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I love, absolutely love K.D. Lang. And all this angst and talk of craving. I saw her in Santa Fe, once, years ago, at least I'm pretty sure it was her, walking down the sidewalk near the Plaza. And then in concert a few times. Stunning lady. What a voice.
I've successfully installed a Comment Challenge plugin complete with CAPTCHA. Yes, it's taken me weeks to figure out how to do this, but. I've. Finally. Done. It.
Waha ha haha HA hahahahah! HA.
Adios you vile amigos.
(possibly premature gloating...? Only time and the contents of my JUNK folder will tell ... )
The mountains look new this morning in the brand new light. So new I barely recognize them. Brand spanking new even though I've seen them every day for years on my commute.
I peer through the tinted windows of my Tahoe, and I swear I simply don't remember a couple of them from the day before. Or is it just a matter of my point of view? I'm asking myself as I steer the SUV around a curve on what used to be the old Santa Fe Trail where the settlers made their way further into the west. Into the wild with horses or oxen. They came in droves. Sometimes they say, you can still find an occasional rut from a wooden wheel of a covered wagon.
Maybe I should stop and get out, I think. But I don't. Because I'm late already, and the undulating blue ridges, even the ones I don't know, are not exactly monoliths, anyway. I've got places to go. Stuff to solve. And I'm thinking thinking thinking it all through very hard, certain I'll figure it out.
Over the steering wheel, the farthest peaks seem to have sprung from the dark earth overnight. Just beyond what's still vaguely familiar territory--where I've probably even explored on horseback in the deep green summer months with my family--the unknown range is cloaked in diaphanous blue.
Like the fine fabric of a lady's gown, it suddenly strikes me. A lady who is reclining. On an elaborate chaise, maybe with a pillow. Of goosedown, my imagination works overtime. Like the one I got myself for that bright corner of my master bedroom years ago, but rarely take the time to use. The antiquated term for the piece of furniture is "fainting sofa", I believe. And delicate ladies used to faint on them when the daily trials of their Victorian lives overcame them. (Or maybe the whalebone was cinched too tight. Or the room had become suddenly hot. Or they'd just seen the stifling walls of their box.) The one on which many books, several containing the wisdom of the ages, are strewn.
And then I know who's smack dab in the middle of all of this.
She is etched from the clouds. Fashioned from ozone.
My nostrils fill with the utter sweetness of the lady's perfume.
This gorgeous photo by imapix. He writes--The Camargue is an ancient breed of horses found in the Camargue area in Provence, France. For centuries, possibly thousands of years, these small horses have lived wild in the harsh environment of the Camargue marshes, developing the stamina, hardiness and agility for which they are known today. Camargue horses are born black or dark brown in colour, but as they grow to adulthood, their coat lightens until it is pale grey or white.
IN A DARK TIME
In a dark time,
the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow
in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo
in the echoing wood--
A lord of nature
weeping to a tree.
I live between the heron
and the wren,
Beasts of the hill
and serpents of the den.
What's madness
but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance?
The day's on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned
against a sweating wall.
That place among the rocks
--is it a cave,
Or winding path?
The edge is what I have.
A steady storm
of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds,
a ragged moon,
And in broad day
the midnight come again!
A man goes far
to find out what he is--
Death of the self
in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes
blazing unnatural light.
Dark, dark my light,
and darker my desire.
My soul, like some
heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill.
Which I is I?
A fallen man,
I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself,
and God the mind,
And one is One,
free in the tearing wind.
THEODORE ROETHKE (See Modern American Poetry)
One of my greatest pleasures in life, each and every morning, is being greeted at the pasture gate by one of these beautiful creatures.
As I was getting firewood this morning, my percheron horse Toby caught sight of me from where he likes to start the day, at the top of the pasture in the sunshine, and came rollicking towards the gate in a great floating trot, 1,800 pounds of enthusiasm, leaving a bevy of highly pissed off mares in his wake.
I've never raised a horse from a really young age before. We got Toby when he was a little over one. He's five now. I remember when the sleek, strapping fellow stepped out of the trailer in my driveway, eyes rolling, ears twitching, nostrils flaring, scared to death, but scared in place, four hooves rooted to the ground, fixed right next to the woman I was buying him from. And I stood there wondering what in the world I'd gotten myself into. We'd made the deal pretty much over the phone, and I'd only seen photos of Toby (then Eclipse) up to that point.
It was a good trade. My thoroughbred mare (the high-strung beauty who had no temperament for the mountains but who was destined to have beautiful babies with the sport horse breeder's Friesian stallion) for one young Percheron gelding. Beneath all of that youngster stuff, all of the full of himself young horse energy, the big boy showed good sense.
And that whole brimming over with life thing is something I hope the horse never completely loses. Maturity will temper that, I know. But the energy will still be there. It will simply change a bit over the years.
Kind of like my own, I guess. I still brim over, but in a middle-aged, more sensible kind of way. Most of the time, that is.
I'll always remember this time of having a sweet young horse who rushes to greet me on a bitter cold morning, and hold it dear. It's almost as if I carry the big horse around with me during the day, hidden away in my coat pocket. I know he's there.
This gorgeous painting is by Sidney-Moonchild.
The current score is:
Bobcat – 9
Me – 0
Last night I didn’t get home until well after dark. So that meant the hens and the lone goose hadn’t been locked up safe in the henhouse, because I secure the birds (you start talking like this after a few years of being married to a former Navy submariner) when I get home, which is generally before dark. After Dennis did the count, we knew that old bobcat had snagged another one of the Rhode Island Reds.
She was such a good layer, I mused, shaking my head, peering into the empty nests amidst the sole survivor goose who was marching back and forth with his chest thrust out like a prizefighter, honking, and the chickens twisting their heads to eyeball me, reporting cluck cluck cluck in a feather ruffled frenzy.
The tenacious heeler dogs were all rattled up. Lila couldn’t stop pacing the house. Something had gotten beneath her speckled skin, but unfortunately she couldn’t breathe a word. If I could let the heelers run at will around the place, which I can’t because of the road, I imagine they’d have run that marauder off by now. Sent his bobtail skittering across the railroad tracks and back to where he belongs.
This morning my draft horse Toby came plodding towards me, lifting each big hoof methodically and putting it down, one in front of the other, until we were nearly nose to nose, and I stood there betting that the 1,800-pound picture of placid domestication had been witness to nine heinous murders in my barnyard. He sighed. Heavily.
I had some friends in Santa Fe whose house was robbed years ago. And since they figured their yellow lab was the only witness, they called in an animal psychic. Well, actually, they had the animal psychic call their yellow lab on the phone (at this point in their story over dinner, I can tell you I was having a hard time maintaining my poker face), after which the animal psychic provided them with a detailed description of the robber.
Well, that robber was never caught.
Years ago I was riding my rawboned, cow-detesting appaloosa mare Lacey Jay down the Pojoaque creek when we came upon a woman who was walking alone. She had the contrived look of a Santa Fe seeker about her in her pressed gypsy skirt, too new cowboy boots, ruffled shirt and all that lustrous golden hair tied back in a fringey scarf. She was using a walking stick that was at least a head taller than she was. Kind of like Gandalf’s from The Lord of the Rings.
So I wasn’t too surprised, after we’d exchanged a few pleasantries, when the seeker woman placed her hands on each side of Lacey Jay’s polka dotted head, stared deep into the mare’s white sclera-rimmed eyes—which generally gave the uninformed pause, thinking the horse was some kind of bug-eyed bronc, which really wouldn’t have been all that far off—and then shut her own tight, for a good long time. I sat back in the saddle, slightly confused and not wanting to be rude, gathered up the reins, and hoping the testy mare wouldn’t bite during what looked like some kind of New Age mind meld. And just as Lacey Jay was about to get real annoyed (I could feel the piss and vinegar twisting right up her spine towards a mouth full of big yellow teeth), that lady let go and simply walked off.
If only they could talk.
This gorgeous image of a Friesian horse is by artist Sidney-Moonchild. She writes--The horse is said to be associated with travel...freedom. The Fresian is so very magistic and regal...truly the horse of Kings. One of the most intriguing aspects of this painting...when you first see it, you're really not sure exactly what it is. You may only see the horse once it has been mentioned to you. The colors are spectacular...a very powerful painting.
Into this wild Abyss,
...all these in their pregnant causes mixed...
His dark materials to create more Worlds
--Paradise Lost
Our quarterhorse Miss Pinon and I canter up the rutted road, through the melting snow and mud, up to the top of the hill where there's a clearing. I usually like to stop here and enjoy the wide vistas of the Pecos mountains, the blue above the treetops. But jutting out of the snow like a scar is the foundation for a trailer house. Doublewide or singlewide, I can't really tell. Right in the middle of the clearing, the rebar pokes its ugly head up through the snow drifts, the chamisa, and the buffalo grass.
Pinon snorts at this new and unpleasant development on what we have come to view as our stomping ground. Nothing passes by the opinionated mare unnoticed. We walk a wary circle around the site.
One of the poorest states, New Mexico is the land of the trailer houses. Some of the people who live here, usually the ones with the good jobs and the educations, like to call the state the only third world country in the middle of the U.S.A. These trailer houses squat all over the red earth of a thousand New Mexico villages.
The flimsy looking structures always strike me as an afterthought, strewn across the dirt like dice thrown by some dumb god along with a few old cars and some assorted trash for good measure. The trailers are notoriously naked, and they are not propped up, back arched and perky breasted, like those air-brushed women in the men's magazines. They have no porches and most of the time no skirting to hide the skinny knees of their cinderblock foundations, under which more often than not lives at least one pit bull dog. To protect the large screen TV and the satellite dish. Never mind her honor.
I grew up in a 250-year-old farmhouse on Lake Erie. As my horse Pinon paws the snow, I do the math--the farmhouse in Ohio is more like 280 years old now. How long ago is that? I ask myself. Not sure if I mean when I lived there or another lifetime ago altogether. When it was built up out of the ground with what must have been a lot of hope by some industrious soul.
That drafty old house with its crazy slanted floors had weathered a few wars and maybe even a few tornadoes had passed her by. She had three wells and a spring. A red barn with a hayloft and a cuploa. She was surrounded by ancient, gnarled apple trees and acres of Kentucky blue grass. There were maples and oaks. Her roots ran deep, way down to the stone-walled basement with its crooked stone steps, and a dirt-floored cellar beyond a wooden plank door to where it was musty and filled with spiders.
I used to fall asleep at night in my wrought iron bed, the one my antique-collecting parents had so lovingly refurbished, wondering about the people before me who'd slept in the same room. Their shadows were long across the bare hardwood floors with the moonlight streaming through the windows. Someone had made love, given birth to babies, spent quiet afternoons reading, maybe even died there. With her plaque on the front porch proudly proclaiming an approximation of her age, the old farmhouse looked like no matter what happened, she'd always be there.
Or maybe that was just an illusion too.
A piece of blue plastic is flapping off the end of a discarded lawn chair in what must be the beginnings of the trash pile of the newcomers.
Pinon dances.
Wild Gnosis. Wild Gnosis can approximately be described as a direct, transforming experience left untamed and unconditioned by cultural and socioreligious beliefs; the state prior to the interpretation of the experience; unconfined by concepts and images. Awareness of Wild Gnosis arises in a quiet mind, in a dimension not touched by chronological time. We find it when we are fully in the present. Not before and not later, but here and now.
How does one live an authentic life? I ask myself this question a lot. I've noticed that I seem to like the word wild. This is curious to me. It comes up in my conversations. In what I write. More than I had really thought. Where the Wild Things Are is one of my favorite kids books. Into the wild blue wonder yonder a phrase of beauty. The word wild is kind of a favorite.
The story of one young man's attempt to find his authentic self and gain his freedom is chronicled in the film Into the Wild. I really enjoyed this scene (above) with the horses. Filmmakers seem to get the freedom of the horse archetype. (We recently saw the movie Michael Clayton with its unexpected horse scene and a moment of redemption. One blogger has this to say about the film, "So, if you dislike lawyers, corporations, money, family or Mercedes Benz's and like horses, strange fantasy role-play books and crazy people' then you might like Michael Clayton.")
It's interesting to me that whether we are horsewomen and horsemen, or not, we usually get the horse on a deep level, whether we can put it into words or we can't. The horse is part of our vast collective unconscious. A symbol of something wild. A momentary look into the depths of the eyes of freedom.
By the end of Into the Wild I was crying like there was no tomorrow. My husband Dennis had prepared for this, though, because he'd read the reviews, and whipped a large handkerchief out of his pocket as if on cue, for which I was very grateful. Funny how he knew I'd be needing that.
I was torn between cheering Christopher on and wanting to shake him for being so silly as to go up north to Alasaka with the intention of living off the land with only a .22 caliber rifle and a bag of rice. He seemed tragically ill-prepared in several ways.
And in the end, found himself trapped by the wild. Kind of like we all are, I'd say. I can saddle up my horse and ride the fence. But there it is, just the same.
I'm thankful to be able to see it.
The horse represents swiftness, strength and healing powers.
Ah. The simple pleasure of riding a horse in the snow. My appaloosa of steel, Teyla, marched resolutely across country as she always does, and would have gone all day if I hadn't gotten pretty cold. My husband's polish Arabian mare danced and pranced, wide-eyed, snorting, because everything looks so ... gasp ... different when covered in white stuff.
Apparently Arabian horse eating monsters lurk beneath the white stuff.
Today is my birthday, and my wonderful husband Dennis is helping me begin a dream I've had for a long time--beekeeping. My birthday gift is honeybees, and all their gear. Of course, we won't actually begin until late Spring. I spent a good hour on the telephone a couple of weekends ago with a local bee producer, who's given us contact information for a Santa Fe based beekepers club and from whom we'll be getting our setup.
Do you know that you purchase bees by the pound? She said about three pounds (I think that's like 10,000 bees) and a queen to start.
This bee producer seems quite fond of her bees. In fact, she stated exactly that. She told me she thinks that my experience with horses and having the kind of understanding I have of them will be a plus in learning how to handle bees. Well, I hope so. I can use all the help I can get with this brand new endeavor. I guess she's talking about the level of sensitivity you have when you spend a lot of time with animals. It was funny as she was talking about her interactions with bees, I'd tell her a story about my interactions with horses, and it seemed that even though we were talking about two entirely different species, we were both approaching our thoughts from a similar place.
I've been reading bee books lately, learning about bee behavior. It's fascinating.
Dennis planting 26 fruit trees this year kind of cemented the idea of beekeeping in my mind. At this point, it's a practicality. But I first began entertaining the idea of bees from this scene from Fried Green Tomatoes, one of my favorite films.
Can I become a bee charmer? A bee whisperer? We'll see.
I got my first Australian saddle for my birthday last year. I am absolutely sold on these. Especially for the trail.
My son and daughter have been riding in Australian saddles for years. It gives them a sense of security on the horse while still being able to feel the horse. There are also all of those great rings for tying things.
The snow we've been expecting finally arrived in the wee hours of the morning. We're feeding horses, breaking the water on the gander's swimming pool, being tagged by heeler dogs, and looking for the super sneaky bobcat, who has left us no tracks in the snow.
Oh, yeah, and it's my birthday.
This is our New Mexico version of The Dangerous book for Boys, which I love, by the way.
Where I follow 10-year-old C. and the tenacious heeler dogs across the railroad tracks, and into the realm of the ... bobcats. Luckily, they are shy creatures. And we didn't see one.
My ranch backs up to thousands of acres of public land. Unfortunately, most of it goes straight up, so can't get my horses up there without trailering them a little ways.
A snowstorm is coming. So they say. My holiday houseguests have decided to sit this one out, instead of driving across the state in what may very well be inclement weather. Luckily, I'm not left holding the bag with a big Thanksgiving dinner (the kids are at their dad's this year), because I brilliantly made reservations for the big Thanksgiving spread at the exquisite Bishop's Lodge in Santa Fe. (Factoid: Bishop's Lodge is named after Bishop Lamy, whose life was chronicled by NM governor Lew Wallace, who amazingly enough also wrote the novel Ben Hur.)
And I also have an extremely clean house.
Some of you have asked me about Zuni horse fetishes. This looks like a nice one.
It's a basic law of the universe-- Horse + Girl = Energy.
This is my first I Gallop On official tee-shirt design for girls and teens. Because if you're a horsegirl, you're a thinker engaged in the science of equestrian physics. A girl works in harmony with a thousand pound equine with her excellent mind, body, and spirit. Keep that in mind next time you saddle up and ride, young ladies. You are made of some serious big stuff inside and out.
A closeup of the tee-shirt logo--
These fine equestrian-inspired shirts are available just in time for the holidays here. All proceeds will go towards hay!
I've turned comments off for now. I can't get the TypeKey registration to work. Although I've followed all of the steps ... I turned comments back on for a few minutes, and got slammed again, and I can't block an IP address, because each porn-related comment has a unique IP. I hope the spammers all come back the next time around as sewer rats. Although I guess they really are already when you think about it.
I'm using Moveable Type. Anyone got any suggestions for this blog security idiot?
Thanks. I'll let you know when I get this worked out.
It is a day in which it is not fitting that salvation be idle, so that you may speak of that heavenly day that has no night and of the sun that does not set because it is perfect. Say then in your heart that you are this perfect day and that in you lives the light that does not fail. The Gospel of Truth
Every autumn morning at sunrise you can pretty much find our five horses in this upper corner of the paddock. This is the sweet spot that the sun hits first, where they can soak up the first rays of the day. The ground up here is filled with black coal, from the ATS&F steam engines that used to run on the track above us. It drinks up the sunshine like a sponge.
Sometimes I get the feeling that the horses are celebrating the dawn in their quiet, equine way. Sometimes I wonder why we don't greet the sun with banners and drums and songs each and every morning.
Isn't it a miracle? The red orb rising up over the horizon. The way it caresses your face.
I would have made a great pagan. (Well, maybe deep down I am.)
This beautiful song is by Rolf Harris. My husband grew up listening to Australian music as his mother had quite an extensive collection. Gotta love it. My grade-school kids adore his music. I suspect yours would too.
I was just spammed with about 9,000+ slimey and distasteful comments from the underbelly of the blogosphere. My apologies to any of you who might have had the misfortune of seeing some of those here.
Yesterday, they were coming in at the rate of about 1 every 4 or 5 minutes. Dennis and I spent some serious time deleting them. And because of the sheer volume, we cleaned out all of the comments. Once again.
FYI, I'm turning on comment authentication. If you would like to comment, I'm going to try and set up some kind of registration process. I'll let you know when it's working.
A pox on spammers.
Walk around my hometown of Santa Fe, New Mexico USA with me for a couple of minutes.
We have the most beautiful blue sky anywhere, hands down. In fact, as you can see, we're rather partial to the color blue here. Santa Fe -- earth, sky, stone, wind, silver, spirit. Beautiful artwork everywhere. People from all over the world strolling around the Plaza. Having lived here nearly 20 years, I've gotten really good at giving our tourists directions completely in my very own personal sign language. Check out those animal totems. I really like the horse, of course.
My hometown is the Conde Nast Reader's Choice. Second to, I believe, San Francisco -- bah! I say there's simply nooooo comparison. Sometimes I take this pretty place completely for granted.
The Daily Galaxy -- The Consumer Paradox: Scientists Find that Low Self-Esteem and Materialism Goes Hand in Hand.
“Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need.” ~From the movie Fight Club, based on the novel by Chuck Palahniuk
Mad Magazine summed it up with the statement, “The only reason a great many American families don't own an elephant is that they have never been offered an elephant for a dollar down and easy weekly payments.”
I sound like a curmudgeon, but here goes--
I wore overalls to high school. My mom sewed all of our clothes. I spent most of my free time on the back of a buckskin quarterhorse. As a kid, my idea of a big day was hanging out in the woods. On Friday nights after the football games, we went to the IHOP and indulged in too many pancakes.
Doesn't this little girl in the Juicy Couture ad look like she's 11 going on 30? (I've got Juicy Couture and Bratz in my sites these days.) I think it's a bad idea for a fresh, beautiful child, or any child for that matter, to be walking around with "juicy" emblazoned on her chest. I think the reasons are obvious.
OMG -- and now we have Juicy dogs ...
The tenacious heeler sisters would have this Juicy Couture dog hoodie eaten up in about five minutes. Four, if I fed it to them by hand.
I was driving home last evening with the kids, and the farther away we got from civilization and the closer to our little ranch, our oasis, our refuge, the better I felt.
We spend a fortune every year and make some big sacrifices to send the kids to a private school, complete with farm animals and farm chores (yes, I pay good money so my kids can shovel horse, goat, llama, sheep and pig manure in a well-rounded learning environment with a superb student to teacher ratio while still paying for the sub-standard public schools in my own poverty-stricken state with its fat, delusions-of-being-president governor who's too busy campaigning to pay any attention to education), where they are to a large degree protected from what I'm increasingly realizing is ... my very own culture.
Next year, my daughter--who announced to me yesterday that her intention is to be an honor student and go to Harvard as I drove on silently and pleasantly shocked--will be wearing a uniform to middle school. Whew, that's a relief. One less battle I'll have to wage on the cool clothing front.
I think having kids around horses and involved in outside activities helps push back at this culture I'm finding is increasingly in my face. And theirs. Wherever we look it seems.
There's so much stuff out there to distract anyone who's one iota awake from contemplating the riches, the complete and abundant wealth that is to be found inside each and every one of us. I worry that it snags the little ones early and it doesn't easily let go. Unless someone shows them another way.
Whoever said that being a parent is not for wimps was absolutely right. Frankly, just being alive and getting up every day is not for the faint of heart either.
If you ask me, I'd say we're all rather heroic.
I didn't have a clue as to what these cowboy types meant by a horse having "a little cow" in him, until I met my appaloosa mare, Lacey Jay.
I'd woken up one too many mornings at my Pojoaque house with Mr. L.'s steers snoozing in my tree-lined driveway like big lawn ornaments that pooped. Everywhere.
I'd chased them too many times with a straw broom down the driveway. Big, dumb brutes. I almost felt guilty whacking the slow-witted creatures with a household implement. They'd scramble up onto four hooves, half-dazed, and trot half-heartedly towards the river. But by this time, several weeks later into their apparent freedom from their pastures at San Ildefonso Pueblo, they'd decided to stand their ground. New Mexico is after all, a fence-out state. And what limited barbed wire surrounded my property would hardly keep a goat out.
So I threw on my coveralls over my pajamas and boots and saddled up Lacey Jay and started off after them at a trot, wielding the broom. This quickly turned into a hell-bent for leather kamakaze attack, broom dropped in the dust and forgotten as I just held on in complete shock. You see, Lacey Jay had "a little cow" in her, although no one had forewarned me of this fact, and I wouldn't have known what it meant even if her previous owner had chosen to disclose this to me about the rawboned mare's past.
Beneath all of those polka dots was one cow detesting equine.
As the bovines awoke from their slumber at the sound of Lacey's rattling hooves and headed in a panic towards the river, she caught up with one of the slackers halfway through the arroyo and sunk her yellow teeth firmly into its rump. You could almost smell their fear. And then she soundly ran down and bit two more of the steers before I managed to rein her in. I'd just wanted to scare them out of my flowerbeds, after all. Not murder them by appaloosa.
Last night my son and I are sitting on the front porch, watching the stars, when all of a sudden the geese began screaming. And I realize that they haven't been locked into the hen house yet for the night and that something is after them. Something big. And with claws.
I hear the sound of the metal water fountains crashing against the side of the hen house. I imagine them being chased around in terror by that old bobcat who's already eaten two of my geese, including my favorite Darwin, five hens, and one good barn cat.
So I'm yelling for Dennis that something's after the geese and the chickens and he comes running out, and I'm already halfway down to the hen house in the pitch black dark, waving a coleman lantern, when Dennis fires off a couple of shots to scare that big cat off. And as I rush to the gate, I am yelling, growling like a bear, like a big she grizzly, GRRRRRRR GRRRRRRR GRRRRRRRR, for all I'm worth, at whatever it is that is lurking in the dark and is after my birds. Dennis is close behind me. I can hear his breathing.
When we get there, there's no cat.
Or is it a bear? Or a mountain lion?
Well, whatever the hell it is, we've managed to scare it off. We count the two geese and the five remaining chickens who have sought refuge in their laying boxes. We are so happy to see that no one's been eaten that we are suddenly laughing in relief. As if this is the funniest thing that's just happened. This story of life and death. Predators and prey.
And at that exact moment, I realize to my complete surprise that I've just gone off on the offensive against a predator in the dark, wielding not even a broom, just a battery-operated Coleman lantern. I certainly didn't think that one through, I am telling Dennis.
And I realize that perhaps I've "got a little bobcat" in me.
grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrRRRRRR ...
Sing it Lyle ...
At the Sunday morning church service, when I was a girl in Oklahoma, our Southern Baptist minister would have us sing about 30 verses of the invitational hymn, sure someone was going to walk down that aisle and get saved, Praise the Lord. I think sometimes he was waiting for someone in particular... whom he deemed to be in special peril on that given Sunday morning. I used to look surreptitiously around, with my head still bowed, curious eyes darting, wondering who the fallen backslider was this morning.
And since it was right around noon, all of our stomaches would be rumbling. By verse 20 of Just as I Am from the Baptist Hymnal, all I could think about was food. And with good reason.
My mom would have a big Sunday dinner cooking in the oven at home. A big pot roast or fried chicken, gravy, new potatoes with bacon, corn bread or homemade yeast bread or buttermilk biscuits, fried okra, slick green beans, fried green tomatoes or fresh cherry red tomatoes, cantaloupe sprinkled with pepper, and some kind of pie with a flakey crust of flour and lard. Occasionally, there was a pineapple upside down cake. It weighed about five pounds.
We knew how to eat in the 1960s in Oklahoma.
Or, there'd be platters of equally aromatic and delicious food in a big spread in the community room at the back of the church where the entire congregation would gather together afterwards to break some bread.
My mother would be all smug about having brought the very best this or that and outcooking the other church women by a mile. (Maybe the preacher's invitational was for her on church supper days...) I always enjoyed the most that green bean casserole some other mom had made. (A secret pleasure.) You know, the one with the canned mushroom soup, the canned french greanbeans, and those canned deep-fried onion thingies sprinkled on the top with a whole bunch of canned breadcrumbs and baked to perfection? That dish wasn't home-made enough for my mom, the epicurean purist, the then Martha Stewart of Oklahoma (and still reigning, but in a different part of the country now).
This was way before any of us were thinking about low-fat food. You can bet that pot roast wasn't 95% fat free. More like 120% +++ of all the good stuff, if I remember correctly. For you uninitiated, slick green beans are swimming in bacon or ham fat. Our bread was slathered with butter. The okra was fried fried fried and fried.
I wonder how I didn't grow up to be one of those fat kids CNN loves to tell us about on a regular basis, the ones who look the Pillsbury Dough Boy at age seven and who are destined to a lifetime of Big Macs and wearing Wal-Mart stretch pants.
Well, we usually ran wild in the woods after dinner, or rode a horse down to the creek where we waded and caught all manner of slippery, slimy things, instead of sitting in front of a computer game.
Oh, the good old days.
Related: See the incomparable Tim Boucher's post on Tent Show Revivalism.
I love this photo of Harry the Horse. Reminds me of me and my big Percheron.
Toby, my just turned five-year-old percheron, and I don't venture too far from home unless we've got the grownup company of Dennis and another good, solid horse. In our case, all mares. And in Dennis' case, specifically, a 14-year-old Polish arabian mare who is an all around trail veteran and mountain goat. Who also, by the way, never seems to get tired. I've seen her carry Dennis and one of our then-five-year-old kids through mountain passes and across rushing rivers at 8,000 feet up in the Pecos mountains, and maintain the same proud carriage and sane sensibility all day long.
When we ride with Toby, that little Arabian meets her match.
What is it about young horses? Sometimes they are simply delightful. And sometimes all of that youngster energy makes them a pain in the ass. Usually, it's a blend of the two--
Brilliance and bull.
The first half and hour out along a brand new route, Toby pranced and trotted, pranced and trotted, started and stopped, blew hot air through his nostrils at the scary things, then after letting me know that Mr. K.'s old lawn chair in the front of his crumbling adobe house was probably going to eat us up at about any moment now, he marched by nonplussed. The routine is this--the big horse stops like a stone statue, blows, stares, let's me know he's not happy about whatever it is he's looking at or imagines he sees, I put my hand on his jar-head, marine-worthy neck, tell him we're safe, and suddenly satisifed, on the draft horse goes without a hitch.
45 minutes into the ride, he'd slowed to a walk, and was sweaty and frothy. With that winter coat in our unusually warm November weather, he had sweat rolling down his muzzle. I could feel his sides heaving in and out, heart pounding, not because he was all that tired, mind you. This is sheer excitement.
Yeah, it was sheer excitement for me too, perched up there on that broad back like a little doll when I'd lose that occasionally elusive deep seat in the rough terrain. And for Dennis and his Arabian, who'd been trotting and cantering to keep up with the living, breathing steam engine. Miss Morning Star did look a bit annoyed at Toby's sheer enthusiasm. Although she wasn't tired. And even if she was, the gritty critter would never fess up. (Nor would her equally gritty rider.)
We got Toby back and forth successfully through one of the big train tunnels (beneath the tracks). I led him through the hundred-year-old structure the first time, his giant hooves echoing clip clop clip clop, tenacious heeler sisters panting at his heels, taking very seriously their job as our escorts and protectors, and he didn't bat an eyelid (more than once or twice). Sometimes I think that horse would follow me through hell if the situation warranted it. This is good. This is the attitude I want in a mountain horse.
All in all, it was a successful outing. I wish I had more time to spend with the youngster. We'd be a lot further along if I did. What Toby needs is to work cattle, plow a field, pull a cart, haul stuff in panniers for miles, to flatten him out a bit and get him a little more sensible. Although I do love his sense of go and forwardness, and don't want to lose that.
You do the best you can with the time and resources you've got, I guess. We've got seven months before the mountains. We'll do some serious training rides on the mesa this winter. Although Toby's enthusiasm for the steers up there, where he likes to trot behind them and push them through the waves of grass (or is he just chasing something interesting?), makes me think I've got a percheron with a little "cow" in him.
Now just imagine that.
Anne over at Smells Horsey and Life Pundit is adding some Pay Per Post reviews to her blogs. I haven't worked with them in a while, but here are a couple of video assignments I got from them last year. These little gems were published on my now defunct janewest.org blog. I guess I'm now officially part of the YouTube Generation for better or for worse.
Just trying to be supportive, Anne. As you start down the Pay Per Post path, you might ask yourself, how far am I willing to go to pay for those riding lessons???! I was surprised to find myself singing for some bales of hay. I may re-think doing some more PPP advertising myself.
As you can imagine, my family is so very very proud--
An ad where I was supposed to tell a really good sob story about why I needed an HP Digital Camera...
An assignment where I was supposed to have Pay Per Post "fight" with someone ...
General Pay Per Post endorsement starring my very hungry horses ...
It is infinitely satisfying at times to be an American woman in the southwest, driving a big dawg Chevy crew cab out of Santa Fe through Glorieta pass, underneath all of this red sky, with the radio cranked to some good C&W, singing.
Makes me think of things I hadn't thought of in a long time -- like me and Dennis wearing cowboy boots to our wedding. Mine were ostrich, the color of ivory, with roach killer toes.
The boondocks run deep ...
I'm cursing the dark that's suddenly enveloping my ranch this evening at approximately 5:00 PM with the time change. I'm stomping off into the pinon trees, behind the barn, looking for the water hose I know is coiled there somewhere, when I realize that the trees are no longer green, but just black shapes in an even blacker gloom, it's inkiness broken only by the stars that are popping out of the matte fabric one by one over the mesa. And I think of how we never really found any pawprints of the bobcat that's been systematically raiding us each night for a week.
I think of my favorite goose Darwin getting dragged off in the grip of steely jaws over the fence on a night just like this.
Then five of my Rhode Island Reds hens.
And my barn cat Boone.
I've got it all buttoned down now, I tell myself, casting a glance towards the hen house where my birds are locked up for the night. But we never did find those pawprints, although we searched each afternoon.
And suddenly I feel the cool fingertips of the prematurely black evening sneaking their way across my shoulders, tickling their way up the back of my neck, and they start the wheels turning. Whatever it is that's been eating my pets all week-- because we never did find those pawprints and maybe it's not a fifty pound bobcat, but a mountain lion, or a big black bear--could be watching me from the unfathomable shadows that are closing in around me now. And I'm starting to regret leaving the tenacious heeler dogs up at the house and not having a gun with me. And knowing that Dennis won't be home for another hour gives whatever that big thing is that's lurking in the shadows ample time to cart me off too.
Oh, quit being so silly, I tell myself. And high tail it back to the house through the pitch black.
Pronto.
This is part of the process of how vaulters learn to mount at canter. You run beside the horse, matching his stride. It takes a lot of tenacity, courage, strength, and breathe. Eventually, you'll grab the surcingle handles, punch forward with both feet, and allow the momentum of the horse's canter to swing you up onto his back.
The first assisted mount I did at canter, I was given a boost by a 60+ year old man, who'd been a vaulter since he was a child, and who had lost one of his arms to childhood cancer, although that didn't seem to slow him down one bit. While I didn't know him very well, I understood he'd spent a large part of his lifetime teaching special needs kids to vault. I wonder if he has any idea of the gift that he gave to me so many years ago, when he boosted me into the bright blue ether with his one good, strong arm until I landed safely astride the horse, grasping the surcingle handles, sitting the rhythm of the big gait?
I was kind of a special needs case who was pushing herself to get back out there, to not give up, to learn another way, although it was hidden so deep inside, I suspect that only the people who knew me very well understood that I'd been among the walking dead. It may sound silly, but being able to do this, to spring up onto the back of a horse at canter, was part of my resurrection back into life. The end of aimlessly roaming in error ...
Do we truly understand the impact of our lives upon others? Even if our paths cross for only couple of hours?
If you know what in yourself will die, though you have lived many years, why not look at yourself and see yourself risen now? ... Everyone finds a way, and there are many ways, to be released from this element and not to roam aimlessly in error, all with the end of recovering what one was at the beginning. The Treatise on Resurrection
I've been privileged to know this mother and daughter for several years. And now they are teaching my daughter and others the beautiful art of equestrian vaulting. This exquisite dance is what these extraordinary horsewomen are passing down to their equestrian "heirs". Like the stories our ancestors used to tell around the campfires, these are the things that will not be forgotten. These practitioners of this ancient equestrian art hand down their knowledge and their secrets like treasures.
These sunlit days are more precious than diamonds.
Sometimes on a Sunday afternoon--in the middle of the sand and sun and pinon--you catch a glimpse of sheer, absolute, beauty. So much, in the span of only a few seconds, that it almost makes your heart break.