Riding Barranca (21 page)

I remember him hitting a ball so hard when I was standing at the net that it struck me in the forehead, and I was shy on the court ever after.

I remember him riding in laced-up hiking boots with his feet dangerously deep in the stirrups, the cuffs to his blue jeans turned up high.

I remember her knowledge of English antiques, and how proud she was of her store, though most of Milwaukee preferred reproductions.

I remember him purchasing junk just to be buying something. “Supporting the economy,” was his excuse.

I remember her large, pop-bead pearls, and her pink-and-green mumu. She looked very comfortable in it.

I remember him in his red-and-blue striped sweater. He wore it for over a decade. After he died, I put it in the washer, thinking it was cotton, and it shrank.

I remember her grinding up a huge array of pills with a mortar and pestle and eating the powder from a plastic container of apple sauce.

I remember seeing the video of her singing “Happy Birthday” to herself a few days before her passing.

I remember him saying, “Good morning pigeons.”

I remember him almost blissful in death, very peaceful, a very graceful parting. It looked so easy. He made everything look easy.

I wonder what they would remember and what I have chosen to forget.

Close Together

I'm in a cleaning mood today and tackle the tack room, taking out the old coil rug and pug doormat, shaking them out, sweeping into all the corners, rearranging the baskets and
buckets of horse medication, tossing out junk—all superfluous items—filling the water buckets after giving them a good scrub, doing some deep mucking (careful to bend my knees), tossing a layer of nice fresh shavings into the stalls, putting out fresh hay and sweeping up. It feels good to have everything so neat and tidy. But why can't it stay that way?

Bali and Cello

It is a morning to hold your breath—
that perfect
—clear blue skies and radiant sun through cool, bug-free air. It is so good, so blissfully vibrant it is almost heart-breaking, like new love, when it hurts because it's so terribly fleeting.

Always thrilled to find a new place to ride, this morning Elizabeth and I follow an offshoot from the Mountain Road
Trail. Taking a right uphill, we ride for miles through pure Berkshire forest. Oddly, apples are already falling from the trees, and the horses know it. Goldenrod is up, everything coming early this year. I hope that means an early winter and that I will get to ride in the snow before returning to Patagonia.

We follow the trail as it begins to descend, eating blackberries as we go, plucking the dark ripe fruit from thorny vines. Suddenly, there is an opening, and we have a glorious lookout over the Alford Valley. I assume that we will end up on West Road, but as we continue, almost down to the valley floor, the trail bends to the right and begins to mount again.

We hear the
hoot
of an owl deep in the woods, and it sounds so lonely, haunting.

Both dogs are with us today, and it is turning into a very long ride. I wonder if this is too much for ten-year-old dogs. Marcello is slightly pigeon-toed so it can be more difficult for him to keep up. Bali is my athlete.

“You're lucky your dogs don't go racing after squirrels,” Elizabeth says. “They're being awfully good.”

“Do you hear that, boys? You're being
awfully good!”

But then, as we head up a smaller path that will loop us back to the beginning, I realize that Marcello isn't following us. He is nowhere to be seen. Maybe, he took a shortcut back to the trailer. We turn and try to find him, but then in the thick of the forest I hear a pack of coyotes howling over a kill. I am horrified. Have they attacked Marcello? I call out for him, over and over, but no response.

We head back to the gravel road that will take us down to the trailer, and there is Marcello standing with a group of people and two stopped cars. They chew me out for letting my dog run loose out on the road, but I am so happy to see him, I only say,
“Where in the world did you go?”

Riding with Betsy Spears

Barranca is showing signs of the slobbers, and Betsy is appalled. “I've never seen anything like this,” she says, as he drools some more. “Do you think it's safe to ride him?”

The slobbers can dehydrate a horse—that is the main risk. It is often a reaction to a fungus that is found on clover. I am suspicious of the new hay we just received, but it could also be something in our own fields.
Slobber!

I think he will be fine, as long as he has plenty of fresh water to drink along the way, and the trail we'll take has a rushing stream coming off the mountain.

Betsy has to get to a doctor's appointment by one o'clock so she follows me over to the trailhead in her own car while I drive the truck. We are going to take this new path in reverse to see which direction we prefer. As we get on our way, Betsy points out sprays of tiny purple-black elderberries, and we talk about making jam.

As we continue climbing up the trail, Barranca throws a shoe. I hear the telltale clink of metal and hop off to collect
it, yup, his right front shoe. I check my cell phone to see if there is any reception up here, and I am able to contact Kacy, who calls Keith, my farrier. He can come over later this afternoon.
What service.

Back at the trailer, I take everything out of my saddle pack— unlock the truck and load the horses. Betsy takes off in her car, and suddenly I cannot find my keys. I do not see them anywhere. Will I have to ride Barranca home leading Peanut all the way? And what about the dogs on the road? People drive so fast and don't slow down for animals. I begin to panic, climbing back in with the horses to check the saddle pack— empty. I dump out the contents of my purse—nothing. Then check all around both seats, front and back and under, until… something
clicks
—my keys are there in the door to the truck.

Emily Rose

I take my mother-in-law Em a glass of lavender lemonade. She is sitting in her library asleep, but she awakes at my arrival and takes a sip of the drink. Immediately she makes a sour
face—
not for her.
So I drink the rest of it down, yum, and remind her that her birthday is right around the corner—only ten days away. On the fifteenth of August she will be one-hundred-and-one years old, and we will have a big family potluck in her honor.

I have already ordered her white orchids with little butterfly -shaped blooms, but this afternoon I pick her a bunch of pinks and yellows and blues from the garden. When I present the bouquet, she says softly, “I
will enjoy this forever.”

Nancy Beach, one of her caregivers, stands by me. We both try to decipher what Em says, but her sense of language has retreated to another world where she seems to slip back and forth over some invisible edge. “Is
she going,”
Em whispers in a very hushed voice.
“Is she going?”

I lift her from behind into a standing position, and she is able to maneuver her walker back to bed. Then, I head off to ride Barranca. I know a big storm is coming. You can feel it in the air, the humidity and the clouds building up to a sodden, oppressive density.

But Barranca and I have enough time to try out the back trails all the way down to the bottom of Rose Hill. There is a massive set of logs blocking the path. As I look down toward the brook, there are other gigantic trees felled from age and wind, the base of their root systems tipped, exposing the earth that once held them in place. A few of these magnificent trees are probably over a hundred years old, and the loss of them in the forest reminds me of the passing of great personalities who are also felled by time. Emily Rose will be like one of these honorable trees, one of the Great Ones, when she goes.

Left at Home

I ask Mason if he would like to come along to Beartown State Park with me. He would remain on foot while I ride, but I feel like his presence would give me more confidence in this new terrain. Even though I would navigate the bridle paths solo, we would each have a cell phone and a park map, as well as a little adventure.

Mason agrees and gets his camera equipment. We take Blue Hill Road to the Beartown entrance, and once unloaded, I tell him that I'll probably be back in two hours or so, around 1:00
P.M.
Peanut, unnerved by the flapping flags by the lake front, the strange planters, picnic tables, and elevated barbeques, is eager to get out of there. Bali is with us, and I think that gives Peanut some reassurance. My dog at least is another creature—
creature comfort.

The trail is rough with lots of branches to break, clearing the way for the next happy trail rider. I pass a couple
of middle-aged women with their two wee dogs. “We're heading back,” they tell me. “This isn't a very nice trail.”