Puddle jumping
Yesterday. 7PM. I am talking my husband into a short horseback ride with me. He’s shedding cell phones, pager, badges, laptop in its carrying case, all the trappings of his day, and looks out the bedroom window at the cloudy sky, considering the possibility that we might get drenched. We’re in the middle of an extended monsoon season here in New Mexico.
“Oh come on,” I wheedle. “We can just wear our slickers.” (I for one am always looking for an opportunity to wear my way cool, jet black, ankle-length, Man-From-Snowy-River oilskin coat.)
“Yeah, but then it won’t rain, and we’ll just be even more hot.” Dennis, who is generally impervious to inclement weather, is frowning. I think it’s probably been a way long day. He launches into a near whine. “I don’t want to spend hours brushing and grooming and all that fuss.”
I decide that a ride would definitely be therapeutic and choose to ignore the fact that he is referring to my tendency to treat my horses like Barbie dolls, brushing them up all pretty before a ride. Dennis has not yet bought into my idea that grooming is half the fun.
“I’ll be quick. I promise.” I’m zipping up the backs of my tall riding boots. “We’ll just knock the dust off and throw on the saddles, OK?” I try to look like a model of efficiency, which he and I both know I am most certainly not. “In fact, I’m going to ride Teyla with a bareback pad and a hackamore.” As if this solves everything. I put on the pleading look. (It’s for his own good.) “I’d really love it if you rode with me, sweetheart.”
My cowboy buys in. “OK, OK,” he’s putting his riding boots on now. He even agrees to carry the digital camcorder and photograph his-wife-the-video-blogger, who is in sore need of content.
There are puddles.
Deep treacherous puddles from this afternoon’s rain on the old railroad road.
Camera in one hand, reins of his hot-blooded Arabian horse in the other, Dennis is having a hard time negotiating the three inches of water that Miss Morningstar is convinced she’ll drown in, possibly sink in up to her eyeballs, the tip of her crooked ear, and beyond, never to be seen again. It’s her peculiar brand of amnesia where she forgets that only a couple of weeks ago she crossed overflowing, rushing mountain streams and lived through it. She is starting to side wind. And I am just waiting for her to turn herself inside out. (I don’t think any other breed of horse can do it quite the way she can.) Like a cat. Not wanting to get her rock-hard little hooves wet.
“Don’t worry about it, honey. Don’t worry about it.” I’m pointing at the camera clutched in one of Dennis’ hands and the nice dry saddle bags attached to the horn of his saddle. The video-blogger in me has kicked into full preservation mode. I am not so worried about my cowboy and Miss-Full-of-Fire, who is taking full blown advantage of the fact that half of her rider’s attention is elsewhere, but worrying instead about how I will ever manage to replace that camera I just managed to buy second-hand on eBay if it gets crushed beneath churning hooves in the rainwater. “Just put it up, darling, and we’ll enjoy our ride.” But my cowboy is a stubborn man, and he keeps on filming.
Teyla and I are waiting, smug and self-satisfied after a triumphant and non-eventful puddle crossing, on the other side.
So here's what we've got. Video of the scary muddy puddle, and the dirt road, and Miss Morningstar’s arched neck, head bobbing up and down, ears swiveling, flat out refusing to go through. (And if Dennis had had both hands free and on those reins, of course, there would have been no problem.) The part where The Princess is clambering up onto the grassy bank makes for some real interesting film. Artistic even.
And here’s the soundtrack—me laughing, giggling, snorting, chortling, hee-heeing, guffawing. With not one single shred of restraint.
(I will not be publishing this particular part of the ride, however, in order to maintain marital harmony in my home and to ensure that I have a cameraman in the future. But video of some of the rest of it is probably forthcoming.)
