
But her eyes and the eyes of her teachers and schoolmates are following Cap floating around the sand on a lovely circle. Silently verbose and full of herself, the horse’s ancient Spanish dance is more eloquent than any words of anyone could ever be.
Longer: Asks horse to halt and come to her in the center of the circle where 9-year-old daughter J. proudly takes the longe line that Longer gratefully relinquishes. The mare nuzzles J., who invites the other children to come up (quietly, gently, please!) in groups of two and three to touch her beautiful friend and say hello.
Caprichosa graciously greets each and every child, standing as still as a statue carved of ivory. Thick neck arched, she sniffs them with her big nostrils. Snuffles them with her soft muzzle. Turns her head and casts her soft eye on the ones who touch her shoulder. Messes up their hair. Licks one little boy who solemnly places the palm of one sun browned hand on her sparkling clean white cheek.
I think it went OK.
Flickr photos by: Reign; nunos; Fack to Bront; Alain Astruc; Wizmo; pensiero; Ludovic Maillard
After spending the week as The Bionic Woman—going to work, commuting into town, getting kids ready for school, making costumes for the end-of-the-year school play when it's a known fact that she can't sew worth a damn and that all sewing activities involve her cursing like a sailor (causing poor Johnny West to run for cover), taking a horse to Show and Tell (which included coming up with a "non-sugar" treat for 57 kids), vetting horses, doing laundry, watering trees, feeding everyone on the ranch, etc.— Jane West is tired and cranky. (Johnny too...)
She has put a moratorium on all weekend activities, except reading.
Jane sure could use a weekend in a secluded mountain cabin. She's envisioning ...
Beatty's cabin. Circa 1920.
She, Johnny and kids made the horseback ride up here in the Pecos Wilderness a couple of years ago. It rained some, and the verdant green grass was up to their knees. The valley was filled with the sound of the rushing Pecos river.
All that's left of the cabin now is bits and pieces of the stone foundation, which made them sad. But that didn't stop the little family from standing in the middle of where four log walls had once been, thinking longingly of what it would have been like to have lived in such a peaceful, quiet place.
Normally I would relish a sky like this.
Look forward to a long night of snuggling beneath the plush red patchwork coverlet pulled up to my nose,
watching the lightning show beyond my bedroom window, sills rattling with each raucous peal of thunder.
Matilda-the-tenacious-heeler burrowing in beneath the four-poster bed. Bare feet eventually padding in. J. and C. cozying up with us. And I'd find myself drifting off to sleep, not in my ranch house, but in a berth on a sailing ship, rocking, swaying back and forth, on a surging purple sea.
But not tonight.
Instead, I worry about getting my daughter's white horse to school for Show and Tell on Friday in sparkling clean condition. (If you have, or ever have had a white horse, you know what I mean.)
It's not like I have a horse sized shower stall for a quick equine bath in the cold, or a cushy box stall with cedar chips, or slinky horse pajamas to wrap her up in against everything potentially dirty. My horses live in a dirt pasture with a big loafing shed.
She's not a big white bed sheet I can just toss into the Kenmore.
This is not a job for Chlorox.
And I've known the Andalusian horse long enough to know that if there's rain tonight, she will wallow in the mud in the morning. On her side. In the sun. Hay belly sticking up like a bump. Legs all askew. Emitting long, languorous groans. Eyes closed. Head lolled back. Mane and tail caked with mud. Then she'll roll over onto her back, legs jutting almost straight up into the air, massaging her spine, wriggling back and forth and back and forth, grinding that dirt in there real good before flopping down onto her other side. Rest a little while. Moan. Repeat. Several times.
Caprichosa will no longer look like a horse, but a big, exotic H-A-W-G. (Sus scrofa.)
And even though I noticed the Fire Danger High and No Campfires signs posted in the Pecos tonight, I can't help this thought, no matter how ridiculous, selfish, or self-centered, from zipping around my mind ...
OH ... please oh please oh please oh please oh PLEASE, don't rain.
At least not tonight.
I try to give one of the precious calico kittens in my barn to the farrier last week.
He spits a wad of Skoal in the dust, gently lowers the hoof of the horse he's working on, straightens himself up to his full 6' and says, "No thanks. I'm afraid of barn cats."
This takes me by surprise, coming from this big cowboy guy. But my whole experience with cats has pretty much been with fluffy purring things that snuggle on your lap.
Come to find out, he was attacked by a barn cat as a little kid. He looks towards the barn, eyes the momma cat lounging on the hay, says, "Barn cats are wicked, man." He goes back to fitting a shoe on my dozing Percheron. That seems to be the end of the story.
After having him come out to the house for five years now, I am used to the farrier's talking in spurts and jumps, interspersed with long bouts of silence, which actually are not uncomfortable. I look at his three-legged Blue Heeler dog Biscuit, sleeping beneath his truck. She is sporting a leather collar with hand-tooled silver conchos on it and a red, heart shaped dog tag. I wonder if that's how she lost her leg.
8-year-old C. and I are feeding the barn cats their dinner. A can of Matilda-the-tenacious-heeler's favorite dog food from Trader Joe's. The blue heeler skulks along behind us, ears down, stub tail wagging a question, wondering what we're going to do with that can and is she going to get any. I'm looking for the spoon I know I left down there when I see Matilda, who has been dying of curiosity since they arrived, making for one of the kittens.
The momma cat unfurls on poor Matilda with all of the hair-raising, eye-snapping fury and wrath of Satan. Beelzebub. The Devil. The Prince of Darkness. Old Lucifer himself. (I guess I didn't spend almost every Sunday as a kid in a Southern Baptist church for nothing...) Backs the heeler down a good three feet until the dog gets her bearings and springs forward. My son grabs Matilda by the collar mid-leap, and stops her from eating the now flattened-down-low-on-haunches, snarling devil cat. We search the mute heeler for the large gaping wounds, the big slices, we are both sure those claws have inflicted. I half expect an ear or a leg to fall off. But somehow or other the dog has escaped unscathed.
C. rises up from his knees next to his dog to his full second-grade stature, points his finger at the momma cat and growls, "You leave my dog alone, you old cat. I love this old dog a hundred times more than you!"
Matilda's bob tail begins to wriggle slowly.
The momma cat remains unmoved. Like the Sphinx.
As we're walking back to the house, I try to explain to C. that raising four babies in a barn all by yourself necessitates this type of thing. I tell him she thought Matilda was going to hurt her kittens. But I suspect he is going to hold this against that momma cat for a long time.
Barn cats are a little scary.
My daughter J. is giving her horse Caprichosa the full beauty salon treatment with the Shop Vac (I don’t have one of those fancy horse vacuums, never have, although I wouldn’t mind.). I have to help a little, because 9-year-old J. can’t reach the mare’s back without standing on a bucket. She’s taking the Andalusian to school this Friday for Show and Tell. I’m hoping when J. is a teenager, she will still be crazy, passionate, mad about horses, and less about other things.
Equines probably kept me out of mischief as a girl, although I was never really prone to much of that anyway. Most of the time as a teenager, I preferred my horse to most boys. (And the joke perpetrated upon me by the comedy duo of my husband and 8-year-old son C. is that they suspect I love my big draft horse Toby more than them. Hah. Hah.) If you have a daughter, here's what I think─A horse is well worth the investment, and the time, and all of the work for this reason alone.
So given my predilection for living in the barn, by the autumn of my sophomore year I had a very big problem. My friend’s brother had a big, gooey crush on me.
To which my reaction was … yuck.
Anyway, I decided the best way to get rid of this pimply-faced, kinky-haired nuisance of a marching band trumpet player was to stop ducking him in the hallways at school, to stop ignoring the elaborately folded (dare I say origami?) college-ruled love letters he dropped into my purse in algebra class, and to stop looking wildly for an escape route when he peered at me like a lovesick cow from across the football field while we marched eight to ten.
I invited the boy over to my house.
When he arrived on Saturday morning, my dad (as requested) escorted him (probably chuckling under his breath now that I think of it) down to the barn where I was waiting in my oldest, cruddiest overalls, a ratty flannel shirt, hair twisted in two braids. My quarter horse was cross-tied in the aisle where he’d just left an enormous pile of green steaming manure, and I was grooming. I’d been grooming for hours, in fact. Mucking stalls. Hauling hay. Emptying and cleaning water troughs. I didn’t have a horse vac then either, but my mom’s old Sears canister did the trick. Pearl the white goat (whose job it was to keep my high-strung quarter horse company) was also roaming the barn at will.
I figured Romeo would get one look at me in my natural habitat and bolt. That was the simple beauty of the plan.
But he didn’t.
That boy planted himself on an upturned feed bucket in his neatly pressed gray polyester disco pants, black silk shirt, shiny belt, and platform shoes (I believe he fancied himself some kind of John Travolta) and proceeded to talk my ears off. I am ashamed to say that I answered mostly in monosyllabic grunts. Occasionally I asked him to hand me a brush. Pearl the goat was delighted to have a captive audience. She thrust her dainty muzzle into his face, eyed him with her green shifty eyes, sniffed at his odoriferous aftershave, tasted his socks. He patted the obdurate goat on the head and even said she was pretty. How long had I had such a nice goat for a pet, he asked. Luckily, he hadn’t brought flowers.
Boy, that was sure mean of me.
And he still asked me to the homecoming dance. (Being at the height of my feminine charm, however, I wound up not going with him or anyone else. That year. Or the next. Or the year after that.)
My little girl, boy, and I walk up to the gas station next to Adelo's General Store in Pecos for our hot coffee and hot chocolate this morning while I fill up our mid-sized SUV with $50 worth of unleaded. It's still so cold we can see our breath. I clasp my arms tight around myself, trying not to freeze, kids hanging off my elbows. They are wondering out loud if the hot chocolate machine is working.
Two old cowboys perch on a bench near the door. One very fat. One real thin.
I smile and say good morning.
The little one has turkey feathers sticking out of the band of his beat-up hat and a beaded leather vest that's red, green, and gold with only a memory of fringe. His black eyes shine and dart like a magpie's, above a slightly crooked and probably ages-ago broken nose, pock-marked face breaking into a smile of Copenhagen-yellowed teeth. "I sees me two pretty women a'comin," he exclaims. And up he leaps, making a great big deal out of trotting ahead of my children and me like a skinny-legged crane flapping its wings, to get the door, which he opens with a painfully-thin bow and the grandiose swoop of his hat, strands of greasy dark hair trailing down over his forehead.
"Thank you," I say. My 9-year-old daughter J. clings a little more tightly to my sleeve, red cheeked, eyes down, grinning, speechless.
Inside the store, 8-year-old C. says, "Mom, that man was weird." He rolls his eyes around and around.
"No," I say, nodding to the cowboy who's now stiltwalking, hitching up his Wrangler jeans, across the parking lot towards his truck with his friend. "That's just being a gentleman."
Sometimes when I longe my daughter’s Andalusian horse Caprichosa ...
I feel like I am shining a bright white flashlight against a cave wall .
It’s dark as pitch, and I can see just beyond the shadows,
almost through the thick rock walls.
If I were to vault onto the white mare's strong back and urge her forward,
we could travel there together.
Feed horses. Haul dense bales of hay. Curse misplaced leather barn gloves. Grunt. Wonder—how the hell heavy can these get?
Fill round feeder while chasing enthusiastically hungry draft horse off. Scrub and refill water tank. Cajole under-the-weather quarter horse mare to finish icky powdered antibiotics concealed in sweet feed and applesauce. Stand beside her. Rub her neck until she eats it all.
Produce two cans of dog food from overall pockets, pop open to chorus of meows, spoon onto plate in a glob. Feed barn cat and four kittens. Sit cross-legged in straw. Do best to convince feral kittens you will not eat them for breakfast. Finally hold one. Eyes wide open. Tiny heart pulsates.
Remind greedy, grinning, begging Matilda-the-tenacious-heeler that she has already eaten.
Emancipate geese. Watch them march off. Toss scratch to relieved hens. Fill chicken founts. Discover dead Rhode Island Red. Think—poor thing. But a quiet end to a good long chicken life. Make funeral plan.
Drop a dollop of lard in pan. Listen to it hiss and sizzle. Cook biscuits and gravy. Feed eight-year-old son (wailing that he is starving), husband, and daughter who straggles in from barn. Give leftovers to Matilda dog. (Blue Heeler Second Breakfast.)
Wash cast iron skillets. Hands. Elbows. Tickly. Suds. Sneeze.
Hang laundry outside. Wet sheets billow like sails of ships at sea. Half expect ranch house, barn, husband, children, horses, to be rended from earth by the next gust of wind.
Watch white horse race up and down paddock fence, squealing. Kicking up clouds of dust like thunderheads grumbling in sky. Ask—will she jump?
Plant five new trees in canyon-like holes husband excavates with shiny new tractor.
Nostrils fill with scent of dirt, water, ozone. Hummingbirds dart. Dark unbraided hair tangles in wind. Whips around eyes. Can't see through tears.
Cottonwood leaves turn belly up. Roar. Rush. Rain begins. Ice water drops create craters in dust causing red ants to run for hills.
Right now—four pairs of hands, two large, two small, tamp down hot loamy earth around sycamore roots.
Flickr photos by: choosefate; foxglove; maefleur; antimethod
This Spring my barn is filled with calico kittens ...
who perch atop the edifice of hay
stacked nearly to the ceiling
like tiny gargoyles
quivering
with green, glinting eyes
keeping watch for evil spirits.
Flickr photo by: nat
Sometimes after a morning of chasing down runaway horses in her work boots and pajamas with straw in her hair, Jane likes to ...
put her feet up in her nice clean office and admire her brand new (well almost) fancy, super pointy-toed high heels, reveling momentarily in the frivolity we women get to enjoy when we feel like it.
Although she could not out run a bear or a mountain lion in these. Even if she tried.
Flickr photo by: mici quack
Terror is finding this at the top of the pasture first thing in the morning and all your horses gone ...
Hoofprints lead up to the railroad road. You jump the torn down gate and run. As fast as your legs will carry you. Call. And call. And call. Breathless. Your horse's names dissipate into the cool morning air just as they have. You hope wildly that you don't hear the train.
You look left, panic rising in your throat. Nothing.
Have they been stolen? Was it a bear? They said on the news last night that they are coming out in droves. One straggled through a neighborhood in Albuquerque earlier this week. One got hit on I-40. Another one got that poor elderly lady in Mora last year. Clawed right through her screen door and ate her.
Mountain lion chasing them around. Morningstar the Arabian putting up the fight you'd expect from the hot-blooded Arabian mare, kicking at the snarling beast with her rock hard hooves. Toby trying to stomp the cat into the ground. Yes, you're sure of it. Is that why the geese were so noisy late last night? Damn. You should have checked it out.
You look to the right, heart pounding way too loud in your head. The road is absolutely, irrevocably empty. Filled with all the superstition of the damned, you find yourself wishing them there until you see a flash of appaloosa polka dots through the scrub oak and pinon. Followed by a flash of bay, and sorrel, and white. You count only four. But there are five. Desperation nearly overcomes you until, finally, finally, you see a large black flash catching up from behind.
You and suddenly-outside husband round up the usual suspects. Actually, with the exception of Toby, the horses bring themselves in at a nervous trot. You find the young percheron standing in the middle of the railroad road, not quite knowing what to do with himself. He lowers his head, seems relieved to see you. Husband shakes a bucket of grain. Big horse comes barreling at you both like a freight train. Allows you to slip on the halter and lead him down.
Check for cuts, rope burns, etc. Can't find a one, blessedly. You wish horses could talk. Think for just a second of that animal psychic your acquaintances said they hired to get their dog to give them a description of the robbers who ransacked their house. That dog gave them a full-blown narrative of the robbery, they claim, although the police never caught the guy. We have some smart dog, they bragged. Only in Santa Fe.
You are pulling cactus spikes from Toby's knees. One big one from his belly, which makes the horse flinch. Stands still as a rock for you, though.
How long have you been out here, you'd ask? At that point you'd probably become a little shrill, and you'd probably have to count to ten before you could pose the question with any modicum of calm. What the hell happened?
Bears, mountain lions, horse thieves, and other monsters aside, once your head clears, you have a pretty good idea of who the culprit is. Someone with the sheer body mass to press against the gate and pop it apart piece by piece to get to the scant, dry grass on the other side of three acres of red New Mexico dirt. You are so put out at the big black horse for scaring you to death, but so deliriously happy to see him and the others that you just don't care.
Your husband wires a sturdy cattle panel to the inside of the gaping hole at the top of the fence.
Antibiotics and apple sauce. Not a very pleasant concoction to be stirring up at 5AM.
Seems like I'm always doctoring something or someone around here.
My son's horse Piñon now has a respiratory infection. (I've been extremely lucky and have never had a horse with this before.) Doc came by last night and said he believes the infection came from her previous barn. He took a blood sample and did a culture on her. Now I have to wait for the results. All of the horses have had their spring shots, and I'm hoping to get her through this OK and not have anyone else get ill. So far so good.
I have a terrible time getting this mare to take antibiotics. I've been in the process of trying to put 100 pounds on the lanky girl since we brought her home (you could see her ribs), but she's a very picky eater. Last night I brought out my expensive juicer from the bottom of the bottom of the closet where it's been stowed away for a couple of years now and juiced apples and carrots to stir up with the antibiotic powder and grain along with the remaining chopped up pieces. She ate up every bit, thank goodness. (I think I could be onto something here─horse smoothies.)
Upon realizing at the crack of dawn this morning that I'd used up all of my apples and carrots, I managed to unearth a jar of applesauce from the pantry. She seems to like that even better.
It's amazing the differences between individual horses. My husband's little arabian mare has not been sick once in all the time we've had her. My draft hasn't been ill. We went through a cracked coronary band with the Andalusian, which was a long, difficult haul.
We'll make it through this one too.
in my own backyard ...
sometimes I find
a very large, blacker than midnight,
sleek as silk, muscles rippling,
mythical creature.
I'd put a garland of flowers around his beautiful neck, but he'd probably eat them.
Sometimes Caprichosa reminds me of that Saint Bernard nanny-dog in Peter Pan.
A few more days like this
wouldn't hurt her diet progress either.
Married with Horses: Horse Poor and Happy
A horsewoman's husband learns firsthand what it's like to be "horse poor" when he goes without new shoes for six months, but the horses get shod every six weeks.
Johnny West is not amused.
Photo source: Marx Johnny West Series
I step out of the Post Office into a bare-bone empty New Mexico afternoon─sun blaring on the red rocks, red dirt, red crumbling adobe, cold-in-the-morning and sweltering-by-mid-day trailer houses with tires stacked on top to keep the roofs from blowing off in the wind. Begin sorting through the stack of letters in my hands, when I see him. Again.
Riding up around the corner of the old Victory Bar. Past the corpses of three or four generations of cars and pickup trucks, a rotted-out Coca Cola machine (when was a Coke a nickle?), half of a wrought-iron bedstead with a cactus growing where a mattress ought to be, piles of firewood, and one dour KEEP OUT─NOTHING HERE FOR SALE sign nailed to the fence. (It crosses my mind each time I read it that if the owner just cleaned up the junk, he wouldn't have to bother.)
The approaching horseman's dingle bobs jangle with each unshod clip clop of his horse’s trot. Ewe necked, the almost too-bony gelding sticks his Roman nose up into the air, swats his stump of a tail against his shiny bay hindquarters with an annoyed thwack. Leather saddle bags are strapped to the back of the well-used saddle with baling string dangling down the horse's haunches like rivulets of bright blue water. The gelding rolls his eyes. Jigs. I think that’s what’s bothering him. The cheap nylon bridle and reins are stitched and re-stitched, knotted together in a couple of places, the ugliest mustard yellow color I can imagine.
But this is what my eyes are drawn to. Two brown and knotted hands holding the reins like there’s a hummingbird cradled in each palm. The still seat. Legs quietly draped against the dancing gelding’s sides. The intent and purpose of each step ridden.
I’m thinking you could do a rattlesnake in with the pointy-toed ostrich cowboy boots he’s wearing. They are a shabby cordovan. Maybe even defend yourself against the yellow Post Office Dog (A chow-shepherd-pit bull-who-knows-what-else mix), who sleeps all day long right in front of the door and growls at you low and menacing if you dare look at her sideways (or at all). Everyone in the valley has warned their kids not to under any circumstances try to pet her, wagging tail or not.
White pearl buttons are done all the way up to the rider’s throat where a faded bandana is tied in a knot. But what I notice most, what I love to see each time he rides by is the smile permanently plastered across his sun-wrinkled face while he sits his horse’s gaits. It’s as brilliant as daylight, punctuated by the flash of one gold tooth. The radiant smile doesn’t necessarily belong to an old man. It doesn't belong to a boy either. And it’s not for me or anyone else. It's all for himself. From the simple joy of trotting his horse down the road.
I raise my hand and wave, wondering if he’ll see me this time. Wondering if he knows I know. I’d like to tell him what seeing him and his horse over the years means to me, but that would probably ruin it. He may not even speak English, I think. But I do know that we share a common language. He touches the brim of his cowboy hat. A small, silent salute.
I smile too.
The old vaquero and his big-headed gelding are passing through the Post Office parking lot in a cloud of rolling red dust. I sure wish the Victory Bar was still open.
My appaloosa horse Teyla and I stopped mid-ride yesterday to watch my husband Dennis, his dad, and C. digging the hole for our weeping willow tree.
It takes a lot of work and a lot of water to get trees started and thriving in the high desert, and it may be an act of madness to try a weeping willow here. Although I've seen some large and mature ones around that appear to have made it with almost no attention at all. We tend to the trees we plant and fret about them almost like they are children. (We are ever vigilant for the yellow-bellied sapsuckers that like to tap their deadly drinking holes in rings around the cottonwood's and cherry's slender trunks.) And the trees return it back to us a hundredfold. Yesterday, I sat in the shade of Abuela's leaves, which have simply popped. When her new green leaves rustle in the breeze, she reminds me of my happy chickens in the evenings when they are snuggled down in deep straw, contentedly roosting in their hen house, eyes half-closed, emitting long-drawn out cluck cluck clucks from somewhere deep down inside of their feathered breasts ...
Bwaaaaaaaaaaaaak.
Bwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaak.
Bwaaaaaaaaaak.
I sure could use Farmgirl's wet weather creek.
Me and 8-year-old C. have escaped all (3) of our weekend houseguests for a while to doze quietly beneath the pines in the hammock. We're not anti-social. Just worn out!
My daughter's Andalusian mare Caprichosa has been doing double duty all weekend long, entertaining J. and her houseguest from school this weekend.
Jane's fit into the same size of little Wrangler jeans for I don't know how many years.
Now that's just not fair.
Long-legged Piñon is about the most laid-back mare I've ever known. Whenever she's just hanging out, she has this droopy bottom lip thing going on.
But don't underestimate this soft-eyed gal on stilts. She can run like the wind. Stop. On a dime. You'd have been proud to have her in a pinch in the old west, I think. I know she's my little boy's horse, but I can't wait to ride her in the Pecos wilderness.
The geese pour out of their safe and secure little gooseyard like water from a pail when I open the gate for them first thing every morning. But, what's this?!
A wiley hen who has ingeniously allowed herself to be swept out of the gate in the midst of all of the wing flapping and honking. Generally speaking, I think the hens heave a huge sigh of relief when I let their unpleasant housemates roam free outside of the chicken yard. This red hen may be reveling in her freedom right now, but she hasn't thought this one out, because I don't have time to catch her and put her back in the chicken yard. LIttle does the escapee realize that she'll be keeping company with a gaggle of vile web-footed beasties all day long.
Fantastic Planet. A Pirate’s Garden.
The South China Sea Pirate Watch is a US Navy submariner custom in which one stands watch bare-butt-naked on the conning tower, scarf tied around your head, dagger clenched in your teeth, while crossing the 120 degree east longitude line. (Source: my husband Dennis did this.)
Our horses are fed, standing together by the pasture gate, heads drooping, eyes half closed, tails swishing, and tonight is awash in indigo. Sitting on my Percheron’s broad back─no halter, bridle, blanket, or lead rope─I feel his coat as plush as any sealskin I can imagine against my legs and seat, warming me against the frisson of purple air, molecules scattering light, the cold, bright wildness of stars beating against the high-desert beach.
He lifts his head, eyes suddenly alert. The others follow.
I press my cheek against his dark neck. Wrap my arms around him. Listen for the muffled roar deep inside his chest, the half-formed words immured in flesh and blood.
We pitch forward and roll, spiraling up up up towards a break in the black and blue pileus clouds, past the crescent moon dangling just above the mountain top. Phosphorescent waves break over the earth’s bow, and the Percheron’s tail is our rudder. Fingers entwined in his coarse jet mane, I glance over my shoulder at the southern sky. There are pirates about.
We are as still as stone, and we are galloping.
We are full of breath, and we are breathless.
We are navigating the waters, and we are lost at sea.
We are locked in the barn, blanketed, fed, lulled to sleep by the amber-lit windows of the ranch house just beyond the gate; and we are free.
Flickr artwork and photos: doggiesarefromheaven; astrocruzan; driestriest
