Further Adventures of a Hermit

                                                by Laura Crum

            I had gone to live alone at Burgson Lake when I was twenty-two years old, envisioning a mystical communion with nature, and in some ways that did happen (see my previous post here), but a lot else happened that I didn’t expect. For one thing, I was often scared.

            I hadn’t expected to be scared. It had never, in fact, occurred to me that I might be scared. I wasn’t prone to being nervous; I didn’t mind being alone. And in the daytime I was fine. Not scared at all. But…

            Almost every evening, as it began to grow dark, the nervous feeling would creep upon me, spoiling my peace. I would hear rustles in the brush, and wonder if it might be bears, or worse yet, men who meant me harm. It didn’t matter that my logical mind knew it was deer. Something about the dark rendered my logical mind useless.

            Or rather, my logical mind was only useful for pointing out stuff that made my fear worse. You are miles from anyone who might help you, it said. If something happens to you here, you are on your own. No one will come to your aid. There is no calling 911.

            This was true. It was long before the era of cell phones (around 1980), and cell phones didn’t work from that spot the last time I was there (five years ago). Even if you could have called for help, it would take at least two or three hours for anyone to get there, if they could have found their way. Even if someone else, unknown to me, was camped in my area, the only likely spots for them to be were all a few miles away. Yelling for help would avail nothing. I really was on my own, dependent on my own resources.

            It wasn’t that I hadn’t expected this. I had sought it, after all. I just hadn’t had any idea what it would feel like to be completely on my own, cut off from all other humans. My mortality, something that at twenty-two I had been reasonably able to ignore, was thrown right in my face. I mean, I realized I could DIE out here. Of course, I could die anywhere. But in the safe-seeming realm of civilization, it was easy to forget this fact. It was impossible to forget it alone here in the wilderness at night (or so I found). Bull frogs would croak and I’d imagine intruders. I would think about how vulnerable I was with no weapon and plan to run into the dark and hide. I’d listen and stare into the night and feel anxious. I also felt pissed. This wasn’t what I had hoped to experience, for God’s sake. I’d hoped to feel mystical oneness with nature, not scared of the dark. I built the fire up and drank wine and at last I would fall asleep.

            Every morning I awoke with the sun and felt fine; the night’s fears seemed silly in the bright light of a mountain dawn. I ate granola and dried fruit for breakfast and bathed in the lake. Some days I hiked, some days I stayed at the lake and read and swam. But fear didn’t really leave me; it returned at dusk right on schedule. And after a week of this I hiked to my truck at the trailhead, drove an hour to town, and borrowed a pistol from my boyfriend. After that I slept with the pistol under my pillow and the nights were better.

            I hiked with the pistol on my hip and I kept the pistol next to me day and night. I felt a LOT less vulnerable (and I got some funny looks from hikers that I met on the trail). But the bottom line remained the same. Some days I would swim across the lake, and almost always, when I got to the middle, it would occur to me that I could drown out here—no one would save me. The pistol wasn’t going to help with that. I’d float on my back and remind myself that I could float like this endlessly and there was no need to drown. And then I’d swim the rest of the way across the lake to be greeted enthusiastically my dog, who seemed to worry that I would drown quite a bit more than I did.

            Since I am writing this, it is evident that I did not perish during my summer at Burgson Lake. In fact, I didn’t even have a truly negative experience. I never got close to drowning. I never saw a bear, though I saw fresh bear scat. I saw three rattlesnakes, but none were a problem. I was never threatened by a human, though I had a few odd encounters.

            Occasionally people would camp at my lake. Sometimes they would want to be social. One young guy was determined to have a drink with me, but he didn’t give me any grief (I had the gun on my hip the whole time). One Saturday, however, three guys who were obviously very drunk at noon came riding in on horses, singing and hollering. I heard them coming from my camp and watched them through binoculars. My tent was hidden in the trees and I knew they didn’t know I was there. There were three of them. And I made a quick choice. I packed a few essentials and slipped out the back way. They never even saw me. I hiked out to my truck and spent that weekend in town. When I returned on Monday, my camp was undisturbed. But I still think I made the right call.

            So, truly the only thing I actually had to fear was fear itself. That and the very real truth of my own mortality. But, of course, I could have faced/found that truth in many ways. This just happened to be the way I stumbled upon it. However, there is one thing worth mentioning. And it is this. It is different to be alone. Really alone.

(To be continued.)

For those who are wondering what in the world this post has to do with horses, it is a postscript to a fairly long (twelve post) saga I wrote about my life with horses. That saga begins here. And many of the insights and observations I made in my journals during my time at Burgson Lake found their way into my fifth book, Slickrock. This book is based mostly on the horse packing trips I did in my thirties, but much of the writing about solitude in the mountains comes from my early journals at Burgson Lake. Click on the title to find the Kindle edition of this book (which is just $2.99).

My Life With Horses--Part Six

                                                by Laura Crum

            So just when you think you have it all figured out…it changes. I was enjoying team roping, but slowly my overall enjoyment began to grow less. Because no matter how hard I tried to dwell on the positive, I couldn’t help but see all the negatives in competition. This was the third competitive horseback event that I had immersed myself in, and it was more fair and more affordable than the first two. But it was just as hard on horses. In some ways it was much harder on horses than cutting.

            I was getting to the end of watching horses be trashed in order to win. In any form, for any reason. I was sick of seeing people be too hard on a horse because they wanted to win a damn event. I didn’t do this to my own horses, but it was all around me. My fourth mystery novel, Roped, had a lot to do with these feelings.

            I became aware that I was less and less interested in winning and less happy at team roping competitions. I began focusing on horse packing in the mountains more and more. Flanigan was my main mount at this time and he proved to be a wonderful mountain horse. We made many, many trips together, including some that were over a week long and covered a couple of hundred miles over many high Sierra passes. Here we are Wood Lake in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

            But despite my riding in the mountains from time to time, the thing that dominated my life was roping. I practiced twice a week and I competed on weekends. It was my life. Training horses and competing at horse events had been my life for twenty years. I didn’t know how to quit. Once in awhile I would stay home and putter around my garden on the weekends and just turn my horses out to graze…and I was aware that I would RATHER do this than go roping. But the honest truth was I felt guilty if I didn’t go. All my friends were going. Surely I should go, too?

            I had retired Gunner from competition at this point, due to arthritic changes. I was still roping on Flanigan, and I had trained my young horse, Plumber, to be ready to compete. But something was wrong. The heart had gone out of it for me. I knew how I felt, but I didn’t know how to change. So life made a change for me.

            I am going to say something here that not all horse people will want to hear. But it is absolutely true (at least for me). I had spent my life focusing on horses to such a degree that I didn’t think very hard about much else. I didn’t, for instance, think about how to create a happy marriage. I never gave much thought to having children. I was too busy with my horses. And now I was forty years old and competing on horses was beginning to seem meaningless and downright upsetting. I still loved my horses, but I went off to the ropings completely uninterested in winning or even performing well. “Please don’t let any horses or people or cattle get hurt,” was the only thought in my mind. “Let whoever needs to win, win.” By which you can see that the joy had really gone out of it. But I kept doing it. Because I didn’t know how to quit. And this is where life stepped in.

            In my 40^th year my husband fell in love with another woman and left me. And between this, and the very real angst I already felt due to losing my lifelong passion for horseback competitions, I fell into a true depression.

            Those people who have been depressed themselves will know what this means. For those who have not, I will say that depression is far more like being sick with the flu than it is like being “sad.” I had tons of physical symptoms. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep, I felt physically terrible. It wasn’t as if I could just sit around on the couch relaxing and feeling sad. I felt so awful that I was desperate to feel better. You know when you have a really bad flu how everything is just misery? That’s how depression was for me.

            And yes, I did try to get help. That’s what everyone says. Get help, there is medication, etc, etc, etc. Well, I am here to tell you that this doesn’t work for everybody. I saw three separate shrinks for a year straight, I took at least ten different anti-depressant meds (not simultaneously). None of it helped at all. Some of the meds just made me feel worse. The only thing that gave a little relief was a couple of glasses of wine in the evening. But the relief was always short-lived.

            And yes again, I contemplated suicide. That’s how meaningless everything seemed. But I honestly felt that I needed to survive for the sake of my animals. At the same time, I couldn’t really care for them. I did not go roping; I did not even ride. I had to drag myself through the most basic of horse chores—feeding and watering. Anything more seemed beyond me, and even this much was very hard to do. My friends and family helped me feed my horses…and they went to the grocery store and brought me food so that I would eat. Yes, it was that bad.

            But it passed. I just had to walk through it, one step at a time. It wasn’t easy. More like going through a severe illness than any other way I can think of to describe it. I felt like shit…all the time. And I endured it and continued to put one foot in front of the other. More than that, I contemplated my life and tried to see what the depression might be trying to teach me. Because strange though it sounds, that depression, as I began to understand, came to me for a reason. When I look back on it, I learned some very important things during the year I was depressed. But that didn’t make it easy to bear.

It lasted a year. Until finally it lifted of its own accord. A year and one month after it began, it left me for good. I was involved with a new man and I went to Europe with him, and suddenly life was worth living again. And I still had my horses. Thanks to my friend, Wally, who did much of the feeding and caring for them during the year I was depressed.

            The thing is that awful though it was, the depression was actually a gift. I emerged from it changed—for good. I no longer felt that I had to compete on my horses in order to achieve something. I felt perfectly free to interact with my horses in whatever way was best for me and them. And I knew that I would never again prioritize horse competitions and horse training over my marriage.

            At this point I was re-married and I knew I wanted to have a child. I still had Burt and Gunner, who were both retired, and Flanigan and Plumber. My friend Wally was roping on Flanigan and Plumber and having a fine time with them. And me? I went on the occasional trail ride on Plumber with my new husband riding Flanigan alongside me and felt that life was good.

            But there were still more changes to come. (To be continued.)

PS—I wrote Slickrock about my horse packing adventures, and Breakaway about my battle with depression during this period of my life. These books are, of course, fiction, not memoir. All my novels have classic mystery plots involving murder and such, and this sort of drama did not come my way in real life, thank goodness. But all the background material in the stories is drawn from my own experiences. Click on the titles to find the Kindle editions of these books.

When a Good Horse is "Bad"

                                                by Laura Crum

            I brag all the time here about my steady little trail horse, Sunny, and how reliable he is. And this is quite true. But Sunny is only human-- uhmm, I guess that would be equine. He has good days and bad days, as we all do. I think you horse people will understand that a chilly mid-winter day after two weeks off is likely to result in a bad day, yes?

            Last week Sunny had a couple of “bad” days. I couldn’t really blame him. And his bad is quite manageable. But I thought it might be interesting to discuss how various folks deal with this sort of thing. So here’s the story.

            My oldest horse, Gunner, got cast a week before Xmas, and needed a lot of attention. And all the next week it stormed like crazy. So no horses got ridden for almost two weeks. Right around New Year’s we started riding again, mostly little rides in our riding ring, as it was muddy and slick almost everywhere. Quite slick. As I was leading Sunny up to the riding ring one day, I slipped and fell down right in front of him. Predictably Sunny threw up his head and trotted off to the nearest clump of grass. But…as I sat there on the ground, unharmed, but a bit chagrined, watching him leave, Sunny (once he was a good twenty feet away) kicked both hind feet out in my general direction.

            Sunny had no intention of kicking me. There must have been at least twelve-fifteen feet between his hooves and my body. It was a gesture of defiance, a thumbing of his nose at me. I can read Sunny perfectly, and I knew what he was saying.

            You see, I handle Sunny a bit differently than my other horses, and there is a reason for this. Sunny is a horse who is always wondering if he can dominate his human. I’m not sure how he got like this—I do know he showed this behavior with his previous owners. Unlike every other horse on my place, Sunny will offer to kick, bite, step on my foot, push through me on the leadrope…etc. Or at least he would do these things when I first got him. None of my other horses would ever consider, under any circumstances, making an aggressive gesture at a human. But Sunny will. Thus, I handle him differently.

            Sunny is not a dangerous horse. I do not believe he has any intention of hurting anyone. He just wants to see if he can be the boss. And if his human does not firmly reprimand him and let him know that he will NOT be the boss, his behavior escalates.

            When I bought Sunny, the first time I went out to catch him he turned his butt to me and made a (quite token) kicking gesture in my direction. I stepped to one side, walloped him as hard as I could with the leadrope, and drove him around his pen until he faced me and stood still to be caught. It took a couple of repeats, but after that Sunny politely faced me to be caught. For many years now, in fact, he meets me at the gate. But there were many other areas in which Sunny needed a similar correction.

            I’ve blogged about this before, so won’t go on about it further. Suffice it to say that though Sunny’s behavior is polite and respectful these days, and he often nuzzles me quite fondly, I know perfectly well that he’s always aware of whether I am assuming the correct dominant role. And I am careful to do so. And we do fine.

            Now I could have fallen down while leading any of my other horses, and though they might have spooked and run away, NONE of them would have kicked in my general direction. This was Sunny saying to me, “Ha. You just put yourself in a one-down, vulnerable position. Now I can dominate.”

            And sure enough, when I went to catch him he kept swinging his butt toward me, which he hasn’t done in years. Sunny doesn’t miss a trick.

            So I caught him and walloped him a little, and he made mouthing motions and OK then. I climbed aboard and we had a nice ride. And the next day I decided to go ride on the beach.

            It was a gray, unsettled day and a storm was blowing in, but we had a favorable low tide at the right time, and it was a day that I COULD do it schedule-wise, and my son wanted to go, so off we went. (I’ll bet you can guess where this is going.) When we got there the horses were very alert and looky (for them), but they are reliable horses and we headed out confidently. Here’s what it looked like on the beach. Pretty stormy.

                      We were bundled up and the horses were just plain up.

           

                     My son and Henry and a big, empty beach. Ours were the only footprints.

            My son’s horse has a very smooth trot (you can sit his long trot with ease) and a rough lope, so my kid likes to trot. He’ll trot for miles. Henry can trot as fast as most horses lope and Henry infinitely prefers to trot rather than lope. So my kid and his horse love to long trot down the beach. Sunny has an equally rough trot and lope—though neither are really terrible, just a little rough. So I don’t much care whether we trot or lope. Anyway, we let our fresh horses trot along. They blew and snorted and looked at stuff, but overall they behaved themselves. We rode for an hour or so, alternating walking and trotting and a little loping. Then we turned around to ride back.

            Sunny has always had an issue with this. I don’t know if his previous owners walked him down the beach and then turned him around and galloped back or what. But on every beach ride, when we turn around to go back, I can feel Sunny get “up”. On a good day, its just a feeling in his body, which resolves in a long swinging walk, what my son and I call his “power walk.” But on a less than good day, it tends to result in a bunch of little hoppy bucks, as Sunny indicates he’d like to bolt now.

            I’ve dealt with this in various ways. Mostly I ignore it and just bump lightly him with the bit to remind him he’s under control. Sometimes, once he’s under control, I let him trot or lope until he’s happy to walk. Occasionally I make him march through the deep sand (this is very effective). Once in awhile, when he’s particularly obnoxious, I reprimand him a little. This day Sunny was very persistent with his hopping and scooting. But hey, it was cold, he hadn’t been ridden much lately, and we’d had a little argument the day before.

            My son thought it was hilarious. He kept his distance, aware of wanting to be away from Sunny’s feet as the horse kicked up, but he was laughing the whole time. “Let’s trot, and see if he bucks,” he suggested with a grin.

            “Ok,” I said, “but let’s hope he doesn’t buck me off.”

            In truth, I don’t think Sunny can/will buck hard enough to buck me off. And the long trot is a good gait for a horse that wants to buck. So off we went down the beach, with Sunny mostly trotting, but throwing in a little hop/skip every once in awhile. My son was having blast. Me, well, it was annoying but not threatening. I just put up with it.

            To tell you the truth, my main emotion was gratitude. I am so grateful to own/ride a horse whose bad days are so easy for me to deal with. I seriously don’t want to get hurt at this point in my life—it’s my number one priority when I interact with the horses. I don’t want to ride any horse that might freak out and panic, or genuinely try to get me off. Not interested in that at all. But Sunny’s little shenanigans are pretty benign. He remains level-headed and responsive to my cues even while he farts around.

            Eventually Sunny got tired enough to line out, and both horses were willing/happy to walk. We finished the ride relaxed, the horses having had just the right amount of exercise—people, too. So even though my horse was “bad,” we had a good day.

            And this is my question. How do you other horse people deal with a good horse who is being “bad?” I’d love to get your insights.

            Also, a big thank you to all of you who made our “free” promotion of my mystery novel, Slickrock, last week such a huge success. If any of you have time to post a review of the book on Amazon or Goodreads, I’d be very grateful. Thank you!

            

Get "Slickrock" For Free!

                                                by Laura Crum 

            Starting today, Weds Jan 9^th and going through Sunday, Jan 13^th, you can get the Kindle edition of my fifth novel, Slickrock, for free. Slickrock was the winner of my contest for a free book, getting the most votes, with Hoofprints in second place. For those who wanted Hoofprints (the second book in my series), that book is currently on special offer for 99 cents, making it almost as good as free. Here is the link to get Hoofprints. And here is the link to get Slickrock for free. Also, if you want to start with the first book in the series, that book, Cutter, is also on special offer for 99 cents. Here is the link.

            If you haven’t tried my mystery series yet, Slickrock has always been the overall reader favorite of my twelve novels featuring equine veterinarian Gail McCarthy. The series as a whole is set in Santa Cruz County, California, where I live, but Slickrock takes place on a horse-packing trip in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and the whole mystery occurs in that context. It’s essentially a “vacation mystery”. Sort of the vacation from hell.

            In brief: Gail embarks on a solitary pack trip in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, with just her two horses and her dog for company. Seeking peace and tranquility, she stumbles upon a soon-to-be-dead man, and is drawn into the whirlwind of events that precipitated the tragedy. It will take all of Gail’s strength and ingenuity to survive this trip, and all of her intelligence to figure out who is stalking her through the mountains. Lots of horse action—all of it based on things that have actually happened.

            The beginnings of Slickrock are buried in my distant past—the summer I was twenty-two and spent three months living by myself in a tent at a Sierra lake, with just my six month old dog for company. I wasn’t there to write a novel—no, I was after something much bigger than that. I’d fallen in love with the book, Walden, by Henry David Thoreau, and I was trying a grand experiment in solitary living, to prove or disprove the claims of that book. I meant to write something, of course. My senior project, as an English major, was a paper to be written about my time of living by myself at Burgson Lake in the mountains, and how it compared to Thoreau’s sojourn at Walden Pond.

            To that end, I kept journals while I lived at the lake, meaning to weave them into something cohesive later. I did present the paper, but have long ago lost it, but the journals, with their descriptions of my solitary life in a tent at Burgson Lake, stayed with me. Those journals were the beginning of Slickrock.

            Here I am with Joey, my six-month-old Queensland heeler, at Burgson Lake, thirty-three years ago. The photo was taken by my friend, Shery, when she drove up to spend a weekend at the lake with me.

            It wasn’t until I was thirty that I conceived the idea of writing mystery novels—more or less inspired by Dick Francis. I came up with the concept of a female equine veterinarian as a protagonist, and began by writing about cutting horses (my first novel, Cutter), as I had spent my late twenties training and showing cutting horses. By my thirties I was involved with team roping horses (which play a large part in my third and fourth novels, Roughstock and Roped). I was also taking many horseback pack trips into the Sierra Nevada Mountains on our own horses. On the longer trips, we crossed the spine of these mountains many times, going over several different passes, and camping at dozens of high Sierra lakes. The longest trips lasted two weeks or so. I kept journals on these trips, too. And gradually the concept of a pack trip mystery began to assume form.

            I wanted to write about the pack station that I had worked at, and the lakes and passes I knew. The trails and the steep, rocky terrain were big in my mind. And, of course, every wreck and near-wreck that had come our way, as well as some described to me by friends, would make their way into this pack trip story. But…I needed a plot.

            Well, as I often do, I borrowed from life. I had heard a tale of real life villainy involving horses that interested me (can’t tell you—it would spoil the story). And I had, myself, stumbled upon a very dramatic crime scene that I thought would make a good opener for the book. And then there were all my Sierra journals, written while I was up in the mountains, for background. And so Slickrock was born (and named for the infamous “slickrock”, which also plays a part in the story).

            I tried to incorporate all my real life pack trip adventures into this book, as well as my favorite places. The picture below shows me riding across Kerrick Meadows, high in the eastern Sierras, and the scene of a fairly thrilling horseback chase in Slickrock.

            The horse Gail rides in the novel is Gunner, but most of my pack trips adventures were on Flanigan, and it is his stalwart nature that is the bottom line in both the story and my real life travels. Here I am on Flanigan at Wood Lake, a lovely Sierra Lake which appears in Slickrock.

            Slickrock has always been the reader favorite of my novels—I can’t say exactly why. For me, the parts drawn from my journals that describe what it is like to be alone in these mountains are the really interesting part of the book. And I think that perhaps some readers agree. For those of you, like me, who admire Funder’s writing and blog (“It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time,” listed on the sidebar), here is Funder’s comment on Slickrock:

“And her place descriptions are amazing! Having read Slickrock I desperately want to learn to pack. She really captures the beautiful, remote, terrifying, captivating reality of the mountains. (I could do without all the calamities that befell Gail!)”

            So there you go. If that doesn’t make you want to read the book, I don’t know what will. Except the fact that it free right now on Kindle—only until the end of this week. So now is the time, if you’re interested at all. I honestly think that if you enjoy my writing on the blog, you will enjoy this novel.

            Here is the link to the Kindle editions of my books. If you do give Slickrock a try, I’d love to know what you think of it. And if you would post a review on Amazon, I’d be really grateful.

Slickrock--the Making of a Book

                                                by Laura Crum

             Slickrock, my fifth book, has always been the overall reader favorite in my mystery series featuring equine veterinarian Gail McCarthy. The series as a whole is set in Santa Cruz County, California, where I live, but Slickrock takes place on a horse-packing trip in the Sierra Nevada mountains, and the whole mystery occurs in that context. It’s essentially a “vacation mystery”. Sort of the vacation from hell.

            The beginnings of Slickrock are buried in my distant past—the summer I was twenty-two and spent three months living by myself in a tent at a Sierra lake, with just my six month old dog for company. I wasn’t there to write a novel—no, I was after something much bigger than that. I’d fallen in love with the book, Walden, by Henry David Thoreau, and I was trying a grand experiment in solitary living, to prove or disprove the claims of that book. I meant to write something, of course. My senior project, as an English major, was a paper to be written about my time of living by myself at Burgson Lake in the mountains, and how it compared to Thoreau’s sojourn at Walden Pond.

            To that end, I kept journals while I lived at the lake, meaning to weave them into something cohesive later. I did present the paper, but have long ago lost it, but the journals, with their descriptions of my solitary life in a tent at Burgson Lake, stayed with me. Those journals were the beginning of Slickrock.

            Here I am with Joey, my six-month-old Queensland heeler, at Burgson Lake, thirty-three years ago. The photo was taken by my friend, Shery, when she drove up to spend a weekend at the lake with me.

            It wasn’t until I was thirty that I conceived the idea of writing mystery novels—more or less inspired by Dick Francis. I came up with the concept of a female equine veterinarian as a protagonist, and began by writing about cutting horses (my first novel, Cutter), as I had spent my late twenties training and showing cutting horses. By my thirties I was involved with team roping horses (which play a large part in my third and fourth novels, Roughstock and Roped). I was also taking many horseback pack trips into the Sierra Nevada Mountains on our own horses. On the longer trips, we crossed the spine of these mountains many times, going over several different passes, and camped at dozens of high Sierra lakes. The longest trips lasted two weeks or so. I kept journals on these trips, too. And gradually the concept of a pack trip mystery began to assume form.

            I wanted to write about the pack station that I had worked at, and the lakes and passes I knew. The trails and their various obstacles were big in my mind, including the infamous slickrock, for which my novel is named. And, of course, every wreck and near-wreck that had come our way, as well as some described to me by friends, would make their way into this pack trip story. But…I needed a plot.

            Well, as I often do, I borrowed from life. I had heard a tale of real life villainy involving horses that interested me (can’t tell you—it would spoil the story). And I had, myself, stumbled upon a very dramatic crime scene that I thought would make a good opener for the book. And then there were all my Sierra journals, written while I was up in the mountains, for background. And so Slickrock was born.

            I tried to incorporate all my real life pack trip adventures into this book, as well as my favorite places. The picture below shows me riding across Kerrick Meadows, high in the eastern Sierras, and the scene of a fairly thrilling horseback chase in Slickrock.

            The horse Gail rides in the novel is Gunner, but most of my pack trips adventures were on Flanigan, and it is his stalwart nature that is the bottom line in both the story and my real life travels. This is Flanigan, possibly the best horse I ever rode.

And here I am on Flanigan at Wood Lake, a lovely Sierra lake which appears in Slickrock.

            Slickrock has always been the reader favorite of my novels—I can’t say exactly why. For me, the parts drawn from my journals that describe what it is like to be alone in these mountains are the really interesting part of the book. And I think that perhaps some readers agree. For those of you, like me, who admire Funder’s writing and blog (“It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time,” listed on the sidebar), here is Funder’s comment on Slickrock:

“And her place descriptions are amazing! Having read Slickrock I desperately want to learn to pack. She really captures the beautiful, remote, terrifying, captivating reality of the mountains. (I could do without all the calamities that befell Gail!)”

            So there you go. If that doesn’t make you want to read the book, I don’t know what will. Except the fact that it is for sale for 99 cents on Kindle—only until the end of this week. So now is the time, if you’re interested at all. I honestly think that if you enjoy my writing on the blog, you will enjoy this novel.

            Here is the link to the Kindle edition of Slickrock. If you do give this book a try, I’d love to know what you think of it.

Random Joy

by Laura Crum

Lately it seems like at least half my favorite horse blogs are written by endurance riders. I love the descriptions of the rides and all those photos of “ears” in front of striking scenery. And they all seem like such nice people. If I were younger and not so burned out on long hours in the saddle (I spent my 20’s and 30’s mostly on a horse), I’d take up endurance myself, if only for the social aspect. (Even though I’m something of a hermit in real life.)

But I am old and stout and I have paid my dues on many all day rides of various sorts (not endurance), and I like my sedate little two hour trail rides just fine, thank you very much. In fact, despite the fact that what I am doing now (horsewise) seems pretty tame compared to the ranching, roping, cutting, horse packing…etc of my youth, I am having as much or more fun with my horses today than I ever have in my life.

I like the freedom I feel, and the complete absence of anxiety. I like to ride along in a relaxed frame of mind, enjoying the scenery and the company of my son. I love my steady, unflappable little yellow mule, though he is a far cry from the much more athletic horses I competed on those many years ago.

So no endurance for me—though I tell myself that I am sort of a mini-endurance rider—after all we’re all folks who enjoy trail riding, right? I just don’t like trail riding until I’m exhausted (!)

But I do love getting “outside” on my horse, and when weather and life cooperate, I’m out on the trails two or three days a week. Last night I started looking for some photos of myself trail riding to post on the blog—as I always enjoy the photos that others post of themselves out on the trail. I particularly enjoy the “ride photos” showing the intrepid endurance rider and mount cruising through dramatic scenery (like the last set Funder posted links to on her "It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time" blog—breathtaking!). So I tried to find some photos of myself and Sunny out in the hills.

Well, there aren’t that many photos of me it turns out—because I am the one taking the photos, usually. Thus photos of Sunny are mostly of his ears. The most recent photos of myself and my mount that I could find are from last summer and fall. And they are a far cry from elegant “ride photos”. No professional photographer was handy. But anyway…

So here’s Sunny and me and my son and Henry in September—taken when my husband hiked with us. I am busy talking to my husband and paying no attention to what I look like on the horse—so yes, my hand is way too high.

And here’s one taken by my son last summer. Look at Sunny’s mane. Funder and White Horse Pilgrim, I think it rivals Dixie’s and Brena’s.

And yes, I know—no helmet. This was before my conversion to helmet-hood. I do wear the helmet now. And yes, I ride in Ugg boots. Works for me. Note the little flames on Sunny’s breast collar. I would not have chosen these (Aarene and Funder), but my horse Plumber won this breast collar in a roping contest, so of course I have to use it.

Looking at these photos, I realize that they were both taken on one of my favorite rides. This is a logging road that runs through a redwood forest on private land. The property is next door to my uncle’s small horse ranch and we have permission to ride there. It’s an up and back, not a loop, but I have been riding on this road for over thirty years and I know every bend and every tree. The road takes you up to the top of the ridge, and then, unless you get permission to ride on some other private land, you come back down. Going to the top of the ridge and back takes between one and two hours, depending on how fast you go. In my twenties, I would lope the whole way up on Gunner. It was great fun. Now we mostly walk and trot.

Here are a few more photos that show what a pretty little dirt road this is. Below you see my son on Henry and our friend Wally on Twister, headed up the hill. My son is objecting to being photographed—I think he’s been reading too much Calvin and Hobbes (!)

And here I am following Wally and my kid out of the forest and into the big meadow that borders my uncle’s place.

Here’s the ubiquitous ear photo as Sunny and I reach the top of the ridge.

Here’s my favorite photo—even though it is blurry. (I have a hard time taking sharp pictures from my horse’s back.) But you can see my favorite stretch of the road with my kid trotting down it—isn’t it pretty?

We only ride here in the summer and fall—since it is a north slope mostly in shade, it doesn’t dry out in the winter and spring and the ground there is very slick when it is wet. So I haven’t been there since the day my husband took the first photo in this post—which was September, I think. Usually the earliest we can ride there is June, and we’re almost never up there past October.

Its been raining a lot for the last week or two, so I haven’t been out on the trails at all for awhile. But looking at these photos makes me feel happy. I’ve had so much fun riding on this little road through the woods over the years. I look forward to getting back up there this summer.

And, on another joyful note, my 5^th book, Slickrock, is now up on Kindle for 99 cents, This has always been the reader favorite of all my books, and today I’m gonna give it a little plug. Folks, if you like horses and trail riding, you will like this book. It’s the least mystery-like of my novels, so even if mysteries are not your thing, I think you’ll like it. The whole story takes place in the course of a mountain pack trip in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California, and its more of an adventure than a mystery. It works just fine as a stand-alone, so even if you’ve got no interest in reading my mystery series, give Slickrock a try for 99 cents (if you read on Kindle). Here is the link.

OK, I’ll quit with the shameless promotion now.

The Real Horses Behind My Fiction

By Laura Crum

I usually write posts about what I’m currently doing with my horses—but at the moment, just as Alison said in her last post, there’s not much for me to say. The occasional quick ride and turning them out to graze is about it. Instead I’m focusing very hard on finishing my twelfth mystery novel, which I must turn in to the editor at the end of the month. So my attention is really on my writing. But that doesn’t mean I’m not thinking about my horses. Because my horses play a big part in my books.

In my novel, Chasing Cans, for instance, Gail McCarthy, my equine veterinarian protagonist, acquires a pony for her child. This particular plot device never would have occurred to me were it not for the fact that several years ago I acquired a pony for my little boy. I had never owned a pony before and Toby was an education to me. I found the little critter so endearing that I just had to write about him, and Toby our pony is faithfully described in Chasing Cans, though the way in which Gail acquires him is rather different than the way in which I came by the real Toby.

This is often the case with my equine characters. Over the course of my twelve mystery novels, I’ve based virtually every horse that Gail encounters, owns or rides on real horses I’ve known. Gunner, who is Gail’s main mount through most of the books, is modeled on my own horse, Gunner. He is accurately portrayed as to appearance (a fifteen-three hand Quarter Horse gelding with white socks, a blaze and a blue eye), personality and quirks (the real Gunner is a big spook, as is Gail’s “Gunner”), but the living horse’s history is a bit different from the fictional one.

Gail acquires her horse Gunner when a veterinary client refuses to spend the money and time it would take to allow the horse a chance at recovering from severed flexor tendons. (This occurs in my first novel, Cutter.) Gail takes the horse to save him from euthanasia. (The story is also based on a real horse; it just wasn’t Gunner.)

The real Gunner’s life history is rather different. I acquired him as a three-year-old, just as Gail did her Gunner. I was twenty-four years old and working for a prominent reined cowhorse trainer who shall remain nameless. As his assistant, I rode a string of eight horses every day; these were horses that, for whatever reason, he didn’t care to ride. Some he considered less talented, some were in the barn just to be broke and the owners weren’t interested in showing them, some had a bad attitude (poor me)…etc. Gunner was in my string because the trainer wasn’t collecting training fees on him; the horse was there to be sold. Gunner was a well-bred and talented cowhorse prospect, and the trainer thought that not only would he collect a fat commission when he sold the horse, he might also be able to place him with one of his own clients who would then pay the trainer to ride this gelding and perhaps enter him in the major futurities. Needless to say the price tag on this horse was high. He was probably the best colt I had in my string; he was also a very likable horse.

Just as he is described in my books, Gunner had a friendly, clownish personality, a willing and cooperative nature, and tons of athletic ability. He came to me in January of his three-year-old year with about thirty rides on him, and I took it from there. He was always an easy horse, never prone to bucking or other negative behaviors, other than his penchant for unexpected sudden twenty foot sideways leaps whenever he saw something worth spooking at, which was often. He never dumped me (and never meant to), but it was a near thing more than once.

Despite the swerves, I loved riding Gunner. It amazed me how quickly this colt came on and how much “cow” he had. As the months passed with no buyer coming up with the purchase price, I grew fonder and fonder of this horse. I began hoping desperately that no one would buy him; I dreaded his removal from the barn or seeing him placed in the trainer’s string (by this time I’d had lots of experience with the well known trainer’s rather harsh methods and didn’t want to see this kind, willing colt subjected to them).

Eventually the day came. A prospective buyer was due to arrive, one who would surely buy Gunner. He was a rich man; the purchase price would mean nothing to him. He was known to be looking for a good futurity prospect and to like Gunner’s breeding. The trainer was very keen to make the deal. I gave Gunner a bath with tears running down my face. That morning, despite the fact that I had no idea where I would get the money, I told the trainer I would give him the full price for the horse and wrote and handed him a deposit check.

I’ve never regretted this decision. I borrowed the money to buy Gunner and I left that trainer’s employment almost immediately thereafter. I trained Gunner myself and showed him at a couple of futurities and “stakes” as a three and four year old, winning some very minor awards. Gunner became an accomplished cutting horse over the years and I won quite a few events with him eventually. Later I trained him to be a team roping horse and competed on him for several years at ropings. I still own Gunner; he’s thirty-one and sound, if a bit stiff, and retired to the pasture. He’s been my friend the whole time.

Gail’s Gunner is given a slightly different history. She never uses him as a cutting horse, but does compete on him at team roping in Roped, my fourth mystery novel. In Slickrock, the fifth book in the series, she rides him on a major pack trip through the Sierra Nevada Mts of California. Though this pack trip is based on many pack trips that I made over those same mountain passes, the mount that I used on those trips was Flanigan, a horse I also rode for years and loved dearly, just as I did Gunner. Flanigan loaned his skills as a team roping horse and his quirky personality to Burt in my third novel, Roughstock.

In my latest novel, Going, Gone, Gail acquires Sunny, who is my current riding horse. The fictional Sunny is an accurate portrayal of the real Sunny, and those of you who read my blog posts will instantly recognize this horse. So the horses in my books are real horses, and the adventures Gail has with them are all based on things I have really done with my own horses. Thus my mystery series is a tapestry of fact and fiction, which I hope will engage readers in much the same way that the actual horses have engaged me.

Anyway, since I am currently pushing so hard to complete one more book, I thought you all might like to see how I have worked my horses into the stories, and perhaps some of you who enjoy these blog posts will be moved to give my novels a try.

And for those who would like to buy my earlier novels in hardcover (they are out of print), my friend/boarder, Wally, sells them through his feedstore. Wally doesn’t do the internet, but if you call Valley Feed, 831-728-2244 (in California) and give Wally or Lynn a credit card number, you can order any of my first eight books for $20.00 each (which includes shipping to anywhere in the continental US), and you will get signed copies, which I will also personalize for you if you would like. If you want to find out more about these books and read the first chapters, you can go to my website www.lauracrum.com

Anyone who has read my novels please feel free to give a reader review in the comments. I like feedback and can stand a bit of criticism, so let me (and others) know what you liked or didn’t like. Cheers--Laura

Campfire Stories....With Horses

by Laura Crum


Reading Mugwump's blog yesterday, her story about hobbles reminded me vividly of some of my horse packing experiences. I told one of my "hobbles stories" in the comments there, and a few people asked about the way I kept my horses in camp on pack trips. This brought so many stories to mind that I thought I'd tell a few here.

First, a little background. I spent a couple of years working at a pack station on Sonora Pass in California's Sierra Nevada Mts in my early twenties. (This would be about thirty years ago.) Then, in my thirties, I spent many summers packing into the mountains with friends. We taught our more phlegmatic horses to carry the pack rigs, and fortunately I had a friend who was good at packing (which is somewhat of an art) and had the gear. Our team roping horses became sure-footed on the rock after a few shorter, easier trips, and we went on to do many longer (two week) trips, crossing numerous passes and visiting many high mountain lakes. These adventures form the basis of my fifth mystery, Slickrock.

As for how we kept the horses in camp, well, as I said on mugwump's blog, some horses will stay in camp (turned loose) and some won't. Unfortunately you often find out who are the trustworthy ones the hard way. Our usual habit was to put half the horses on run lines, or zip lines, and turn the other half loose. Usually this worked well....except for the times it didn't.

I remember one trip when a friend and I had gone in to a favorite meadow. There was a pretty creek and a lot of feed here; a horse could graze his fill. We had two reliable horses and the friend was riding a new horse, a red roan mare named Shiloh. Shiloh hadn't been on any trips that we knew of, but she was a ranch raised horse and gentle and we thought she'd be fine. We were careful, though, and when it came Shiloh's turn to be loose, we tied up both the other horses, so she'd have no excuse to wander far.

Well, we unclipped the lead rope from Shiloh's halter and she looked around the meadow with interest. She studied the creek, and her buddies on the tie lines, and our camp. She looked at the trail. And she put her ears forward and started into a long, swinging walk. Down the trail.

My friend and I looked at each other. This wasn't good. Surely she'll stop and graze, we said. Nope. Shiloh walked in a purposeful, determined way down the trail, across the meadow, and out of our sight. We flipped a coin to see who would go after her.

My friend lost and I stayed in camp with our other horses while he trailed the mare. Fortunately she ran into a party of hikers not a mile down the trail. They were standing there wondering what to do with this roan mare they'd caught when my friend retrieved her. Needless to say we didn't turn that horse loose again.

The funniest "campfire story" concerns a horse we called Lester. This was a lively, restless gelding; I often referred to him as our ADD horse. The first time we turned Lester loose on a pack trip, he looked around, lifted his head, and started out away from camp in the long trot, which quickly escalated to the gallop. My friend and I looked at each other with that "oh no" look on our faces. Lester galloped across the meadow and we waited for him to hit the trail back through the woods. But just as he was almost out of sight, he stopped. Whirling around, he galloped back across the meadow, straight at us.

Our "oh no" looks turned to "what the hell" looks, as that horse proceed to gallop right through the middle of camp, leaping over the fire (I kid you not) and out across the meadow again. On his next pass he went through the woods behind camp, jumping a log that was at least three foot six in diameter. He kept galloping around until he'd had enough (you would have thought he'd be tired after the ride in) and then settled down to graze. And we all gave a big sigh of relief. Turned out this became a routine with this horse. I can't count the number of times he ran through camp, often jumping the fire. We'd yell, "Here he comes!" and get out of the way. But he never once took off on us.

So, a couple of campfire stories for a winter's day. I'll try and post a few more pack trip tales later, for those who are interested.


Happy Holidays!

Flanigan's Story

By Laura Crum


I just got back from vacation last week and was very happy to be reunited with my horses again. Almost the first thing I did on getting home was walk down to the barnyard and have a look at the four equines living in the corrals there—our current saddle horses. All looked as if they had weathered my absence nicely—a real relief. As always, my gaze eventually went to the large rock in the biggest corral, which marks the grave of what was argueably the best horse I ever owned, or more accurately, was partners on. Now Flanigan doesn’t appear by name in my mystery series featuring equine veterinarian Gail McCarthy, but he lends his abilities, personality, exploits and tribulations to several horses in the course of my ten books, and since he’s been on my mind lately, I’d like to tell his story here.

Flanigan was a team roping horse, and a good one, which was how he came into my life. At that time, I was competing at ropings on my horse, Gunner, and my team roping partner purchased Flanigan from a well-known rope horse trader for a fair chuunk of change. When Gunner started to suffer from sore hocks and I decided to quit roping on him, my partner offered to sell me a share in Flanigan, so that I’d still have a mount for the ropings.

I was doubtful. The horse trader had informed us that Flanigan’s previous owner had been so afraid of the horse that he’d attempted to starve the animal into submission; it had taken the horse trader six months to feed the horse back up to a normal weight. Flanigan was cinchy, and if a certain careful protocol was not followed with his saddling and warm-up, he would buck. He’d bucked my partner off several times and I wasn’t eager to be the next victim. Nevertheless, my partner insisted that Flanigan was a “babysitter.”

This seemed like somewhat of a paradox to me, as I’m sure you can imagine. Neither did Flanigan attract me, as some horses in my past had done. Plain, brownish bay with a little white, Flanigan pinned his ears in a grouchy way whenever one looked at him, and he did not have a particularly “pretty” way of moving or working. In short, on the surface there didn’t seem to be much to recommend him. Nonetheless, I tried him.

The horse amazed me. If you’ve ever had the experience of a mount who would really pick you up and carry you, who attended to his job without needing much if any help, leaving you free to concentrate on your end, then you know what I mean. I saw instantly what my partner had meant by telling me the horse was a babysitter.



I bought a half share in Flanigan and roped on him for many years. In the photo above I am turning a steer for my good friend Sue Crocker, who is heeling on Pistol (who also appears in my mystery series as an equine “character”). I mastered the art of Flanigan’s warm-up program, and though he crowhopped with me occasionally on the first run of the day (something he would do right up until the time he was retired), he never bucked me off. I also rode this horse on numerous pack trips through the rocky Sierra Nevada Mts of California, where he proved to be just as reliable as he was in the roping arena. Flanigan and I traversed many tricky trails together over those years (including some spots that brought other horses and riders to grief), and I will be eternally grateful for his calm and responsive reactions, as well as his strength and surefootedness. Our travels in the mountains form the basis of my fifth book, Slickrock, and though the mount Gail rides in the story is Gunner, the horse who crossed those passes with me in real life was Flanigan.

Flanigan had other virtues, too. He would work a cow as well as a well-trained stock horse; he would pack an outright beginner and/or a small child willingly and calmly; he won many dollars and numerous trophy saddles and buckles as a competitive team roping horse. For me, though, the thing that mattered the most was the incredible “feel” I got from Flanigan. An immensely strong, intelligent, self-assured and capable horse, he made me feel safe and centered, whether we were traversing slickrock passes in the mountains or charging at full speed down the arena after a steer. Flanigan was one of those horses who simply would not fall down. Didn’t matter if a cow turned right in front of him at a dead run or a foot slipped as he followed a narrow crack in the granite---the horse stayed up.

I grew to love Flanigan as much as I’ve ever loved any horse; I understood his grouchy behaviors and saw through them to the great heart inside. I nursed him through many bouts with colic, which he was prone to, and made sure that he spent long periods of time turned out in my sixty-acre pasture getting some well-deserved R and R. When my baby was six months old, the horse I chose to take my child on his first ride was Flanigan.

Sadly, though Flanigan stayed sound and usable until he was twenty-one, at some point that year while he was turned out in the pasture, he suffered an injury (we never knew what happened) that resulted in a diaphragmatic hernia (diagnosed through ultra-sound at a major equine veterinary center). From this point on, he could only walk about the pasture. Moving faster than the walk caused him to gasp for air. (More about this in my novel, Moonblind.)

We kept Flanigan for another year, and he was able to enjoy a reasonably pleasant season in the pasture, but eventually he came down with a severe colic which wasn’t responsive to drugs. Since surgery was impossible due to his condition, we chose to put him down rather than let him suffer. He is buried here on my small horse ranch and every time I look at the stone that marks his grave I remember him, and what a magical horse he was for me, enabling me to do many things I didn’t think I was capable of. I will always be grateful to him.

I still miss Flanigan, even though I lost him some years ago, but I feel his spirit stays with me—a protective guide. I’m sure that others who have lost beloved horses will understand.
Cheers—to Flanigan
Laura Crum and Flanigan
http://www.lauracrum.com/