Sick

                                                           by Laura Crum

            I’ve been sick. Yucky bug which went to my lungs and then lit up my asthma. And suddenly walking down to the barn to feed the horses is overwhelming, not to mention sleeping at night is impossible…etc. This has been going on for over a week now, not counting the two weeks I was “kind of” sick with the cough/cold bug, BEFORE it turned into an asthma attack.

            I know, you’re all thinking yeah, yeah, yeah, we all go through it, why are you whining? And the truth is, I’m not really wanting to whine. I’m wanting to talk about the benefits of downtime.

            For a week now I’ve been forced to stay home and rest. My husband and son have been feeding the horses for me. I’m not doing much of anything but puttering around looking at things. And reading. And writing. And you know what? I really like it.

            I have time to drink a cup of tea and watch a sunrise from start to finish.

            I have time to watch a buck wander around behind my house.

            I have time…I think that in itself is a huge gift. People spend big money to vacation at some cute little cabin and just relax. I don’t need to pay a cent. I just need an excuse to stop being so busy with “doing.” And this being sick is the perfect excuse. I have time to sit on the porch in the sun.

            I finally finished an essay that I started six months ago concerning the insights I’ve had about life…etc. And yes, this was an ambitious piece and I’m beyond thrilled that I finally just sat down and finished it. And I’ve been able to process some of the difficult things that have happened lately and see them a little more clearly. I’ve gotten a lot of truth about what is important to me and what is not. I’m actually quite happy to be in this mode—I wouldn’t mind if it lasted another week.

            Yes, I miss riding. But after many, many years of riding non-stop, I can take a break. I can stop and smell the flowers (metaphorically, anyway--there aren't many actual flowers in the garden at this point) and not worry about what I’m NOT getting done. This would have been much harder for me in my 20’s and 30’s. But in my 50’s, I see life a little differently.

            I’ll tell you one thing I don’t miss. Being out in the world dealing with people. My best friends come by to see me and we talk, my husband and son are here with me. I really don’t miss interacting with the world of people in general. I watch my horses and I watch the wild animals and you know, it’s a lovely world right here. The last six months have taught me some big lessons. I will never be so trusting with people again. It is only too sadly true that some will pretend to be your friend and turn against you as soon as they perceive it to be in their own best interests to do so.

            And so I am taking some time to rest and heal and be a peaceful hermit. There is always much here to delight me, and my horses and other animals are all doing well. Sunny is a bit bored and gallops up and down his corral at feeding time as if to tell me, “Look, I’m ready to do something.” But the other horses seem content.

            And then there is the magical world of the greenhouse. The greenhouse is my husband’s project. He always wanted a greenhouse of his own (he makes his living growing plants and so has spent many, many hours in greenhouses), and last year we made it happen. By early December the greenhouse was here.

            I didn’t originally have a lot of interest in the greenhouse—I thought of it as Andy’s deal. But over the two months it has been here, I have grown very fond of it. It is beautiful and full of life and my husband and son have so many interesting projects they are doing together there.

            My son’s hydroponics project—which is providing us with salad every night.

Growing food is becoming a huge passion for our family. We have been very interested in growing our own food for many years. We raise our own grassfed beef, we have a veggie garden and fruit trees and chickens for eggs. Growing your own food connects you to the “real” world in a way that I can’t really explain; those who do it will understand. It is a little like owning and riding horses. It connects us to something deep in our human selves that is connected to the natural world that we truly live in. It helps us feel a part of what is, rather than separate. Not to mention it is good for us and good for the planet. We relate to life very differently when we grow our own food rather than going to the grocery store and buying it.

            So yeah, we are loving growing even more of our own food. Basil, cucumber and strawberry plants in the greenhouse.

            My husband’s seedling beds.

            Finally, I’m going to build a pool. This may not be of much interest to you dedicated horse people, but I have been just as interested in my garden as I am in my horses for many years. And my current passionate dream is to build a small rocky pool. Planning the pool gives me many happy hours of imaginative thinking, and I have many books on the subject—I haunt the websites of some fine designers of garden pools.

            So yes, I am sick, I’m not doing much with my horses currently, I’m still processing some shitty experiences I had in 2013. But overall I’m enjoying the magical world I live in right here, and planning the next cool thing I want to do. So you know, life IS good. Despite my being sick.

Postscript--the Future (and My Life as a Hermit at Burgson Lake)

                       by Laura Crum

            This last series of posts that I’ve written about “My Life With Horses,” has focused on just that—my life with horses. I’ve deviated only enough to explain how and why my life with horses has changed over the years. But there is an aspect of my history that did not come into the story (as I told it) that has a big influence on how I see my future “life with horses.” So I thought I’d explain it now (for those readers, however few, that are interested in how my life with horses has evolved).

            When I was twenty-two years old and in my third year of college as an English major, I became fascinated by Henry David Thoreau’s book, Walden. I read and re-read it and slowly I became determined to give his idea a try. (For those who haven’t read this classic, the book tells the story of how Thoreau spent a couple of years living alone in a cabin he built by Walden Pond, and the insights that came to him there.) I knew I wasn’t going to be able to build a cabin, or try Thoreau’s experiments in self-sufficiency, nor would I be able to live this way for years. But I came up with a concept that I thought was workable.

            Those who have read this series of posts about my life will have figured out by now that I was a pretty determined person in my youth, and when I had a goal, I didn’t let go of it easily. And my goal became spending a summer living alone in a tent at a remote Sierra lake. My version of Walden.

 Easier said than done, of course. But I persevered. My boyfriend at the time lived in the town of Sonora, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. He knew a woman who was the daughter of one of the original forest rangers in that region. He told the woman of my goal. I needed a lake that was enough off the beaten path that I could be alone there, but it needed to be close enough that I could walk out and get supplies once in awhile. The lady said she knew of such a lake.

And one spring weekend the mountain lady hiked with me and my four month old Queensland Heeler pup, Joey, to Burgson Lake, near the Dardanelles, in the Clark Fork Wilderness. Getting to Burgson Lake involved five miles down a dirt road to the trail head, five miles hiking down a well marked trail and one mile off trail to the lake. Burgson Lake was sort of a well-kept secret. It was relatively easy to get to, and a little gem of a lake. It was marked on maps. But there was no trail that led to it and no signs, so very few people went there (at the time—this was thirty years ago).

I loved Burgson Lake at first sight. I can envision it perfectly all these years later, cradled in gray granite, rimmed with pine trees, poised on the rim of a great silvery canyon, with a view of the big volcanic cones called the Dardanelles. I found a campsite at the far end of the lake, protected by a little grove of pine trees, and made my plans.

One month later, I moved in. I had packed up enough food for three months (granola, nuts, dried fruit, beef jerky, trail mix…etc), to be augmented by weekly trips to town for fresh food. This load took one pack mule. I had enough books for three months of solitude, and following Thoreau’s guidance, I took the “greats”—no summer romances here. Plato, Aristotle, the Bhagavad-Gita, War and Peace…you get the point. This load of books took another pack mule. And I had an old African safari type canvas tent that I had borrowed from friends (thinking it was as close to a cabin as I was going to get), a folding cot, and all the usual camping gear. This took another mule.

And one early summer day, I rode a rented horse named Tex ahead of a packer and the three mules and guided the string into Burgson Lake (where the packer had never been before). And the packer unloaded my mules and helped me set up the big tent and left me there with my young dog. And so began what was perhaps the most interesting summer of my life. A time which is shaping my future to this day—or so I believe.

I still have the journals I wrote during the time I spent at the lake, and they begin with my impassioned desire to get away from the busyness and turmoil of every day life and have “the time and space to watch the sunset die out of the sky.” I envisioned many long hours sitting by the lake just watching whatever came to pass, reading, writing, thinking. Along with days of solitary hiking and swimming. And all these things happened, just as I planned. And yet it was nothing like what I had thought it would be.

To begin with I was very excited. I set up my camp, and I took a swim in the lake. Burgson Lake was a perfect swimming lake in the summer—cool, but not too cold. As evening drew in, I built a fire, had a glass of wine (or two) and some trail mix and beef jerky for dinner and watched the light die out of the sky, just as I’d hoped and planned. My young dog pressed himself close to me, not yet used to the big wild world where we now lived. And when it got dark, I crawled into my sleeping bag on the cot (quite comfortable) and went to sleep watching the orange-y shadows of the firelight flicker on the canvas walls of the tent. And I had a very odd dream. One that I remember to this day.

In the dream I was right where I was in reality, in my camp on the shore of Burgson Lake. I recognized the boulder strewn granite terrain instantly. Crossing the granite, in full view of me, was an animal that I immediately recognized as a snow leopard. And this was odd because I had never seen a snow leopard in my life, never even seen a photo of one. But somehow I knew it was a snow leopard, and in retrospect, since I have now seen many photos of this animal, I can say that it looked like a snow leopard. But how my brain created that image is beyond me. Anyway, this snow leopard paced along a granite ridge in the Sierras, where it certainly did not live in real life, looked back at me once and was gone. I have a vague notion that I tried to follow it. That was it.

Doesn’t seem very significant or memorable does it? But from the moment when I awoke the next morning to the present day, more than thirty years later, that dream remains vivid in my mind. I knew it meant something. I just didn’t know what.

It was only when many years had passed, maybe twenty years, that I read a book about totem animals and vision quests. And to my amazement, I recognized what had happened to me all those years ago. Because completely unknowingly, I had more or less fulfilled the criteria for a vision quest, moving heaven and earth in my determination to be alone at the lake. And as is said to happen, on the first night I spent alone there I dreamed of my totem animal. The fact that I had no idea what a vision quest was, or what a totem animal was, or even what a snow leopard was, makes this seem pretty magical to me. I couldn’t have projected these concepts—because I’d never heard of them. Judge for yourself.

Anyway, there I was, twenty-two years old, alone at Burgson Lake, having had a dream I knew had some spiritual significance, even if I didn’t know what it meant, and ready to begin my “Walden” experiment. And this is where I got my comeuppance.

Here I am with my dog, Joey, on the shore of Burgson Lake. Photo taken by a friend who hiked in to visit me.

(To be continued)

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On Being a Hermit

                                                by Laura Crum

            An advance warning here: This blog post contains a small rant. I didn’t set out to rant, but somehow no matter how many times I re-wrote the piece the rant crept in there. So I gave up and left it in. The post is now sort of bittersweet. It tells a reasonably pleasant story that I meant to tell, and it also gives a true view of the frustration I often feel. I am hoping that there are a few of you out there who will both understand my joy in being a hermit and also my frustration with what Ratty (of Wind in the Willows) called “the wide world.”

Anyway, those who read this blog and my books may perceive me as a reasonably social person, but the truth is far different. In real life, I really am something of a hermit. And lately it’s getting worse. Or better. Depends on your point of view.

            In my old age (I’m 55) I am just plain happy at home with my husband and son and my horses and other critters and my garden. Doesn’t matter if I’m riding or doing chores, I can fill hours messing with the horses and/or wandering around the garden observing what’s in bloom (in the spring) or ready to be harvested (summer and fall). Truthfully I can fill happy hours watching the spring breeze toss the treetops on the ridges, or watching the goldfish dart around the pond, or the quail pecking in the riding ring, or the lizards catching bugs. I could seriously go on all day listing tons of small events here on my mini-ranch that happily engross me. I like to write, so often I write about these things. I like to take photos…and sometimes I post them here and on facebook. And I like to sit on the porch with a cup of tea in the early morning and a margarita in the evening watching the light change. I am never bored.

            Fortunately I married a man who is also happy to avoid the social scene, and our son, like us, is an introvert, who appreciates lots of time alone. I make sure my son has a social life with his friends that works for him, but my kid, like me, enjoys swinging on the barnyard swing and just watching the horses and chickens (and sometimes the deer and bobcats) for a good bit of time each day. Yes, we ride with our friends and do more ambitious things, but I think we get our greatest joy just being peacefully quiet here in nature.

            There is so much to see and do in the springtime….the chickens are endlessly entertaining. Toby the rooster struts.

            Our cat Tigger amongst the hens.

            A one day old bantie chick.

            The roses are really starting to bloom. This is Fortune’s Double Yellow rose in my wild garden. It’s not really yellow, but it was discovered by the plant hunter Robert Fortune in China in 1844, and at that time there were no yellow roses in commerce. So this rose was a big deal. And it is still a glory today. An early rose-- it is always in full flower in April.

                                            We ride and have much fun with our horses. 

            

            So my life is good and happy and I have no complaints. It’s just that I feel I don’t fit in any more in groups of people. There are friends that I care about, and one-on-one with them I’m fine. I can be polite and reasonably friendly with waitresses and checkers and such. I can hang around with my horse friends and talk horse. But put me in a group of folks that I’m just barely acquainted with, and I’m no good at all. In fact, I’m kind of miserable.

            The problem is that I think my social skills (what I had of em) are slowly vanishing. I’m becoming a hermit. I feel out of place with groups of people any more. I try. I treat others as I would like to be treated—which means I respect their space and I say what I mean and mean what I say. Somehow this isn’t working too well. Other people just don’t seem to play by this code.

            As far as I can tell, many people expect me to mouth things I don’t mean, and make nice when others are treading on my toes. And when I let them know (in my straight forward way) that this sort of thing doesn’t fly with me, I am perceived as a grouch (actually I think the right word has one less letter and also ends in “ch”). And then a lot of people seem to share a form of sarcastic humor that I mostly don’t get and don’t find funny when I do get it. If you take a shot at me with venom disguised as humor, I still read the emotional content perfectly, and I don’t care for it. I’m liable to let you know that I don’t care for it, too. 

            It feels to me that my instincts have become similar to my horses and other critters. I expect truth and honesty and simplicity, just as I get from my animals. I try to give it back. I’m not comfortable with the two-faced attitude shown by many people, and on top of that I don’t share their interests. I don’t watch TV and I don’t like popular music and I really don’t “get” a great deal of popular culture, from politics to fashion to sports. I don’t want to get it. I’m interested in the green color of the light before a storm and the specific scents of different roses and how many words my smart little dog has learned to understand. I could spend hours listing the fascinating things that delight me here at my home. But I find many people confusing, and, to be frank, boring. I do better with animals.

I often leave a group interaction with people feeling frustrated. I don’t try to manipulate any one into doing what I want them to do.  I really resent others trying to manipulate me. I don’t take covert shots at people. If there is something I don’t like or don’t agree with, I’ll say so—openly. And I am fine with others doing the same with me. It doesn’t threaten me when someone disagrees with me. But it seriously annoys me when someone takes a sneaky shot at me—in the guise of “teasing humor.” I had a “friend” like this once. When I let her know that her malicious little games were not OK with me she wrote me off and never spoke to me again. Since then I’ve been a lot more careful about who I accept as a friend. For me a friend is someone “who stabs you in the front” (I believe this is a quote from Oscar Wilde…thanks, Dahlia).

In short, more and more I feel like a misfit around other “normal” people and can’t wait to get home and shut my front gate behind me. Sometimes I lock it.           

            Here, back with my horses and dogs and cats and chickens and garden and little family, I let out a deep breath of relief and feel almost instantly happy again. Here I fit in. I’m good with a horse, I get along with my kid (sorry all you mommy bloggers, but its true), and I love all the plants and animals of this place—domestic and wild. I listen to my husband play his pipes and enjoy the wild notes drifting out over the ridge. The horses graze contentedly by the vegetable garden. The little dog sits in my lap; I stroke her rough fur and I can smell the jasmine. I feel a real sense of connection and peace. Yes, I am

 becoming a hermit. A happy hermit.

            Does anybody else feel like this? I keep wondering if other people might be “hermits” like me, and possibly share some of my frustration when it comes to interacting in the “wide world.” I don’t mind being a loner (not at all), but it is fun to share thoughts with like-minded folks, so I’m putting this out there just for fun. Any horse loving hermits reading this blog?