Good boy!
Mary over at Horse Bliss has one good Percheron! (Hey, where do I sign up for horse camp?)
Check out her yummy horse treat recipe and a real surrey with the fringe on the top (that I wish I could buy right now!).
I Gallop On Goodies
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July 31, 2006
Keep him guessing! Creating an easy-to-catch horse
Have you ever spent twenty minutes chasing your horse around the pasture before going on a ride? Here's one way to create an easier-to-catch horse.
How do you catch your horse? Have any secrets or tips to share here? I'd love to hear them.
Video credits: 9-year-old cameragirl extraordinaire, J.; Acoustic sunrise guitar by acousticryan
July 27, 2006
Horse Safety 101
Check out the Horse Safety 101 posters created by the horsewomen over at Of Horses and Art. They cover everything from not wearing dangly earrings that can get caught in your horse's mane (ouch!) to helmet safety.
Adorable.
The Jane West Chronicles
See Johnny buy Jane a present.
When the handsome Johnny West returned home from his recent trip to southern Colorado to pick up a manure spreader, he brought Jane back something absolutely wonderful.
Her own Cub Cadet riding lawn tractor.
This cute little thing is the color of lemon drops, butterscotch, lemon meringue pie, citrus flavored Italian ice. My goodness, you just want to eat it up!
While Jane is head over heels in love with any farm equipment that makes her life easier, she wondered out loud to Johnny if Cub Cadet markets their products solely to women? After all, what self-respecting, red-blooded American male would have a tractor (er, mower…) called a Cub Cadet, unless maybe he’s eight-years old and a boy scout?
This has brought up a point of considerable contention between the usually harmonious Jane and Johnny. As Johnny presented her with the Cub Cadet, he announced magnanimously that they are now the owners of his and her tractors.
Hers―this little Buttercup mower.
Jane then had to remind Johnny that she has clocked far more hours on Digger than he has while shoveling the mountains of horse manure generated by their five equines. She advised him that the Kubota is unequivocally half hers, a fact that he stubbornly denies.
This has caused some tension in the West household.
July 26, 2006
Blackberry cobblers and varnished roans
One hot, Maud, Oklahoma evening a long, long time ago, way back before a blackberry becomes a mobile electronic gadget that everyone has to have so they can interface with the rest of the planet from the checkout line at the grocery store, my little sister and I fill a cracked enamel wash basin full of fruit, one tender berry at a time, and wait for her to come out.
The roping horse that my Grandma J. is keeping in her chicken yard for some cowboy― whose name I don’t know, but want to, because then maybe he will give me a ride―peers at us over the barbed wire, swatting at the buzzing flies with his unfortunate stub of a tail. Probably he is wondering what two sun-browned little girls are doing hunkered down behind the blackberry bushes, scratching their bare arms as they part a sea of brambles with their grubby hands to spy through the fence into the neighbor’s yard. The horse licks his dappled lips, stained with the juicy berries for which he’s developed a big taste since I’ve been around.
Not an animal person by any stretch of the imagination and seeing danger everywhere for as long as I can remember, Grandma swears the lanky varnish roan is full of ticks, chiggers, and all kinds of dangerous diseases. She advises us in no uncertain terms to leave him alone, for heaven’s sake, don’t touch that animal, honey. Wiping her hands on her calico apron, standing at the screen door we’ve left ajar as we go charging outside into her overgrown garden as fast as our legs will carry us, whooping like wild things―she hollers her warnings.
We lace our fingers through the garden fence, pretty sure Grandma can’t see us from the kitchen window through the tall corn she is so smug about, but disappointed that the adjacent back yard is as empty as ever. Why is the INside furniture OUTside?, my sister starts out whispering, but her voice gets shrill on the question mark. Hush, I tell her, as she points at the tattered reclining chair on the other side beneath a sycamore that looks worth climbing, no doubt thinking of the harvest-gold Lazy Boy in our carefully decorated house in Tulsa.
Just this morning on our way over to Mr. Moore’s, we pass the sad-looking clapboard house next door. With its sagging porch and broken windows, it looks like someone has kicked it’s hide, busted it’s jaw, knocked out a few teeth, and given it a shiner more than one time. No one could live there, I tell my sister, full of all the knowledge of the universe, pointing. But Grandma J. grabs my hand, tells me that pointing is rude, and that someone does. She sneaks a glance at the house. But that woman is as crazy as a jay bird. Tosses her chin in that direction. And I want you to stay away from there. She marches us right past all that peeling paint and the raggedy, lonesome-looking recliner standing its lopsided watch. She’s not saying anything more about that.
In the brass bed to which he’s confined every single time I lay eyes on him, Mr. Moore looks like some half-starved baby starling that has tumbled out of it’s nest, skin stretched taut over hollow bones where feathers would grow any day now if the cat wasn’t sure to get him first. But he does manage to prop himself up on a shabby pillow. The gleaming headboard fills up practically the entire house, which is really just a falling-down shack at the back of a garden gone hog wild. (Don’t say anything about it, Grandma J. hisses the first time we pick our way up the ivy-choked path to his door.) Mr. Moore beams from ear to ear and folds back the edge of his coverlet with purple-splotched claws for hands, flashing a couple of teeth the same gray as his grizzled beard, as Grandma lifts the tea towel from the still-warm dish. The room fills with a sweet aroma. He sniffs it as delicately and with as much pleasure as the roan gelding does each time I offer him a blackberry, murmuring, Oooooh, fresh cobbler. Then he leans forward, squints at me and my sister, now hanging back behind Grandma, and asks us if we know she is the finest cook in Maud, Oklahoma.
As Grandma J. perches on a stool next to the brass bed and spoons blackberry cobbler into Mr. Moore’s mouth, daubing at the corners with her handkerchief, I can almost taste the dense concoction of lard, white flour, fruit, and sugar myself, satisfied with the thought that there’s a second one she made just for us, cooling on the kitchen cabinet back at the house.
The appaloosa horse’s head pops up from where he’s been eyeballing us through the chicken wire, ears pricked forward like antennae. My sister stares at me wide-eyed, a look of half-fear, half-excitement playing across her freckles. This is exactly what we’ve been waiting for. I point to the other side of the fence, mouth the word, Listen.
Yes we'll gather at the river
The beautiful, beautiful river
A woman’s voice floats through the humid afternoon like the scent of Five & Dime talcum powder after a hot bath. I follow the gelding’s gaze to the swiveling, swirling, reclining chair. It is spinning around, and around, and around.
Gather with the saints at the river
We are afforded only fleeting glimpses of it’s singing, helmet-haired occupant in motion-blurred, floral house dress and pantyhose, tiny lace-up shoes barely reaching the ground, head lolled back, eyes rolled skyward, clasping the moth-eaten armrests
That flows by the Throne of God
just like I imagine the astronauts do when they blast off. She whirls like a dervish, like one of my baby cousin's wind-up toys. We inch closer, careful of blackberry stickers.
Shall we gather at the river
Where bright angel feet have trod
With it's crystal tide forever
The recliner scrEEEeeeeaks and scrEEEeeeches to a wobbling stop, as does the singing. And all of a sudden that ungrateful berry-eating-hawg of a horse snorts in alarm, and takes off at a trot. Leaving me and my now starting to bawl-like-a-baby little sister behind as the neighbor lady careens about in the chair and casts her hammered metal gaze upon us through the wire, the most colorless eyes I’ve ever seen, frizzy silver hair nearly standing on end. Thin lips drawn across toothless gums in a wicked smile, she leaps towards us like some kind of harpy up and out of her rockem’ sockem’ reclining chair, hands outstretched to grab us both and haul us into her house where kids probably disappear forever, shouting―
We run like hell, busting at the seams with high-pitched shrieks. Scratching our legs and arms, we spill blackberries all over the ground, trample them with our bare feet.
Her cackling winds along behind us through the cornrows like a garden snake with its tongue flicking.
That evening as we watch the Porter Wagoner TV Show in the living room with the box fan whirring, bedazzled by The King of Country Gospel’s rhinestone-studded suits, and finish up every last bit of re-heated cobbler, we’re not sure how we’re going to go about explaining to Grandma J. that we don’t want to pick any more blackberries from her garden.
Truth is, she probably knows already.
Check out these Flickr photos: Muffet; judithsviews; ipuzzled; xthylacine
July 24, 2006
Wise Fools, Tricksters, Black-Eyed Peas
Why circus? Because it is irresistible; it speaks to the senses and becomes the substance of dreams.
~ Wise Fool New Mexico
In the same sense that Jesus Christ stands at the very, very centre of Christian mythology, we have a character in our mythological universe, in our dreamlife as a people, who stands at the very centre of that universe, and that character is the Trickster.
~ Cree playwright Tomson Highway, quoted in The Trickster Shift
6PM Friday Evening ― You help to paint the faces of thirty-two little Wise Fool Circus Camp performers in preparation for the big show. Boys and girls eye you solemnly as you slather and daub greasepaint flowers, sunbursts, shooting stars, flames, and waves, on their foreheads, noses, cheeks. Your nine-year-old daughter, who eschews all female frippery and is the original, militant, anti-pink girl, refuses to let you decorate her face with even one silver and black lightening bolt, which you insist will be way cool and not at all prissy. During the performance, you yell and whoop with the mom sitting next to you in the crowded bleachers as your kids dance in circles on impossibly tall stilts to the Black-Eyed Peas’ Where is the Love?
4AM Saturday Morning ― A band of howling coyotes wakes Matilda-the-Tenacious-Heeler way up. You are jarred back to this plane of existence by a cold nose and freckled paws poking your arms, your face, anywhere they can reach. After she flashes by you in a speckled streak, you find yourself standing groggy-eyed at the front door in your old pajamas, peering hard into the darkness and listening to their shrill, keening song, wondering if the yellow-eyed tricksters are going to eat up your geese or bring you fire.
7AM Saturday Morning ― You curse the snoring blue heeler, damn you pain-in-the-ass Matilda dog, because you’ve been up since her pre-sunrise wakeup call, unable to drift back off to sleep. Your husband has already left for Southern Colorado to pick up a manure spreader. The kids are with their dad. And you are left entirely up to your own devices. So you tromp down to the barn and feed the horses. Emancipate the geese from the confines of the hen house. Watch them march out of the gate single file on their floppy, webbed feet like a troup of circus clowns with oversized orange shoes. Feed the kittens. Importune the crazy gray one who is pussyfooting across a narrow barn beam like a tightrope walker to come down. Now. But she's having way too much fun tempting fate to listen to you.
10AM Saturday Morning ― Toby the Percheron horse dangles his much loved and very beat-up bird seed bucket by the handle from his mouth while you groom him, rolling an eye back at you every now and then to see if you are paying attention to his neat trick. You spend approximately half an hour stupidly grinning.
11AM Saturday Morning ― A good friend, the one who helped you find your wings, gives you a call. She may start up equestrian vaulting again in September. Excitement rising, you don't care if you are almost 43. You are going to be there, and you are going to stand again on that cantering horse's back. How many sit ups and pushups will you need to do between now and then, you wonder? The geese sit beneath your bedroom window like five gray teapots, listening in on your conversation, muttering to themselves and preening their feathers.
11:30 AM Saturday Morning ― You are scrubbing the kitchen sink, singing in your empty house along with the Black Eyed Peas at the top of your lungs about Where is the Love? You sound just like one of those back-and-forth-swaying, maroon-robed, hand-clapping, gospel choir singers from the heart of the south, albeit a little off key―
Whatever happened to the values of humanity? Whatever happened to the fairness and equality? Instead of spreadin' love, we spreadin' animosity. Lack of understanding leading lives away from unity. Can you practice what you preach? And would you turn the other cheek? Father, Father, Father help us. Send us some guidance from above. 'Cause people got me, got me questioning.' Where is the love?
You're pretty sure she's right here, Wise Fools and all.
Flickr photos: boccacinofoto; boccacinofoto
Lyrics to Where is the Love?
July 21, 2006
The space between the notes
Music is the space between the notes.
~ Claude Debussy
When my Percheron horse Toby shuffles away from the herd and stops squarely next to me, pressing his big-hearted chest against the stock panel rails, thick neck unfurled, muzzle high, sniffing the air, swinging his lush tail back and forth like the metronome on top of my daughter's long-silent piano, trying to fathom what it is I'm looking for somewhere beyond the fence line—the first star of the evening, a silver curtain of rain rippling towards us through the mountains, a rumbling thundercloud, or something other that I couldn't name even if you asked me—I smile to myself, enjoying the gentle pianississimo of his oversized company.
Flickr photo: The Hills are Alive
The Jane West Chronicles
Jane does Del Mar. (Well, not really. But she was spotted wearing this confection last evening while cleaning horse corrals.)
A steal at $799. The “Ascot” is covered in specially treated silk-satin, and comes with hand-made silk-satin roses. It includes the two delightfully flamboyant hand selected and naturally harvested specially dyed ostrich plumes (one black, the other white, of course), along with a hand-wrapped silk-satin black-white ribbon swirls around the towering crown. It is finished with a hand-made churrigueresque silk- satin bow and black grosgrain hand-stitched binding.
Source: Baron Hats
July 20, 2006
Opening day finery
Check out the traditional opening-day finery at the the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club in Del Mar, Calif.
Ooooooooooh. Pretty.
Years ago, my dad brought me an outrageously gorgeous and fine hat from London.
It's melt-in-your-mouth chocolate brown, plush velvet, with a luscious cascade of netting to frame your face, and a froth of feathers at the back that would put any exotic bird to shame. Every now and then, I take it out of the box and admire it.
Where in the heck am I going to wear the darn thing? The Grocery Store? The Rodeo? Sam's Club?!
The barn.
Photos: AP Photo/Chris Park; AP Photo/Chris Park
Gaiety
At this stage every effort should be made to avoid a fight as it is so important that the horse should not realise his power and be encouraged to dispute the will of the rider... He (the rider) should not forget the youthfulness and inexperience of his horse and show leniency to his faults, overlooking playful bucking which is an expression of youthful gaiety to which the horse is entitled.
~ Alois Podhajsky on The Young Horse in the First Phase of Training, The Complete Training of Horse and Rider
With Toby on a loose lead line, we head into the pines.
I need to go for a walk today (part of my plan to lose this extra twenty pounds), and the young Percheron needs to get out so we can continue working on his ground manners, which are pretty darn good now, by the way.
The Big Boo is interested in everything. He stops for a moment like an ebony statue, ears cocked, listening, nostrils flared slightly, one eye superglued to me because I'm his security blanket. I freeze along with the youngster who is now standing at military attention, trying to see whatever it is that he sees. Then Matilda-the-tenacious-heeler comes crashing through the scrub oak, pink tongue lolling, panting, and in one fell swoop every bit of tension releases from the horse's body, and we stroll on.
A culvert causes some eye rolling, but I tell the Percheron it's OK, it's not a monster, culverts don't eat draft horses, well, not too many anyway. And he relaxes his stance with a long exhale of breath, believing every single word I say.
I'm picking my way down into a narrow, rocky arroyo, with Toby equally cautious at my shoulder, when all of a sudden he explodes into a black flash flying through the air next to me like a gazelle, and lands on the other side, trots up the rocky incline in three light-as-a-feather, rip-snorting, long-legged strides on the loose lead, while I just about stop breathing, thinking of all the power of those 1,350 pounds that have just been unleashed, knowing there's no way I can ever keep a hold of the rope if he gets a wild hair and decides to railroad forward, wishing I had on better shoes for running, when to my surprise all of that good ground work pays off, and the big black horse turns around on his forehand to face me, draws himself up to his full 17+ hands, and waits as I stumble forward, heart pounding. He is shivering with expectation and all the marvelous fun he's sure the two of us are having, never guessing that he's almost given me a heart attack.
We amble on side by side, blue heeler blazing the trail ahead of us.
I lay a hand on the behemoth's damp neck. Careful to stay right with me, he casts a wide, childish eye in my direction, just a tinge of white showing.
Gaiety, I mutter.
July 19, 2006
Waiting out the rain
I am the light that is over all things.
I am all: from me all came forth, and to me all attained.
Split a piece of wood; I am there.
Lift up the stone, and you will find me there.
~ Gospel of Thomas: 77
So is waiting out a late afternoon thunder shower with a couple of muddy horses. But a lovely kind of boring.
Swimming chase
This looks nice and cool.
German jockey Dirk Fuhrman on his horse Helmac leads the pack during the so called 'Seejagdrennen' at the BMW Derby-Meeting 2006 in Hamburg, northern Germany. Fuhrman won the race , while Oliver Schnakenberg with Sovereign Gay, unseen, who placed second. (AP Photo/Fabian Bimmer)
Pretty good looking
Charisophia on Elusive Beauty.
At the Rodeo, I watch these four in amusement as they drink beer after beer in the glaring hot sun and gape at everything female over about the age of about 25 who strolls by their little tailgate party. They are having one hell of a good time, and I think they are probably harmless enough. Especially with my big cowboy around. But, as I make my way down from the bleachers with my 8-year-old son in tow to take photos of the Rodeo Queen, who is sitting on her horse almost right next to these charmers, I figure I am in for it.
I haven't snapped one photo when I feel eyeballs glued to the seat of my jeans and hear a high-spirited, "Aieeeee, want to come and sit with us?" I ignore them. Take my pictures while guileless C. is tugging my arm, saying, "Mom, Mom, those guys asked if you want to go sit with them."
"Oh, come on, why don't you take our picture?" they cajole. The Rodeo Queen is glaring at them now.
I put the camera down, turn to survey all of them grinning at me wickedly like four slightly paunchy foxes. At 42, I know how to nip this one in the bud.
"Hey, you know what?" I ask them. Allow the moment to fill up with silence, and then answer myself. "You guys are pretty good looking."
Their faces register shock.
"I think I will take your picture. Ready?" I point the camera at them. "Say cheeeeeeeese."
One of the men removes his cowboy hat, straightens up his hair, grins, then on second thought, puts it back on again, still grinning.
Sweet.
July 18, 2006
Rooting for Barbaro
I had a thoroughbred once. She was tall, lean, gregarious, kind, heart-wrenchingly exquisite, a natural athlete, and not too smart.
We named her Shiloh. Per her Jockey Club papers, her registered name was Spoon's Baby, and she'd won not quite $2,000 during her short racing career. But most of the time, we affectionately called our great big beauty The Super Model (pronounced Sooooooooooooooooooooper Model).
My then toddler-sized daughter J. cried and cried, tears streaming down her little face, when they loaded the leggy thoroughbred into the trailer one Saturday morning to take her off to her new home with a wonderful horsewoman who has a much better understanding of and appreciation for this fiery breed than I. But what I really need, I told the puffed-up little girl, as she sniffled and looked at me accusatorily with pained eyes, is a horse who's a little more mentally solid for the trail. Not one who will run mommy off of a mountain peak at a hundred miles an hour in a panic.
It took a few days before J. was no longer mad at me for selling The Super Model.
In the midst of the barrage of news about violence in the Middle East, I find that, even though I'm not a thoroughbred aficionado by any stretch of the imagination, I will stop and listen for any news of Barbaro, the Triple Crown favorite who broke down after bolting from the Preakness starting gate. I am as hopeful for the recovery of this magnificent thoroughbred from laminitis as I would be for one of my very own horses.
Journalist Linda Robertson writes, He is fighting for his life. So why has Barbaro's heart captivated so many? He is, after all, a horse.
Her answer is sentimental. But, that's OK with me. I like it.
He is a hero unencumbered by human flaws. At a time when so many of the people we look up to let us down, Barbaro doesn't lie, cheat or manipulate. In a world boiling with hate and revenge, he's not cruel, greedy or power-mad. After he won the Kentucky Derby, he was happy to receive pats on the neck and extra oats. His innocence prevents disillusionment. He gives and gets unconditional love.
I'll keep watching.
Lady Godiva Rides Again
Yep, just like I was saying earlier ... something hot and fiery!
A woman enacting the role of Lady Godiva sits atop a stuffed horse in front of the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. Lady Godiva rode naked on a white horse through the streets of Oxford, according to legend, and the eye-popping sight was repeated -- three times -- by a striking young woman recently. (AFP/Vince Bucci)
Ride Along
Check it out.
A supporter rides a horse as the pack passes by during the 211.5 km twelfth stage of the 93rd Tour de France cycling race from Luchon to Carcassonne. (AFP/Pascal Guyot)
Girls who run the barrels
These ladies get it done.
July 17, 2006
Dances with horses
The practice of equitation is a valuable lesson, as it requires the exercise of all human virtues.
~ Nuno Oliveira
The Equus Projects. Now this is dancing with horses. Doesn't this look like fun? Do you ever feel like this inside when you ride or see some beautiful riding?
This reminds me of my 9-year-old daughter, gamboling around the pasture, flitting through the pines, with our young Percheron trailing along behind her in absolute wonder. Maybe he's thinking, who is this energetic little butterfly?
I'm thinking a little flamenco guitar, a Santa Fe Fiesta dress, an Andalusian horse, and the moonlight. This would not be the first time there's been dancing in my pasture.
Good thing I don't have neighbors ...
Check out this review of The Equus Projects from the stunningly exquisite Horse of Kings magazine.
Photos: The Equus Projects
July 16, 2006
Royalty
It may be hard to believe, but at the Galisteo Rodeo, we spent the afternoon in the company of several royal personages.
Ladies and gentleman, I introduce to you the Santa Fe Rodeo Queen and her princesses!
Rodeo daze
Your rodeo finery is drying on the line.
Spurred on by the Rodeo Princess when you were shopping for new cowboy boots at the western wear store last week, your 8-year-old son is talking up how he's going to enter the mutton busting contest. And win.
While you will never fess up, you are hoping you arrive after the registration for that event closes.
July 15, 2006
The Sorceress
For Marcy.
She asks the tall, lanky teenage boy if he has ever cantered on horseback before.
He stares back at her from behind the slightly bewildered gaze he wears most of the time.
“In Germany,” she tells him crisply, "and we will be doing only European-style vaulting here,” she reminds the rest of the group before returning her attention to the boy to see if he’s listening, “there are only two vaulting gaits―walk and canter.”
From astride the big draft horse, out on the circumference of the roughly twenty-meter circle, hands lackadaisically grasping the vaulting surcingle handles, Joseph’s dark eyes are hooded with heavy lids, rimmed with coal-colored eyelashes. His shining black braid swings to a lazy halt as the mare squares up and stops beneath him from a walk. His voice is barely audible as he shakes his head slowly from side to side, like he’s just been bombed out of bed after twelve hours of dead-to-the world, teenaged-boy sleep, and finally answers with a dull-edged, “No.”
“OK,” she says, straightening out the unwieldy vaulting whip. Dressed in black only, a classical horsewoman all of her life, her tall boots are planted firmly in the sand. She draws her shoulder blades down and gathers the rest of herself up with all the poise of her hefty ballerina career, peers at him over the rims of her dark sunglasses, reeling in at least a yard of line in a leather-gloved hand. “Here’s what I want you to do.”
Joseph is nearly unseated as the vaulting horse unleashes a tsunami of shudders all the way down her spine from tail to muzzle, scratching an itch that’s been bothering her way too long, flapping her big red ears and groaning. Grunting. Finally letting loose a yawn that’s all teeth and gums. But he manages to compose himself into a modicum of cool, dragging himself up from the shapeless lump to which he’s just been reduced―long languid legs, indolent arms, baggy britches, oversized high-top sneakers all askew―then scans the arena. After all, there are girls scattered around the periphery.
Their giggles waft across the deep sand, wood chips, manure.
And, in just a moment, although the boy doesn't have a clue, she is going to light a fire under his torpid behind.
“Someone come and attach the side reins for me,” she calls out. One of the ten-year-olds hustles to do her bidding. All reined in, muzzle close to her chest, the vaulting horse’s sinuous neck suddenly fans out like a cobra’s hood.
The boy looks startled to have his name called, “Joseph,” she says, assuming a rider’s stance to demonstrate, “I want you to hold the surcingle handles like this.” She places her arms in the correct position while artfully managing to not become entangled in all that heavy line and whip. “With your shoulders back and down in a V, legs long, seat deep and still, zip up your core, keep your hip flexors loose and open, toes pointed down hard, ankles against her flanks, thighs long, and looking straight ahead between that horse’s ears and beyond.”
The boy considers all this for a moment, synapses actually firing, having practiced it more than a couple of times at a walk and on the vaulting barrel, while the draft horse remains glued to her spot, one ear cocked towards the inside of the circle, anticipating her cue for flight.
“Just sit back and enjoy the ride.” She bestows a brilliant smile of encouragement upon him that catches him completely off guard. “Ready?”
“Yes,” he nearly croaks, as the vaulting horse leaps forward in a clean departure from a standstill. He’s almost left behind the mare’s center of gravity, but she is talking him up into the correct seat. “Sit back, Joseph. Back. Farther. Legs longer. Gooooooooood!” He is riding now.
Moon in her left hand, sun in her right, she conjures horse and boy, flesh and blood and bone and breath and spirit with a series of half-halts on the longe line and rhythmic flicks of the heavy vaulting whip near the horse's hindquarters. She suspends them in a perfect three-beat balance along the circumference of the circle between her two outstretched hands. Joseph’s braid wafts behind him like the mare’s tail. They revolve around her three times, a fourth, and then she tells the boy to prepare for the halt, circling the vaulting whip around the back of her head in an arc and down to flicker in front of the thundering horse, speaking the calming incantation to the mare, “Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!”
Sixteen hundred pounds of horse and boy and steel and leather grind to a stop.
The mare’s nostrils are flaring.
Joseph’s dark face is flushed. He’s smiling. His chest rises and falls. His eyes are wide open, taking it all in.
She is grinning at him mightily now. Places a hand on her hip. “Good morning,” she says.
Flickr photos: loratliff; antomic; tommyMartin
July 13, 2006
El Ermitano
Your husband is sitting cross legged on the living room floor with his USDA Forest Service Map of the Pecos Wilderness spread out before him.
“Whatcha doin?” you ask, as he takes another swig of ice tea, ice cubes clinking against glass, tapping the bottom right-hand corner of the map. “What far corner of the earth are you dragging us to this time?” You squeeze his shoulder. “We’re not going to need machetes to hack through the bush, are we? Pygmies to carry the gear?” He smirks, ignoring your smart-ass comments for the most part. You sit down next to him to take a closer look, pretty sure of what the legend reads just above the blunt tip of his finger. And, there it is, to the right of the crease where the yellowing paper’s been folded and unfolded in all types of weather—Hermit’s Peak, Hermit’s Spring, El Porvenir (The Future in Spanish).
Funny how a handful of words on a map can stir up something all big inside of you.
Since the late 1800’s, Cerro Tecolote, just northwest of Las Vegas, New Mexico has become known as Hermit's Peak, for a mysterious Italian ex-patriate, Giovanni Agostini. This son of an Italian nobleman—who received a fine education in preparation for the priesthood—traveled from Europe to Cuba, South America, Mexico, where letters of introduction from dignitaries opened up doors into the homes of wealthy and powerful strangers. It was rumored that he’d been excommunicated from the Catholic Church, that he’d committed murder, that he was a victim of unrequited love.
At 62, he eventually made his way to Kansas, where he hooked up with a wagon train and the Romero family, politely refusing a ride in their wagons. He explained that the load he had to carry would be far too heavy for the mules, far too heavy for anyone, although he had only a small bag of books in his possession. To make his point, Agostini climbed into the seat of the wagon, and reportedly the mules refused to budge. So he walked the approximately 550 miles alongside the wagons to Las Vegas on the Santa Fe Trail. Lived for nearly five years on the peak above the town. First, in a shallow cave on the face of the mountain, eventually in a series of log huts built for him by the locals.
You’ve stood in El Ermitano’s cave twice, most recently with your husband, the first time with your then-sister-in-law who carried a quiet, heavy load of her own. Nearly ten years passed in between each visit. You think of the rotting crosses of the Sociedad del Ermitano that ring the entrance, where you've looked out past them over the plains for hundreds and hundreds of empty miles. The same vast plains where the gold-seeking Spaniards had to shoot a bow and arrow to mark a straight path to avoid traveling in circles among the one endless herd of buffalo. You know the trail to the peak on foot—a snarl of grueling switchbacks straight up the face of the mountain.
Unfortunately, you discover, there’s no easy approach on horseback either, from that side of the range. According to the Las Vegas Forest Service ranger you call, Trail #223 - Hermit's Peak Trail is full of dead and down, and the Search-and-Rescue folks will be up there this weekend, clearing debris. Trail #247 - El Porvenir Trail is simply not suitable for horses below Hollinger Creek. The approach from Jack’s Creek, on your own side of the Pecos mountains makes the most sense, the ranger advises. You reconcile yourself to the fact that this trip will be several days long and involve some real horse packing—Big Boy (OK, Girl too) stuff—but eventually, you know you’ll make the trip. When you are ready.
The only water supply up there bears Giovanni’s mark, Hermit Spring. It’s right there on the Forest Service map. What it doesn’t say is that the water has healing powers, at least, according to some. Local legend says Agostini called the cool water forth out of a rock for a group of weary travelers to his solitary home. With his reputed miraculous healing powers, he was looked upon as a sacred, holy man, often called upon to minister to the sick or dying. Apparently if you were too poor to pay the fee, the local Catholic priests wouldn’t come, regardless of the state of your soul. No wonder the hermit was loved.
Still is.
To let the citizens of the town know he was OK up there on the peak alone, the hermit struck an agreement. He would build a fire on the edge of the mountain every evening. A sign that all was well.
On the occasional drive to Las Vegas to pick up something at Wal-Mart, Mallette’s Feed, the hardware store, you pass Starvation Peak, where some cowboys tried to wait out an Indian attack a long time ago, and died from lack of food and water. You occasionally consider the blue hazy mountain from the front porch of your house when you step outside the door, and think, that would suck, being totally surrounded. Further down the highway past Romeroville, Hermit’s Peak juts up out of the landscape and catches you completely by surprise, almost every single time, as if you’ve never seen it before. This is where you have a hard time keeping your eyes on the road.
Possibly you are looking for a campfire.
In 1869, Giovanni Agostini was found in the Organ Mountains lying face down on his crucifix with a knife in his back. He was wearing a penitential metal girdle full of spikes. The murder was never solved.
Found on the back of the USDA Forest Service Map for the Pecos Wilderness—
A combination of the rugged terrain, variable and sometimes severe weather, wildlife, livestock, time, distance, and other natural factors, constitute a risk to personal safety… Survival depends on the ability to meet natural challenges and to overcome emergencies. Chances of finding help on short notice are remote… Count on no one but yourself.
I wonder what Giovanni would have had to say about that?
El Ermitano is buried in the Mesilla Cemetery in Dona Ana County with the following Spanish inscription, John Mary Justiniani, Hermit of the Old and New World. He died the 17th of April, 1869, at 69 years and 49 years a hermit.
The Forest Service map lies face up on the dining room table for now. Just in case you want to measure the distance again. In miles. Or years. Eventually, you’ll fold it up and put it back in the drawer.
Flickr photos: toOliver2; jaysonphoto; richardDickie
July 9, 2006
Little ones
My two little ones. The way that my 8-year-old son wools on our 4-year-old Percheron, you'd think Tobias was an unusually large black lab! I guess that's what happens when you've been around horses since the day your were born. These two are very close friends.
July 8, 2006
Mountain life
Check out Paintbrush Poet's Top Ten Reasons I Live in the Mountains.
10. I look at the mountains and see God.
(We slept last night with the windows thrown open beneath a mountain of coverlets [delicious], and I know everyone at the Post Office too!)
A taste for ...
While I haven't witnessed the ... ahem ... crime firsthand,
and, based upon the well-known fact that the front porch is a one-creature domain,
I strongly suspect
that Matilda-the-tenacious-heeler has developed a taste for strawberries.