Flower Ride

                                                by Laura Crum

            We had a fun time on Monday when my blogging friend kel from horsegenes (listed on the sidebar) came for a visit with her horse, Semper (and her husband, Mr Wonderful). After some discussion—should we go on a trail ride, a beach ride—kel decided she’d like to ride through the fields where my husband grows begonias. And this was a good choice, as these fields are only in full bloom from August through early October.

            We lucked out with the weather, as the fog was present enough to keep things in the 60’s (kel had just come from the Valley where it was 104), but the sun shone enough to make it pretty and not too chilly. We only rode for an hour or so, but since kel had fitted this visit in amidst a long day of traveling, that worked pretty well.

            Here we are in the fields.

            Another shot. Look how much bigger kel’s Semper is than Henry and Sunny.

            We rode along happily until we came to a ditch that none of the horses wanted to cross.

            Kel eventually got Semper across it and Wally was determined to make Twister cross. My son, on the other hand, who was at the rear of the group, decided he wanted no part of the battle of the ditch and opted to turn around and go another way. Being a good mom, I went with him—thus proving I am not a good horseman, as I failed to make my horse cross the ditch. However, my days of being a good horseman are pretty much behind me—I’m a relaxed horseman now. (In Sunny’s defense, this is only the second or third obstacle he has ever seriously balked at in five years of trail riding, and I’m just not that concerned.) Anyway, my son and I trotted around the long way around and rejoined the group who had successfully crossed the scary ditch.

            After that we rode down dirt roads to see if we could reach the Salinas River. We didn’t make it all the way to the river, but did reach a bluff where we could see the river and a portion of the Salinas Valley. Then we rode back to the begonia fields. Here’s Sunny and me and kel and Semper.

            kel and Semper.

            Meeting kel was great fun—I’m so glad she made the time to stop by and visit. She is the third blogging friend I’ve met in real life—the first two being Shanster from “Shanster’s Goats and More”, listed on the sidebar, and Funder from “It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time”, also listed on the sidebar. All three times it was as if I’d known the person for years. Our long time being blog friends and emailing really did make a connection that was palpable when we met face to face. 

            So thank you kel, for coming by for a flower ride, and I have to say, Semper is one of the nicest horses I’ve ever met. If he weren’t so big (and white), I’d want to steal him. Unfortunately, I don’t think I could get on him (!) But what a lovely, kind, well-mannered horse-- with an equally charming rider. It was real pleasure to meet all of you.

A Question About Books

                                                by Laura Crum

            As most of you may know, this spring the 12^th book in my mystery series (Barnstorming) featuring equine veterinarian Gail McCarthy was published by Perseverance Press, which has published my last four books. At the same time, the first eight books in the series (which are out of print) became available on Kindle for 99 cents. Thus the whole series is once again easily available to readers—as long as you read on a Kindle. Since then I have had a few inquiries from those who have Nook rather than Kindle as to when the books would be available for Nook.

            I have to admit I took a deep breath after I did all the work needed to put the first eight books up on Kindle. But last week my husband and I looked into what we would need to do to get the books available on Nook. It was a little daunting. Unlike Kindle, which was a pretty straight-forward process, the Nook people wanted to know everything from our social security numbers to our bank account numbers and passwords and more. Stuff we weren’t comfortable giving them. Stuff that Amazon/Kindle certainly didn’t ask for. We decided to abort the process and think about it.

            So today I want to put the question out to anyone who is interested in reading my books—and for that matter, anyone who reads, even if you’re not interested in reading my books. I need advice. What should I do here?

            Do many of you read on Nook? Do those who read on Nook prefer to get your books that way? Can you get the Kindle “app” and read on your computer? I am trying to decide if I need to look harder at getting these books available on Nook—or for that matter, other ebook applications.

            For those who have asked about getting the first eight books as regular books, they can still be found as used books on Amazon. Sometimes as cheaply as 99 cents. A reader (thank you Judy O'Bannon) wrote to say that she found Slickrock (my most popular book—set on a pack trip in the Sierra Nevada Mts) for 75 cents on a site called half.com (ebay’s book site).   

            Anyway, any input on this subject is appreciated. In what form do you read books? How many Nook readers are out there who would buy my books if they were available on Nook?

            And a big thank you to those who have been buying my older titles on Kindle—I really appreciate it. This is the seventh book—and one of my favorite covers—by the very talented Peter Thorpe, who did many of my covers.

PS—I’m not the only author left posting on this site—many others are busy or on vacation, so I’m filling in.

Summer's Blessings -- and Curses

Summer is crashing to an end, and as in one of my previous posts, I am still wondering what the $%^& I accomplished.  We are headed to the beach for a last hurrah (and perhaps the last time at the beach--kids get older and jobs get in the way and already this upcoming beach week will be totally different with my daughter coming only part-time and no girlfriends and boyfriends to round out the family group due to jobs. WAH!)   and as soon as we come back, school starts.  I decided to spend a few moments today before packing and cleaning to think about my summer. Please indulge my meanderings and my amateur photos!

The weather has been both a curse (so HOT!) and a blessing. We have had rain almost every day so compared to the parched Midwest, Virginia has abundant hay, corn and grass. The statistics in today's paper were sad: Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, Texas and Illinois have extreme drought conditions and July was the hottest month on record in most of the USA. The loss of crops are expected to affect the whole world, and I know from earlier comments that horse owners in the Plains will be searching far and wide for hay for the winter. Yet I have the best garden I've had in years, and our pastures are so lush we have to restrict the horses, and there will be enough grass for grazing most of the winter. How can we have such abundant rains and other areas have none?

My second blessing has been a summer not teaching. Okay, a curse because I didn't get a paycheck, but for the first time, I didn't have a 'schedule' that I had to adhere to. What did I do with that time? Ummm. Not sure. I'd love to say I had long rides on Relish (it was too hot), I wrote a novel (I was kind-of doing research), I added gardens (well, I planted phlox, which I love. Do you see the giant spider in the foreground?) or started a new hobby (does Ebay and Etsy count?)  I did get a Ziggy, which has taken up most of my time these past two weeks (see previous post). Ziggy is both a blessing--and dare I say it--a curse. See that mischievous gleam in his eye? He's thriving but I am exhausted keeping one step ahead of him so there are no potty accidents, chewed shoes, stomped on cats and hurt feelings on the part of the chihuahua princess. So far, we have not let him off-leash, which means every walk and playtime requires me. This morning, in order to get sales tax filed and this post written I (GASP) tethered him outside after a long walk. My sanity required it. I hope all of you who have recently adopted a pup know what I mean.

My last summer's blessing has been time to research World War I. Again, this has been a curse has well. I was never a history buff in school, but once I start reading about a certain era, I inhale it. And The Great War was horrific for humans and animals. UGH. I am writing a novel from the point of view of a mercy dog, used to locate and help rescue the wounded. I am a sensory detail kind of writer: sights, sounds, smells, emotions are crucial to my story. How in the world am I going to paint an accurate picture of the war yet keep it safe enough for young readers?  It will be a tough juggling job.

Those are a few of my summer meanderings. My next post, I will be excited to review Linda Benson's new novel, Six Degrees of Lost.  How is the end of your summer going? Please tell.

Color Means Something--or am I Crazy

                                     by Laura Crum

            I was raised in the horse biz by a tough team roper who taught me to pay no attention to a horse’s color. The color didn’t matter. What mattered was what the horse could get done. One should ignore color and also whether a horse had a pretty head (things that were only important for resale value) and focus on getting a sound, athletic, well broke horse that could get the job done. Didn’t matter if the horse was purple, I have heard this guy say. (Though I also heard him reject a very loud-colored leopard Appaloosa because “I don’t want to look at that horse in my corrals.”)

            Well OK then. I spent most of my life trying to look past color and a pretty head to pick out good, sound horses, with good trainable minds, if they were colts, and well broke if they were older. But somehow that was never the whole deal. And the whole deal had something to do with color.

            The horse I idealized when I was growing up was a marvelously talented bright bay that belonged to my uncle (Mr Softime). And somehow the first horse that I totally fell for and kept until he died was a bright bay with no white who was almost exactly the same color as Mr Softime (this was Burt).

Coincidence? I think not.

The next horse I fell for in a big way was a bright bay with a big white blaze. (Gunner) And for the rest of my life I have been disposed to assume that all blaze-faced horses are “good ones.” Silly, I know.

My most recent color affectation came upon me gradually. I was aware that despite my early teaching in ignoring color, there were colors I liked and didn’t like. If a horse was a color I liked, that predisposed me in his favor. If he was a color I didn’t like, that made me less inclined to like the horse. Still, I could look past my prejudices. Perhaps my favorite riding horse of all time was a brownish bay—a color I really don’t care for. (Flanigan)

            And the pony I bought for my son was a mostly white pinto with blue eyes—though I don’t, in general, like this color scheme. But Toby was a good one—the magical little white horse that taught my son to ride.

            Still, overall, I didn’t care for white or whitish horses, be they paints, cremellos, whited out grays…etc. (There is some logic to this as these light colored horses always have dirty green and brown blotches.) I didn’t care for sorrels—it seemed to me to be such a common color. And I didn’t like horses with too much inky darkness in their color—dark bays, dark browns, blacks. Just my prejudices. 

            My favorite color remained bright bay, followed by bright gold palomino and bright gold buckskin (I didn’t much care for the buttermilk varieties). I liked blaze-faced horses and certain sorts of paints. I liked roans.

            So when a bright gold palomino who was a good trail horse came my way, I bought him. This would be Sunny.

 And despite my general dislike of grays, I fell hard for the dark, dapple gray gelding my friend Wally bought as a six year old (Twister). Twister has always been boarded with me, and I am just as fond of him as I am my own horses. He really was striking as a young horse.

             Twister soon “whited out” to a silvery color, and yes, he always has dirty looking blotches. And the next horse I bought was a deep red sorrel. I didn’t much care for the fact that Henry was a sorrel, but I looked past my prejudices, once again, and bought the best horse I could for my son when his pony died of cancer. And Henry was a pretty shade of sorrel, a coppery red.

 So for the last five years most of our riding time has been spent with these three horses—Sunny, Twister and Henry. Here they are in a row as we get ready to go riding yesterday. See what they represent?

            It took me awhile to see it this way, and I’ll grant you, it’s a fanciful idea. But Sunny, Twister and Henry have come to represent gold, silver, and copper in my mind—the three precious metals. Ok—its silly, I know. But the idea gives me pleasure. Our three horses—symbolizing what’s good (colorwise). My copper, gold and silver horses in their corrals in the high country.

            OK—is anybody else as weird about color as I am? I have already pointed out that I can look past my prejudices, and I now love my son’s bright copper-colored horse as well as I love my bright gold horse—and Wally’s silver Twister. But I still have an aversion to horses with too much dark “ink” in their color, such that I don’t especially care for a very nice black horse that Wally owns—simply because he’s black. (And yes, I realize this is not very rational, but despite the fact that I read “The Black Stallion” as a kid and used to think I’d love a black horse, the feeling I currently have is still mildly negative when I look at a “dark” horse.) It just feels like there’s too much “darkness” there. Sort of a symbolic thing. (Its fine for you to vote that I’m crazy—and I do know there are many, many good horses that are these colors.)

I guess the point of this post is just that in my old age I have acknowledged to myself that color DOES mean something to me—if only in a symbolic sense. Is it just me? Or do others have these odd preferences? Where certain colors give you active pleasure and other colors—well, you can like a horse of that color, but it’s despite the color, not because of it? Or, as I started out by saying, am I just crazy?

The one thing I can say for sure is that every morning when I walk down to feed, the sight of my silver, gold and copper horses gleaming in the sunshine brings a smile to my face. Of course, it has something to do with the fact that they are genuinely good, reliable horses. But I still think the colors (and my rather fanciful notion about the colors) is part of what brings me joy. Does anybody else feel this way?

Something Nasty

                                                by Laura Crum

            I mentioned in my last post that I had one negative experience on our otherwise delightful mountain camping trip with our horses. I don’t want to emphasize this experience too much, because it was maybe two yucky minutes among many days of good times. But…I do think this encounter merits a blog post, if only so that those who read it can share their thoughts on what I might have done differently.

            We spent most of our vacation time riding in the Glass Mountains, where we met no other folks. But on one day we hauled our horses to a Sierra trailhead, in order to ride in to a mountain lake. For a description and photos of this ride, see my last post “Ride the High Country.” We arrived at the trail head at 8:30 in the morning, so no people were about as we started down the trail. But I could see the fresh tracks of a mountain bike in the trail dust, and assumed we’d eventually meet the biker.

            This didn’t worry me overmuch, as our horses are not scared of bikes. I just hoped that we’d meet the bike in a convenient spot and that it wouldn’t be going too fast. My first warning that the bike was ahead came when a large white dog (standard poodle type) came around a corner and barked at my horse. Sunny spooked slightly (merely because he was startled), I said whoa and pulled him up, and the mountain bike appeared right behind the dog. Fortunately the trail was level, there was plenty of room and the bike, warned by the dog, wasn’t moving fast. The mountain biker called his dog, laid his bike down by the side of the trail, gave me what I could only describe as a shame-faced look, and said, “Sorry.” (I later found out that mountain bikes were not permitted on this trail.)

            I smiled, said, “Don’t worry, they’re not scared of bikes or dogs”, wished him a good day, and rode on. No problem.

            We never saw another soul after that, all the way to the lake and at the lake. It was on the way back that the second encounter occurred.

            The photo below was taken less than a minute before another dog ran barking up to my horse.

            This dog was large and black and much more aggressive appearing than the white dog. Again, I halted my horse and waited for a hiker to appear, or to call the dog. But nothing happened. The dog barked energetically at Sunny, who wasn’t bothered. Maybe thirty seconds went by. I didn’t want to ride on and give the dog a chance to attack from the rear, or give it a chance to run up to my son’s horse. None of our horses are scared of barking dogs, and I wasn’t scared of this one, but it just makes sense to be careful. Also, to be frank, I was a little annoyed at whatever hiker had let his/her dog run ahead and bark at strangers and wasn’t doing anything about it. So I yelled (loudly), “Call your dog!”

            And sure enough, someone not too far ahead (but out of my sight) whistled for the dog. They must have heard the dog barking, mind you, but did not call it until I shouted.

            I rode on and coming around the next bend, saw a youngish, fit-looking guy with an older dog and the dog who had run up on us. The guy had the dogs off to the side of the trail and was busy telling them what good dogs they were.

            I was torn. Part of me wanted to tell this guy that he shouldn’t let his dog run up and bark at other parties like that. If our horses had been spooky, someone could have gotten hurt. Its certainly happened before—though not to me. But the other part of me said, oh, just keep quiet. It’s a nice day, nobody was bothered, let it go.

            I listened to the second voice, and kept my mouth shut. When I rode past the guy and his dogs, I kind of expected him to say “sorry,” as the mountain biker had done, but he didn’t, just kept talking to his dogs. I was still mildly miffed at his trail etiquette (or lack thereof), so I didn’t greet him as I normally would do. I just nodded (I think civilly) and rode quietly by. My son and Wally did the same. It wasn’t until all three of us were completely past him and headed down the trail that the guy hollered something.

            I couldn’t understand him, so I pulled my horse up and called “What?” (I am at least fifty feet from the guy by this point.)

            The guy yells back, “Say please.”

            I am completely puzzled, but I can hear an aggressive tone in his voice.

            “What do you mean?” I yell back.

            “Next time, say Please call your dog.”

            It takes me a second to process this. Mister rude hiker is telling me he thinks I was rude to him. And at this I get a touch (OK more than a touch) annoyed.

            “You were totally in the wrong,” I respond. “Your dog could have got us hurt or killed. Don’t let him run up and bark at strangers next time.”

            At this, the guy comes unglued and starts screaming at me. How I need to share the trail, and maybe I should get my fat ass off the horse and walk…etc.

            Wally, who is riding last and thus is closest to the screaming hiker, wheels his horse around and rides back to him. Oh oh, I think. Wally, at 79 years old, has never shied off from conflict. He’s a tough old bird. But the hiker is young and fit.

            Wally says something to the hiker. I can’t hear it. Now the hiker is yelling at Wally. (Wally later tells me that he said, “Is that dog dangerous?” The hiker replied—very loud and angry—that of course the dog wasn’t dangerous. Wally then said, “We had no way of knowing that. If I was riding first and I’d had a gun, I would have shot him.” At this, more angry yelling came from the hiker.)

            I turned my horse and trotted back to back Wally up, though I’m not sure what my game plan was. The hiker immediately began telling me to get my fat ass off the horse. Wally and I looked at each other and both said the same thing. “Lets go.”

            I rode away with my middle finger raised and the guy screaming after us, as I said loudly and clearly “You are the rudest hiker I have ever met.” Quite true.

            This encounter, as you might imagine, left a very bad taste in my mouth. My son said it almost ruined his day. “Why did the guy act like that?” he said.

            “Probably because he didn’t like horses on the trail,” was the best reply I could come up with. But inwardly I felt stymied. I hike with my dogs all the time. I’m very careful that they don’t run up and bark at strangers, whether the others are on foot or on horseback (and my dogs are not all scary looking, as this dog definitely was). But if my dogs had barked at someone, and that someone had hollered at me to call my dog, the first words out of my mouth would have been, “I’m sorry.” If this guy had said sorry, I’d have responded just as I did to the mountain bike guy. But how in the world this hiker managed to decide that WE were somehow in the wrong boggled my mind. I was supposed to ask him “nicely” to call off his aggressively barking dog? For all he knew (he couldn’t see me), I had been coping with a leaping, plunging horse that was terrified of the dog.

            It was a very frustrating and upsetting experience, so now I want to put it out there to the rest of you. What should I have done differently (if anything)? For those who would say not to engage or argue with him, I might agree, but I didn’t really know what he was saying to me to begin with, and by the time I’d sorted it out, we were already engaging, so to speak. And yes, I’m not one to let others walk on me. If you treat me poorly, I am going to stand up for my point of view. I don’t know if this is a strength or a weakness.

            Either way, I’m open to hearing how the rest of you would have handled this. For me, I spent the next half hour feeling as if I’d stepped on something nasty and it was stuck to the bottom of my shoe. After that I was able to let it go. But the whole thing made my son sad, and that made me sad.

 Some people are just rude, and we have to accept this. We can’t always change them. On the other hand, we don’t have to lie down like doormats to be walked on by the overly aggressive, rude folks of this world—or for that matter, the covertly malicious folks. (This is also what I told my son.) I don’t think I did anything wrong here, but I wish I knew a way to change the above story so that it wasn’t so ugly. Any thoughts?

PS—For those who would like to read something lighter and more playful, here is my husband’s post on his “Begonias in the Mist” blog, talking about names for fog. I think he is both amusing and poetic, but then, I’m prejudiced.

            

Le Blah

by Francesca Prescott 

I’m battling a case of the midsummer blahs. On the horse front, things haven’t exactly been pink and peachy over the past week; Qrac has had a horrid case of conjunctivitis, and doesn’t seem to understand that I’m squirting oozy ointments in his eyes for his own good. It’s a struggle, I tell you. But four days into the treatment my horse is looking a lot better, as when I turned up on Sunday the poor guy was oozing thick yellow gloop on a fiery red backdrop (behind his eye was red), so I knew immediately that bathing his eyes in black tea wasn’t going to cut it. I called the vet; he came on Monday morning bearing antiobiotic and soothing moisturising drops. By Tuesday the yellow gloop was already gone, but since I need to treat him for seven days, it would be nice if he’d stop doing his giraffe impersonation the moment I bring out the tubes of ointment.

Also, Qrac didn’t choose a good week to get sore eyes, as I was supposed to be going down to Burgundy with Olivia to visit Kwintus, our old dressage horse, who is now twenty-years-old and retired there. I didn’t want to delegate Qrac’s ocular treatment to someone else at the stables as something told me nobody but me would have the patience to spend ten minutes twice a day struggling with eye creams. So I asked my husband, who is on holiday at the moment, to go down to Burgundy with Olivia this time, thinking it would be a nice for them to spend time together.

I’ve written before about what a lovely place we’ve found for Kwintus’ retirement, and although my husband doesn’t know the back end of a horse from its front end, he likes Kwintus and was more than happy to drive down there with Olivia for twenty-four hours. Olivia was looking forward to seeing her old horse, even hoping to tack him up and take him for a little plod around the countryside, as the last time we visited him (in April) Kwintus looked fit as a fiddle.

Yesterday afternoon, soon after they got there, Olivia called me, fighting back tears.

It seems that over the past two weeks Kwintus has suddenly lost a lot of weight. His ribs are showing, and Olivia said he seemed very tired, and not at all his usual perky, curious self. I already knew that he’d dropped a bit of condition about six weeks ago when we got our first heat-wave, as Natalie, the owner of the centre had called me to tell me she’d been a little concerned for a few days, but she’d kept an eye on him and he’d picked up again as soon as the weather cooled down. But in the past two weeks we’ve had some pretty intense heat, which has really affected him. Kwint normally spends the days outside, and is brought in at night, but during the hot weather he seemed to want to stay out all night with his friends. As Natalie always tries to take the horses’ wishes into consideration, she let him sleep outside. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea, as even if Kwintus might have enjoyed the cool night air, he probably missed being able to lie down and sleep in his cosy bed, and became over-tired. Add the stress of battling flies all day in hot, muggy weather, and the result is that all of a sudden poor Mr. Kwint is looking pretty bony.

Olivia got Natalie to call the vet, who came this morning, checked Kwint over and did a blood test. I spoke to Natalie about two hours ago; apparently the blood was very pale, which might point to anaemia. At this point, I don’t know anything else as we won’t have the test results until next week. Meanwhile, Kwintus is going to be made to come in every night whether he wants to or not in order to ensure he gets a good night’s sleep. He’s also going to get more food, and will be turned out alone in a field with slightly richer grass for a while (he doesn’t mind being alone).

Of course, I feel terrible about not having gone down there with Olivia, as my poor husband felt totally at a loss. At the same time, I don’t see what more I could have done. It’s just that I know Olivia was really hoping to be able to get that short plod around the countryside on her horse, as she was away at university in England when I was forced to take the decision to retire him. A short ride, even a few minutes, would give her a sense of closure, but she’s always said that she’d let Kwintus decide on whether or not he wanted her to ride him.

Olivia and I will return to Burgundy to visit Kwintus sometime in September, before Olivia goes back to University. The weather should have cooled down a little by then, so I hope that with adequate treatment and extra food he’ll have picked up again, and be back to his normal, somewhat rotund, perky self.

Have you ever had problems with older horses suddenly dropping a considerable amount of weight? Have you had horses with anaemia? If so, what caused it? How did you treat it? How long did it take for them to bounce back?

Ride the High Country

                                                by Laura Crum

            And yes, I saw that old movie. But today’s post is about my own vacation last week (with horses) in the high Sierra of California and the nearby Glass Mountains (we were 8000—9000 feet high, to be exact). We had a wonderful time—and a few adventures. But adventures, once they are successfully completed, are part of what make a wonderful time. So here’s my story.

            First off, I was a bit dubious about this trip. My son wanted to ride to a Sierra lake and camp with his horse, Henry (we had done pack trips on rented horses to lovely Sierra lakes, but it just isn’t the same as going with your own horse). The problem is that my son’s horse, Henry, though healthy, sound, and still pretty darn capable, is 24 years old. I am the veteran of many, many mountain pack trips, and I have seen first-hand how stressful they can be on older horses, or for that matter, young horses. It’s a combination of things. We live on the coast, and the horses are not used to altitude, the rides on pack trips tend to be longer than the horses are accustomed to, the horses often have to be tied at night, the hauling to get there can be hard on them…etc. I have seen many horses colic due to stress, and though I have treated this myself—with Banamine—successfully in every case I was involved with, it is very worrying when a vet is simply not available. I have seen other horses get hurt in the rocks—sometimes badly hurt. Never my own horses (thank goodness), but I am careful. I know the dangers. The last thing I wanted to do was hurt, or God forbid kill, my son’s healthy older horse by taking him to the mountains.

            But we had a unique opportunity. Our friend Bill had recently purchased a house on forty acres in the Glass Mountains (a small range on the east side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California) that was twenty miles from any other dwelling. Surrounded by National Forest. Absolutely lovely. And he was willing to put up corrals for our horses and let us camp there. So Henry could have space to move around at night, rather than be tied, and we could do short day rides from a base camp, rather than longer pack trips. I thought it could work.

            I asked knowledgeable friends for advice (thanks, Aarene), I listened to my gut, and eventually I decided it was a go. So last week we hauled my horse, Sunny, my son’s horse, Henry, and our friend/boarder’s horse, Twister, eight hours, through Yosemite and over Tioga Pass, to the Glass Mountains, just east of the Sierra Nevada, and just south of Mono Lake, to ride and camp in the high country. And it was a blast.

            I have to admit, the haul was hard. Tioga is sort of scary coming down. A LOT of exposure. But we made it just fine. And put the horses into their (very nice) corrals around four o’clock. Here they are.

                        The next day I got up and fed at sunrise.

            And then, after breakfast, we rode away from the corrals, on pleasant sandy roads, for a seven mile loop, through lovely, wide open country. There were aspen groves and meadows and stretches of sagebrush and big pine forests. There were dramatic views of the Sierras and Mono Lake. We never saw another human being the whole ride. We did see deer and hawks and jackrabbits. Here we are—tiny horsemen in a big landscape.

            Sunny looks out at the eastern range of the Sierra Nevada.

            The next day we rode into the Sierra Nevada Mountains on a trail that had been recommended to me as “easy” to a lovely lake. Well, it was mostly easy. It ran through chapparel and then climbed a bit to follow a pretty creek through aspen and pines to a gem of a high Sierra lake called Parker Lake. There was just one small problem. The part where it climbed a bit?  That part included a truly severe and very tricky hundred feet of steep trail in loose rock with a lot of exposure. Not good.

            I’ve been on many mountain pack trips and have ridden my horse through some rock slides. But I was younger then, and I was riding an immensely strong, athletic horse named Flanigan. Now I am riding the clunky, if level-headed Sunny, and providing a lead for my young son on 24 year old Henry. I didn’t want to ride down any rock slides.

            I don’t mind steep, if there’s no rock and no exposure, and I don’t mind rock, if it’s not steep and there’s no exposure. I don’t mind exposure if the trail is level and not rocky. But this was a steep bit of trail, with lots of loose rock, and a sheer drop down a couple of hundred feet to a canyon on one side. LOTS of exposure.

            Still, Wally and my kid insisted we could get up it, so I rode on, and up we scrambled. We all made it just fine, though my son admitted it was scary. The trouble was (which I wasn’t forgetting) that we had to come back down.

            The rest of the way in to the lake the trail was just lovely. Level and easy, running through chapparel, aspen and pines, and along the bank of a pretty creek where the horses could drink.

            The trail to the lake.

            Sunny at the creek.

            Finally we reached Parker Lake.

            Parker Lake and the high Sierra.

            And then we had to come back. I will confess that I was thinking about that steep, rocky bit of trail quite a bit of the time as I rode back, and wondering what to do. I know lots of people would have gotten off and led their horse and I did tell my son that we could do this. But my son said firmly that if Henry could walk down it then he could ride him down it. “Believe it and you can achieve it, Mama.” Well, OK then.

            Hoping I was being a responsible adult by letting my kid make his own choice, I put my faith in Henry—and it was not misplaced. My horse, Sunny, balked a bit when faced with the rocky drop off (I could read his mind—“I don’t want to go down here”), and stumbled once, but calm, unflappable critter that he is, we still made it down through the rocks unscathed, though my heart was in my mouth. Henry, on the other hand, never put a foot wrong. He made it look easy. My son rode quietly and competently, and they came down with no trouble. I was so proud. Twister scrambled a little, but did OK.

            Of course, I do not have pictures of this cause I was way too busy/scared to take photos. (I never have photos of any of the slightly exciting moments on our rides--for the above reason.) But after the bad spot, I took a few more.

            Twister and Henry coming out of the high country.

            Lovely view of Mono Lake on the ride out.

            Here we are back at our camp in Sagehen Meadow. Wally and Twister, me and Sunny, my kid and Henry.

            We had a wonderful trip. Rode every day, not long rides, about a couple of hours. Just right for us. The weather was lovely, the country spectacular. The horses, Henry included, did great, and really seemed to enjoy being there. They walked with their ears up the whole way and about one mile an hour faster than their usual gait. It was fun. I’m so grateful, and so glad we did it. I did have one negative experience, but I’ll save that for another post.

            So, sorry for the perhaps boring travelogue, but I did enjoy our trip to the mountains very much and wanted to share it. I hope you all are having a lovely summer as well. Cheers—Laura