Mini Memoir: My Dad Saddling a Horse

By the time I was five, I was riding some old ranch horse around the yard. When I was in first grade and we lived on the Seventy-One Ranch, I remember many days taking off on my own. By the time I was in sixth grade, I could saddle a horse myself. Before then, my dad would do it for me. Although he has been dead for many years, I think of my father with love, gratitude, and good memories, especially of those ranch years. One of my favorites is the memory of watching him saddle a horse for me.

I see him with the curry comb in his hand. I hear it scratch against the horse’s hide, and the slightly different sound as he combs the mane and tail. He brushes the horse’s back, reaches under the belly, softly crooning, “Whoa, boy. Easy now.” I hear his voice cautioning me not to brush the tender wedge of the horse’s withers. The horse might kick.

He throws on a blanket, releasing a whiff of horse sweat, smoothes and evens it, because another blanket will go on top, a fancier one. Somehow I know that he must smooth the blankets because a wrinkle could wear a sore on the horse’s back. Yet I don’t remember him saying this to me. Other than reminding me not to brush the withers, or, when I was very young, not to stand right behind even the gentlest horse, I don’t remember him lecturing me on how to saddle a horse. I think he knew that if he saddled a horse with care, attention, and love, then I would, too, when my time came.

He gracefully heaves the saddle onto the horse, the right stirrup hooked over the horn. He reaches up, lets down the stirrup and the cinch; sometimes the horse jumps a bit. When he reaches under the horse to grab the cinch, I think he is brave. I love the narrow leather cinch strap that he loops around and around, finally folding it through the brass buckle and giving it a firm tug.

I watch him undo the halter and buckle it around the horse’s neck, take the bridle and, with his left hand, guide it into the horse’s mouth, placing the strap around the horse’s left ear. I hear the rattling of the bit as the horse adjusts it in his mouth.

He walks the horse around the yard for a couple of minutes, maybe handing me the reins to do that job, which is to get air out of the horse’s stomach. He puts his hand under the cinch, feels the slack, and then tightens it.

He ties the reins in a knot, lifts them over the horse’s ears, and rests them on the saddle horn. The horse is still tied by the halter rope to the hitching rack.

Except when I was very young, he never helped me get on a horse. That was my job. I remember leading the horse to a rock, a hay bale, or even maneuvering the horse close enough to a corral fence so I can slide onto the saddle from the top rail. I am ready to go on my own, into blue skies and sage-covered hills of a Nevada morning. I like to think he watches me with love as I leave the yard.

Mini-Memoir: Ranch Food

Having spent much of my growing up years on ranches, I guess some would say I was deprived of fresh fruits and vegetables; however, I have such fond memories of canned food, especially canned grapefruit sections and canned kadota figs. Where was Kadota, anyway, the exotic place that produced those plump, seedy orbs in syrup?

The ranch commissary contained rows of syrupy fruits in cans: canned peaches halves and canned apricots were other favorites. I remember canned tomato soup and small cans of spinach, which my mother would dress with vinegar, bits of bacon and chopped hard boiled egg. I could easily imagine Popeye slurping canned spinach through a pipe.

I remember the DelMonte labels on canned cream of corn and canned green beans and Lipton’s canned cream of mushroom soup and cream of chicken soup that would go into casseroles with potatoes, which stood in a lumpy sack in a dark corner. Although some potatoes did come in cans, we didn't like them.

You should see the surface dumps here in Tuscarora: mostly rusted cans.

One-Page Meditations: Nature.

I am a country girl at heart and my heart is divided between two places: the basin and range country of northeastern Nevada and the Mendocino Coast of California.

The older affiliation is with the territory where I was born and raised. I have never really left it. All the years and trips going back to Elko, to my parent's small ranch on Thorpe Creek, their summer camp at Talbot Creek, both places at the base of the Ruby Mountains; and now Tuscarora and the stark beauty of the Independence Range. This is the place of my deepest sensory imprinting--the scent of sage, the surprisingly gaudy Nevada sunrises and sunsets, the sound and sting of winter wind; the feel of leather, a horse's sweaty hide, the weight of a horse's hoof in my hand; the taste of an alfalfa pellet, the nectar of Indian paintbrush, the sour, fruity taste of a wild rose hip; the bitter taste of a chokecherry before it is sweetened into jelly.

The Mendocino Coast reminds me of the birth of my children, the clearest connection with nature a woman can know; that is, until we experience dying. Here on the coast my senses are attuned to rain, fog, the deep whoosh of wind in the redwood trees; and the omnipotence of the Pacific ocean.

There is the solace of eternity in both places.

Falling Off the Wagon

Falling Off the Wagon: A Parable

You are the driver of a wagon, looking ahead, going down a road. You are also riding in the wagon, sitting on a pile of loose hay. The road is straight, curved, smooth. bumpy, wide, narrow: all the things a country road can be.

You keep falling off. You go along for a while and then you fall off. Sometimes it is because of the road, or maybe the horses shy at a rabbit, or the driver goes “gee-haw” without warning. Sometimes you fall off for good reason, sometimes for no discernable reason at all. You simply fall off the wagon.

You run to catch up, clamber back on, rearrange your body and your thoughts. You always feel good when you are safely back on the wagon, just you and the driver going down the road.

The next thing you know, you have fallen off again. You are surprised, irritated, frustrated. You have to catch up. Sometimes you panic that you won’t catch up. Sometimes you stop in the road and say, “To hell with it. I didn’t want to be on that wagon. I didn’t want to go down that road.” Then you run faster to catch up, get back on. You are desperate to get back on the wagon.

From a hillside high above the road you are a comical sight. There’s a long road and a driver and a wagon. There’s this person who keeps falling and running, climbing on, riding a while, then falling and running.

From a distance, it seems like a hard way to go down a road.