Alone

                                                            by Laura Crum

            I spent three months all alone at a Sierra Lake when I was twenty-two years old, with only my young dog for company. (See my first two posts on this topic here and here.) For those who wonder what in the world this has to do with my life with horses, I’m getting to it. Slowly but surely.

            So I’ve touched on the magic I experienced at the lake, and I’ve talked about the fear, but there was one other notable thing. And that was the pure experience of being truly alone. Not in the sense of being afraid, which I’ve already written about. But just in the sense of how different it is to be really alone.

            We commonly don’t think much about this. We talk of being alone when we are merely without others in our home for awhile. We have neighbors, we go shopping, we drive down the street. We see other people every day. Almost all of us. We are never really alone.

At Burgson Lake, I was, for long periods, truly alone. Alone as in I never saw another human. I often went to town on Saturday to buy fresh food, but sometimes I did not. I sometimes saw others when I went hiking, but quite often I saw no one. It wasn’t a heavily traveled area in any sense. And I kept track. So this is how I know that I once went for ten days without seeing another person.

Ten days doesn’t sound very long. But stop and think if you have ever gone even three days without seeing another human. How about 24 hours? Most people have not. It’s an interesting experience. There can be fear, which I experienced. There were, for me, many moments of thrilling beauty, when I stared at the light sparkles on the lake and truly lost myself in the connectedness of the moment, just as I had envisioned. There was lots of time to read, and to write in journals. I didn’t bring a timepiece, but I became very good at reckoning where I was in the day by the sun. And the days stretched long in a way that could be both delightful and difficult.

Cause here is the part I didn’t imagine before I went to the lake. You get bored. You miss other people and regular things like cars and movies and bars and such. This was before the days of the internet, but now, I suppose, you would miss the internet. I missed my boyfriend. In short, there were moments where I was lonely. I would have given anything, at times, for a loved companion.

I had my dog and I had books. All in all, I did pretty well. I wrote in my journal when I wished I had someone to talk to, and I read. I stared endlessly at the lake and the mountains and the birds and lizards and deer and pine trees and tried to understand whatever message they had for me, just as I had hoped to do. I watched the light die out of the sky, and the flames of my campfire flicker in the darkness. I watched the full moon rise over my lake. Everything around the lake became deeply familiar to me, from the small, swampy forest at the other end (lots of mosquitoes), to the “granite beach” (a gradual sloping shelf of rock that led into the lake, where I sunbathed), to the “jumping off rocks” (where I dove into deep water) to the “dock” (a huge old floating log that I tied up near my camp, which functioned quite nicely as a pier).  I became very good at building fires and prided myself on not needing even a scrap of paper or such. One match, dry needles and ferns and twigs, voila!

 And sometimes I went to town on Saturday. You have no idea how much patience you can have with things like traffic and lines and crowds and such when you spend the rest of your time completely alone. It was fun just to be in the bustling tourist town. But I was always ready to go back to my camp after a day of town life. In many ways, which I barely understood at the time, I truly was soaking in the experience of solitude like a sponge. My Walden experiment was a success in a way I never could have predicted. It gave me a pattern for my life.

And now I return to what I said in the first postscript. I view my future as being shaped by this solitary summer which changed my life. Its interesting, that summer was the only period of my life since I was fifteen and first allowed to buy a horse of my own, when I did not own a horse. I had sold Hobby in May, and I bought Burt in September (see part one and two of “My Life With Horses). In the intervening three months I lived at Burgson Lake and learned some things.

Back to the present. I said in part twelve that I envision my future as being more contemplative, and my life as becoming perhaps a somewhat solitary and hermitish life. I wrote about these themes in my twelfth novel, Barnstorming. 

The truth is that I see that I have created a life that is somewhat modeled on my time at the lake. I have a small cabin on the edge of a round riding ring. The centerpiece is a round vegetable garden with a round birdbath of clear water in the middle. Symbols for sure.

 I can see no other houses from my front porch. If I keep my gate shut and don’t go out, I can spend days without seeing a human other than my husband and son. This is it. It’s the perfect form of the life I sought. I have loved companions, I have solitude, I have that cabin by the symbolic lake. I have my Walden. My task now is to deepen in my understanding and connection—the goal I sought that summer. I believe that vision can come to fruition now.

And so my life with horses is no longer about anything I especially want to “do” with them. It is more about sharing my life with them. Because one of the things I was acutely aware of missing at the lake was horses. I didn’t so much miss riding (though I would have been happy to ride)—I just missed having horses around. And if I am to be a hermit in my old age, I want to be a hermit with horses. A happy hermit with horses. 

I have written about my feelings about wanting to be a hermit recently (see On Being a Hermit), but that post covers only one half of the equation (the cranky part). Just as I did when I was twenty-two, I still have a vision of escaping the endless busy-ness of civilized life and the pressure to do and be something that other people exert. I want to sit on my porch and watch the light die out of the sky without feeling that I must go somewhere and/or do something. Just as I did then, I want to deepen in my connection to the natural world. To be with what is. I want to live as Thoreau did at Walden Pond.

And I can do that right here. In my own cozy cabin by the shore of my solitary symbolic lake, which is, actually, about as remote as Thoreau’s cabin was in real life (he could walk to town for lunch, and could see the railroad tracks from his front door). I have the loved companions that I missed at the lake and I have my horses. I feel that my life’s journey has brought me full circle to the goal that I sought in my youth. And I am happy with this result.

We don’t know what the future holds, but if I envision anything, I envision this.

And yes, I hope to keep riding as long as my horse and I enjoy looking at the world together. Here we are yesterday on a lovely ride through the redwood forest. As Aarene says (Haiku Farm, listed on the sidebar), “Life is good.”

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 Twelve (and a Free Book)

                                                by Laura Crum

            Here is where I must play catch up and add in all that has been left out. Because I have told the story of the seven wonderful forever horses that came to me, but left out many other parts of my life with horses.

            My first forever horse, Burt, was turned out for many years in a friend’s pasture, fifteen minutes from my home. He was joined by a motley collection of horses, two that I took because they were sweet old rope horses that deserved to be retired (ET and Gray Dog), along with Wally’s great old heel horse, Pistol, who was retired due to arthritic changes, plus another horse of Wally’s that I had trained who crippled up due to EPM in the prime of life (Rebby), and the last colt I ever trained (Danny), who tore up his stifle joint in a freak collision with a pickup truck. Danny would have been euthanised by his current owner, but I took him back and rehabbed him and eventually he was sound enough to be a pasture pet. I had Gunner turned out there for awhile, too. So at one point we had six or seven of these pasture pets.

            But life moves on. Pistol grew too sore to be comfortable even on painkillers, so we had to euthanise him when he was 25. And eventually Burt died of a massive stroke at 35 years of age. ET and Rebby were both very hard keepers, and as they got into their thirties and late twenties respectively, it became impossible to keep them at a good weight in the pasture, even with tons of supplemental feed. And Wally and I were both getting overloaded trying to take adequate care of all the horses we were responsible for. A couple of years ago we made the difficult decision to euthanise Rebby and ET and bring Gunner home. The pasture owner kept Danny and Gray Dog for her pets, and they are still doing well there.

            Wally is eighty this year and, like me, has decided he no longer wants to ride young horses. He gave his young horse, Smoky, to a good home that had already taken a previous horse from him, Lester. And Smoky and Lester are happy, useful riding horses to this day with owners who love them. Wally’s gray gelding, Twister, has been living with me since he bought the horse as a six year old. (Twister has definitely "whited out" as he aged.) 

            Twister turns 17 this year and he is the last horse Wally has left, and will probably be the last horse Wally owns. I have made a commitment to keep and care for Twister until he dies. I owe it to the horse and to Wally. Twister and Wally accompanied my son and me with Henry and Sunny, on many, many expeditions. So Twister has a forever home with me.

My gold, silver and copper horses.

            Today I have five forever horses living with me on my small horse property (five horses is the maximum number I can have here). My own Gunner, Plumber and Sunny, my son’s Henry and Wally’s Twister. Flanigan and Toby the pony are buried here, and Burt is buried in the pasture where he lived for his last ten years and where he died.

            Gunner is 33 and still doing well. 

            Plumber is 24, retired, and sound, perky and happy.

            Henry is 25 and my son rides him a couple of days a week, mostly at the walk and trot. Henry is still perfectly sound and shows no sign of weakening. 

            Sunny is going strong. I think he may be nearly twenty years old. He has no papers and when I bought him he was said to be 10, but the vet said he had “funny” teeth, and could have been as old as 15. So who knows? But he is sound and strong and I ride him a couple of times a week on average. 

            Wally is recovering from knee surgery currently, so Twister, whose usual job is team roping horse, is getting a little downtime. Twister is sound and strong and doing well at 17 years, and Wally is already back to riding again and will be roping soon. Here's a recent photo (taken on 4th of July) of Twister and Wally along with my son and Henry on Wally's first ride post knee surgery (exactly one month after the operation).

            As I’ve known for awhile, if I keep taking good care of these forever horses (which I plan to do) there is a chance that in five years or so, I’ll have five older horses that are not ridable for anything more than puttering around—and no place to put a younger riding horse. And that’s OK. Its Ok because I love these horses and am deeply grateful for all the hours of happy riding time that every single one of them has given. I don’t in the least begrudge becoming their caregiver as they get older. Yes, I like to ride, but I have achieved all the goals I set myself in my life with horses and my mind and heart are both full to the brim with everything that horses, and these horses in particular, have brought to me. If there is more riding to come, that’s great. And if there is not I take complete joy in spending time with my horses and connecting through them with all the wonderful things we have done together. Time past is as present as time present when I am with my horses.

            I will add that it is important to me that every single one of these horses are good horses who have been great riding horses. None of them EVER purposefully dumped or harmed a human (to my knowledge). And yes, this matters to me. It is not my calling to babysit a herd of rescue horses who never had a partnership with humans, and would be happy to kick your block off or dump you on your head. It’s my pleasure and privilege to reward some fine horses who are richly deserving of a happy, peaceful retirement after their long, steady years of good service. And who are now, as they always were, a true pleasure to be around. I will feed them three times a day, and brush them and doctor them as needed, and ride them lightly if it seems right, and turn them out to graze and live happily with them in my garden. 

            As with my horses, so with my novels. I set out initially to write an even dozen, and that goal has been accomplished. People have asked me if I will write more, and the truthful answer is that I don’t know. The novels cover twenty years in the life of horse vet Gail McCarthy—she is 31 in the first story (Cutter) and 50 in the last installment (Barnstorming) and it took twenty years of my life to write the books. Gail goes through many of the life changes that I have gone through in the course of the series. My husband said, upon reading this series of posts, “You need more anecdotes.” Well, the anecdotes are all in the novels. The names have been changed to protect the innocent—and the guilty—but most of the things I describe in the stories, really happened in some form or other. I wove the events of my life into my books. (Oh, and just by chance, this series of posts about my life with horses is also twelve episodes in total--serendipity.)

And yes, its possible that I could write more about Gail, but its also possible that I won’t. And either way is fine with me. As I said about my horses, I’ve achieved the goals I set myself and I am happy and at peace with where I am now.

There are those who ask, what’s next? Well, I don’t know, and I am OK with not knowing. I may have many more adventures ahead of me, or I may live a peaceful, fairly solitary and hermitish life from now on. Right now my focus is on raising my young son. My life is good and I love every minute of it. I spend as much time as I can with my husband and child and our critters and garden. I try to enjoy the present moment fully. I don’t ask for more. And I am very grateful for all that I have. I will always love my horses, and if luck favors me, I will always live with them.

I know that there are some who will consider this a sort of “do nothing” life. There are those who think one must have goals and be working hard to achieve these goals for life to have meaning (both with horses and in general). There are those who think one must be busy to be happy. I am not in this group. I feel I have been plenty busy and productive in my life, and I have achieved pretty much every goal on my “bucket list.” It’s my intuition that moving on to a more contemplative stage at this point in my life is a good thing, not a bad thing. If you want to read more thoughts on this subject, I wove them into the last book in my series, Barnstorming. This book somewhat tells how I view my own future, as well as how I see Gail’s future.

Finally, I am deeply grateful for all my readers. And so, I’d like to offer a gift. For the next five days, Cutter, the first book in the series, and always one of the most popular titles, will be FREE as a Kindle edition. (Starting today, July 7^th, and going through Thurs, July 11^th.) Hoofprints, the second book, is currently on sale for 99 cents. So right now, for less than a dollar, you can read the first two books in the series. The remaining ten books are available for just $2.99 each as Kindle editions. The order is Cutter, Hoofprints, Roughstock, Roped, Slickrock, Breakaway, Hayburner, Forged, Moonblind, Chasing Cans, Going Gone, and Barnstorming. Click on the titles to find the Kindle editions. And for those who have read some of these books, I would be eternally grateful (really) if you would post reviews on Amazon or Goodreads. These reviews mean a great deal to authors nowadays. A huge thank you to those who have already done so. And I very much hope that you enjoy my stories. Cheers--Laura

           

My Life With Horses--Part Eleven

                                                by Laura Crum

            With Sunny and Henry my son and I began exploring the trails along the ridge near our home in earnest. My son was seven and a half. I was fifty years old and, to my surprise, a new horseback passion had entered my life. Because I became quite obsessed with riding the trails of my home.

            And here, if there is anyone out there who has been reading my posts on Equestrian Ink from the beginning, is where you came in. Because I began blogging here just a couple of months after I bought Sunny. In fact, one of my early posts was titled “The New Horse” (May 2008).

Sunny was always a very reliable trail horse and he gradually came to accept me as his boss and dropped most of his “testing” behaviors. I’ve blogged about him here often enough, so probably most of you have a pretty good idea of this little yellow horse’s personality. Suffice it to say that Sunny and I formed a good partnership and from the beginning I was deeply grateful for how steady both he and Henry were on the trails. These two horses opened up a whole new world for my son and me.

We began riding in the hills several days a week, sometimes with our friend Wally, sometimes just the two of us. We rode the trail to the Lookout often. 

We also discovered new trails, a whole network of trails that criss-crossed the wild ridge that we could see from our front porch.  

We hauled the horses down to the shore and rode them on the beach. 

Sunny and Henry were and are amazing trail horses. In the redwood forest.

    Crossing creeks. 

           In the mountains. 

I could never describe, or even show you in photos, half of the delightful and beautiful things my son and I were privileged to see from the backs of these two wonderful horses. I have to say that though it may not sound as exciting as training and showing cutting horses or competing at team roping, these last five years exploring the trails of our home and the beaches and mountains have been my absolute favorite part of my life with horses. It has been a time of pure enjoyment, of taking delight in both the horses and my son and the wonder of what we were all seeing together. There has been nothing to prove to anyone, and no need to improve or train or push. The horses have been our partners every step of the way; they were competent, solid horses when we got them and they brought their own confidence and experience to share with us. My forty years with horses stood us in good stead, and I am proud to say that my son has grown up riding, has challenged himself as he saw fit (and yes, kicking Henry up to a gallop after a steer and riding some of the steep, tricky trails we have ridden has been a true challenge), and has become an adept, kind and secure rider, one who really understands horses. I don’t know what the future will bring, but we have done and seen some lovely things. My photos can show our life with these two horses better than words. 

I can truly say that for five straight years we rode Henry and Sunny everywhere and had a blast. We may be getting close to a thousand rides all told (I kept track the first year and we went on 165 rides that year alone). We were never hurt or scared, never even very anxious—none of us. And it is all due to these fine horses. We have had so much fun. Gathering and working cattle with friends. 

Just loping along in the sunshine.

This year my son turns thirteen and Henry is twenty-five. We are still riding a couple of days a week, but we aren’t pushing Henry too hard, and, to be fair, my kid is developing other interests and isn’t as passionate about riding. And that’s OK. The magic will always be with us and in us. And Henry and Sunny will be with us until they die. The gift they have given us is beyond price, and I will always be grateful.

I wrote my 11^th and 12^th novels in the Gail McCarthy series about trail riding along the ridge by our home (of course the books feature some very dramatic happenings out on these trails—which I am VERY glad we never experienced in real life). Sunny and Henry both have prominent roles in these stories and are described very much as they actually are. So, for a glimpse of this part of my life, and a couple of exciting mysteries as well, try Going, Gone and Barnstorming.