Summer Riding and Reading

                                                by Laura Crum

            Now that I’m finally done with the long saga of “My Life With Horses” (everybody heaves a sigh of relief), I thought I’d catch you up on what I’ve been doing lately. For those few who might be interested, I will collect the “My Life With Horses” posts into a brief memoir, which will (eventually) be up on Kindle.

            So, lately we’ve been riding (no big surprise there). Our old friend and boarder, Wally, has recovered from his knee surgery and is back to riding and roping. Here he is on the trail with my son, as they give their horses a breather climbing up the big hill. Wally turns eighty in a week or so, so his fast and uneventful recovery from knee surgery is both impressive and inspiring (to me, anyway, and perhaps to all of us older riders).

            I love riding this dirt road through the redwood forest in the summer. The shade under the trees feels like a drink of cool water on a hot day, and the dappled light is lovely. The road climbs, sometimes steeply, sometimes gradually, until it reaches the top of the ridge. It is private land where we have permission to ride and we seldom see anyone else.

            My son and Henry as we ride along the ridgeline. 

            Riding single track trail through the forest on the way home. My “ear photos” are pretty predictable. Beach photos in the winter and the forest trails in the summer. Riding through the redwoods is strictly a summertime pleasure—its dark, dank and muddy under the trees from the first major rain until it dries out sometime in late spring. So I ride here as much as I can in the summertime, when it is absolutely magical. Lately we’ve been up here a couple of times a week.

            Sunny and Henry, our very relaxed trail horses. They are just the best.

            We’re also riding at the roping arena with our friends a couple of days a week. My son helps bring up the cattle with our friend Mark.

            Henry gets to chase a steer.

            Wally’s first run post surgery. Mark heading, Wally heeling on Twister. And yes, Wally roped two feet.

            So that’s my current summer riding life. And then, there’s reading. “What are you reading right now?” People ask me this, in real life and on the internet. And on this blog we often talk about our favorite “horse books,” (not just our own books). Right now I am reading a couple of lovely novels that were recommended by my friend Funder (at “It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time” over on the sidebar). In my family we read aloud to each other after dinner (we don’t own a TV) and these are the books I’m reading to my husband and son this summer (having read them previously myself).

            “The Hero and the Crown” and “The Blue Sword” by Robin McKinley are our summer reading fare, and they are truly delightful. Both books are fantasy, about an imaginary land called Damar. Being fantasy, everything, from people to horses to other critters, is a bit bigger than life. The people are heroic (or really dastardly) and the critters, including the horses, are a bit more noble than your average real life horse. (And lets face it, we don’t meet many real life dragons.) Nonetheless, the horses ARE believable in their context as war horses; Robin McKinley has definitely spent a good deal of time with horses and is able to create believable equine personalities. Lovable ones, too.

            I have to say that the courage and intelligence displayed by the horses in the books remind me very much of the courage and intelligence displayed by my own horses, working cattle and climbing through rocky passes in the mountains and what not. I’m pretty sure my horses would not be up for facing off a dragon, but I have faced off a charging bull on a tough cowhorse and the equation isn’t so very different. Robin McKinley’s horses are real to me.

            I like fantasy, if its well written, and these novels are exceedingly well written. Both feature a very strong female protagonist (which I believe is this author’s specialty), and I take great pleasure in reading to my son of young women who are strong and courageous and smart and self-aware (he loved Brave—if you want a Disney equivalent), and I am hoping he will internalize this version of the ideal female.

            More than this, the descriptions of the landscape and climate of Damar are deeply evocative, and I will admit that this is perhaps my favorite part of writing—both in my own books and the books of others. I love description that can make you feel that you really ARE in the particular world of the book—the sights and scents, the chill of the air, the hot desert wind…etc. I am criticized once in awhile for too much description of landscape, plants and weather in my stories, but I have no criticism for this aspect of Robin McKinley’s books. I love it. I can picture Damar as if I’ve been there.

            There is one confusing thing about the two books. “The Blue Sword” was published first, but “The Hero and the Crown” comes first in chronological order, making it a prequel. THTC is actually set several hundred years (I think) before the time of “The Blue Sword”, which is a tiny bit confusing overall. The Damar of “The Blue Sword” bears a certain resemblance to India during the time of the Raj, and THTC doesn’t have this tinge at all, making the two stories very different in feeling. I wasn’t sure in what order I wanted to read them (to my family), but settled on THTC first, as that was the order in which I first read them myself, and is the chronological order. (Funder agreed).

            And finally, these are great books. Really exciting, really engaging. Not since I first read Tolkien and the Harry Potter series have I been so taken by a fantasy novel as I have been by these. If you’ve read them yourself, please chime in with your thoughts. And if you haven’t, well, if you like fantasy (at all) and horses, give them a try. Perfect summer reading.

            There you have it. My summer riding and reading. And I hope everybody else is having an equally happy summer, and enjoying those lovely views “between the ears.” If you have any summer reading to recommend, give it a shout out in the comments. Cheers--Laura

Gathering Cattle

                                                by Laura Crum

            And now for something completely different…anybody remember that Monty Python movie? And yes, today’s post is pretty much the polar opposite of Terri’s previous post, in which she tells the almost fairytale story of her triumphs at the upper levels of dressage with her lovely horse, Uiver. Congratulations, Terri and Uiver!

And now you get me, the has been cowgirl, dinking around with my hairy pony, my young son, and a bunch of old team ropers. Quite the culture shift. Let no one say we are not a diverse group here at Equestrian Ink. Our common bond being a love of horses and a desire to write about horses (!)

So, lately most of my riding has involved gathering cattle. For many years now, I have been mostly trail riding, but this last year my son preferred to ride with our team roping friends and help them gather and work the cattle. I love moving cattle…I’ve done it my entire life. So I willingly prioritized riding with the roping crew a couple of days a week over the trail rides that we’ve been used to doing.

            However, the other day it struck me that I have very few photos of our gathers…etc, unlike my trail rides. The reason, of course, is that trail rides have many fairly quiet moments when it’s easy to take the ubiquitous ear shot, or turn and photograph your companions. Not so when you are working cattle. Most of the time you are focused on being where you need to be in relationship to the critter or herd, and you are moving too quickly for photos. There is almost never any handy person just standing around who can take photos OF you. Thus I have almost no photos of gathering cattle, despite how often I have done it.

            So the other day I decided to try and “capture” one of our gathers with my camera. I thought that many of you have probably never done this before, and might enjoy a vicarious internet version of the experience. 

It’s November and the fields are pretty bare here. The green grass is just barely started. The cattle are being fed hay every day. So the scene is not as picturesque as it is in the spring, when the fields are lush and green.

            Also, despite my best intentions, I only got a few decent shots. I was just too busy herding cattle the rest of the time, and the one shot I took when the cattle were galloping up a ravine was so blurry as to be useless. So here is my rather feeble attempt to take you all with me on a gather.

            Sunny and I are looking for the cattle. Can you see from his ears where they are?

            After this I had to pay attention to what I was doing as we went down into the ravine and pushed the cattle out of the brush and got them gathered in a herd. Then a certain amount of scrambling quickly up the hill and loping across the field happened, as we worked to get the herd moving toward the catch pen. I was too busy to take photos at this point, but here’s a photo from last fall, showing my son following the other guys up the ravine toward the upper field.

Finally the cattle are headed in the right direction and I hung back, pulled my horse up, and took a photo of my son and our friends pushing the herd toward the catch pen gate. That’s my kid on the far right and my uncle Todd and our friend/boarder, Wally, on the left.

            Then, more loping here and there, and ducking and dodging with the cattle took place, as we worked to get the more recalcitrant critters through the holding pen gate and then through the gate into the alley. Again, much too busy and moving too fast to take photos. Then I had to lope ahead of the group to open the gate that leads to the roping chutes, as someone had (ahem) forgotten to open it previously. So, again, no time to take photos. 

But here’s a shot from this spring showing my son and our friend Wally pushing the herd up the alley toward the roping chutes.

Once the cattle are loaded in the chutes the roping begins. The big fun for my son comes when there is a steer that is deemed no good to rope (lots of reasons—it “sets up” or it “drags” or it turns left in a determined way…etc), and my kid and his trusty steed, Henry, get to chase this animal down the arena.

            Anyway, thinking about gathering cattle reminded me of the many, many times I have done this. First on our family ranch here in Santa Cruz County, then on the northern California commercial cattle ranch where I worked in my 20’s, then in the central valley and the foothills where I worked for various cowhorse/cutting horse trainers (gathering the cattle was always the first chore of the day), and finally here on my uncle’s little ranch in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Almost fifty years of gathering cattle. I guess I should know how to do it by now(!)

            Gathering cattle (and working cattle in general) is all about a sort of intuitive understanding of a cow’s body language. You have to be able to read the cattle. A recalcitrant sort of cow will need you to be far more “in her face” to turn her and get her moving in the right direction. A flighty animal will need you to back off. You have to be able to tell what the cattle are thinking. It’s also important to read the herd as a group. Some people can work with cattle for many years and still they always seem to be in the “wrong place.” Just like people who have horses for many years and never learn to “read” them very well. And the skills that one uses in reading and moving cattle do translate to some degree to reading horses, though the two species have some BIG differences.

            Actually, the skills used in reading cattle or horses also come in handy when herding any sort of critter—including chickens. Trust me, I know.

            (The above photo is Toby, our banty rooster, crowing defiantly at me as I attempt to "herd" the chickens back in the coop after a day out in the garden.)

Anyway of course there are no photos of me cause I am the one holding the camera (as I usually am), so I talked my intrepid companion into taking a shot of me when we went riding the next day. A little blurry, but you get the idea. Sunny and me—having fun covering some country in November.

I know some of you, like me, enjoy working cattle in various disciplines, but maybe for a few of you it’s a new experience. Many of our authors here on the site are involved with dressage. And our readers do everything from endurance to reining. So our riding disciplines are pretty different—does gathering cattle seem exotic to some of you, just as high end dressage seems exotic to me? Anyway, this is what my riding time has looked like lately.

Happy Thanksgiving to all—I am so grateful for my happy life here with my horses and family (not to mention my garden and other critters)—words can’t express it. I hope you all have much to be grateful for, too.

And for those who are already embarked on Xmas shopping (black Friday and all that), I would like to point out that the first two novels in my mystery series featuring equine veterinarian Gail McCarthy are currently on sale as Kindle editions for 99 cents each. For just shy of two dollars you can give a fun Xmas present to anyone who likes horses, mysteries and reading on Kindle. Or you can give them to yourself to enliven the darker days of winter. Here is the link to Cutter, the first book, set against a background of western ranches and cutting horses, and Hoofprints, the second book, which revolves around murder in the world of professional trainers and reined cowhorses. Come take a peak at the western cowhorse world where I have spent my horse time.

Cheers--Laura

PS For those who prefer to read "physical" books, I'm thinking to have a giveaway. If you're interested, leave a comment to let me know. I'm never sure how many folks prefer "real" books to digital.