Posts Tagged ‘horses’

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The View from Mattie’s Pillow

September 7, 2009

A lovely evening tonight.

Around 10pm, I went out to take a bag of spruce shavings to the horses to bed down their run-in shed. The air was cooling enough that I wore my horse club hoodie, but I still wore shorts. The sky was still clear—had been clear since Thursday—and there was a deep aqua light in the northwest sky, fading to cobalt to the south. It was deep dusk, but I could see well enough to drag the black plastic bag of shavings under the fence to the run-in shed and divide it between the two stalls. As I walked back to the corral, I could see Sam’s coat gleam in the fading light where he nibbled the last of his evening’s hay. Mattie, in her side of the corral, was a blacker spot in the deepening darkness. Above the southeast horizon floated an egg-shaped gibbous moon, pale orange, as if about to hatch more of the deep yellow birch and aspen leaves that we’re seeing increase each day. As I walked past Sam, back to the house, it felt like a pause in time, as if the season had hit a balance, a perfect pose like the moment a dancer poses in arabesque on pointe and we catch our breath and believe she can stay in that balance forever. I could stay in this season forever if it would delay what is to come.

We were haying all weekend. Yesterday we went out to the Quist farm at the end of Rosie Creek Road, the fields spread out green on a rolling bench of land along the Tanana River. To get there, we drive along a pot-holed dirt road through spruce and birch, past five-acre “homesteads,” then suddenly there’s the farm, the green fields striped with darker raked hay or dotted with squares of ten bales that tip out of the small trailer towed by the baler. Yesterday, the hay was still too wet, so today we gathered up another crew: Mike, Ira, Tobin, Peter, me, and rattled through the dust and potholes to the farm, then filled the trucks one-by-one with brome hay. The bales were still a bit heavy but dry enough that they (I hope) won’t start to mold before freeze up.

It was nearly seventy—not too hot, but warm and dry enough to dry the hay. We took turns tossing and stacking, and those of us not driving a particular truck, sat on the bales as we drove along the field from square to square. Rufus the farm dog came running up to check on us sometimes, and at the end of the field, a flock of a half dozen sandhill cranes moved slowly over the cut grass, their necks snaked down to find insects in the dirt.

When we showed up in our yard with truckloads of hay, Sam whinnied. He’s in the front side of the corral today, though I’ve been switching them about once a week to keep them entertained. When Mattie’s in the front and hay arrives, she leans into the fence and stretches her neck as long as she can to grab a mouthful as the truck backs up to the hay barn. Sam stood and watched intently, waiting for us to bring some to him. This says a lot about the difference between the two.

After we stacked the hay—the harder part of the job. I made a big bowl of penne pasta with tomato and Italian sausage sauce and carrots and purple and yellow cauliflower from the garden as finger food. We sat on the deck in the gathering dark, looking out across the river at the Tanana flats—gold patches of bright birch and aspen, dark streaks of spruce—the gold and dark green together are especially dramatic now. I said, “Sometimes I wish it could stay like this for a whole season.” Usually these colors fade in a week or two, usually with the first September rains. Then I realized that if the yellow were around long enough, we’d get tired of it and long for snow—or, as I am now, for spring again.

Robert Frost knew about yellow things: “Nothing gold can stay,” he says in his tiny poem about early spring leaves, dawn, and the sweet melancholy of transitions. For now we revel in the gold of our leaves–like the sun reflecting back to us twice—and we store it up to get us through the dark winter days ahead.

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The Post of Don Sam Incognito

August 21, 2009

It’s been rainy since I got back from New Jersey and yesterday was the first day the corral was dried out enough to ride in a small circle without danger of slipping. I went out to ride Sam, hoping to consolidate what I learned in New Jersey and to get Sam back in shape for horse camp in a week and a half.

While I was gone, I visited two dressage stables, Holly Tree Dressage, in Shamong, and Transitions Farms in Elmer. I’ve already written about my first visit to Holly Tree and my ride on Cindy the quarter horse. A few days later, on a Saturday, I headed south to visit Debbie Morrison at Transitions and ride her Hanoverian, Clovis. It was a hot day—in the upper 80s—but I left early in the morning for a 9AM ride. The traffic was light, and I only made two wrong turns, and caught them early enough that I was actually on time. As I drove south, away from the congestion of I-295, I saw a landscape I recognized from childhood—white barns with silos, flat-fronted houses facing the road, fields of corn and sorghum, vegetable stands. By the time I got to Debbie’s place, I could feel all the tension of the drive wash away. I could hear crickets.

Clovis is a 17-hand bay gelding, a silver medalist in USDF competition. When I first saw him, he was in cross-ties with his saddle on, looking gentlemanly and aloof. We walked him out to the covered arena and I got on the three-step mounting block, stepped in the stirrup and eased myself into the saddle. He began to walk and I could feel his long strides pushing me forward with each step. It’s hard to describe—it was as if every part of him were in motion, as if his joints were springs. Debbie talked to me about feeling the footfalls of the horse—I had them completely reversed; I imagined that his hind leg lifting raised my hip at the walk, but the hip lowers when the hoof comes off the ground.

We walked for a while, working on my asking for give in the neck, and then she asked me to trot. His trot was so big it threw me up off the saddle in a post. I couldn’t imagine sitting his trot. He grew a little frustrated at my signals. I’m left handed and riding Clovis really pointed out to me how left-sided I am. My right leg hardly made contact with his belly; my right arm drifted out from my side. And riding him was work—everything I didn’t do precisely caused him to do something else than what I thought I was asking. He shook his head as if I weren’t articulate enough, as if I were trying to talk with marbles in my mouth—I couldn’t speak his language or share his vocabulary. But it was worth the try.

I went out again the next day, and the trot went better, and we worked on canter cues. Finally, he began a rocking chair canter, and I sat right in the center of it. All that energy: the impulsion of the hind foot, the reach of the leading front foot, the rocking leap of the gait itself. It was hot, and both Clovis and I were sweating—as was Debbie, following us on the ground. The air was dense and damp, and dark clouds were rolling in. There were rumblings of thunder and the light dimmed. At one point, as we cantered near the open doorway of the indoor arena, thunder and a passing motorcycle sounded together, and Clovis did an unplanned sideways canter, then recovered and kept on going.

Finally, Debbie showed me the piaffe, impelling him on and half-halting him all at once, lifting each shoulder and hind leg in rhythm until he performed a stationary trot. I don’t know if I can remember it enough to try it on Sam, but I might someday.

Then the sky got dark with lightning scratching through it. The thunder rumbled and crashed and the rain began to fall so hard we thought it was hail. I dismounted, and Debbie led Clovis through he rain to the barn where we chatted as we untacked and hosed Clovis down. I gave him a few treats to remember me by , then, when the rain lifted, I drove back through the farmland to my brother’s suburban apartment.

So yesterday, I tried to apply what I had learned about seat and legs and hands, both from Debbie and from Cathy, when I rode Sam. Sam was a bit put out by being ridden after a long layoff—and through a muddy corral, at that. He didn’t seem to like riding in the small circle of dry ground, and, when I tried to keep nudging him into an energetic trot, he turned and gestured toward my foot, as if to confirm to himself that I really meant it. Clearly he was contemplating an annoyed nip, but thought better of it. After Clovis and wide-backed Cindy, Sam felt small and narrow. My legs could barely find his sides. It was a short ride, but we’ll do more tomorrow.

Today I rode Mattie, and she did respond well to the seat and leg aids. For the most part, she bent into collection easily and moved well. She’s wider, too, so that the leg aids made more sense. Her gaits are so smooth, a real contrast with Clovis. It felt good to be back riding both of them.

Next week, horse camp.

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The View from Mattie’s Pillow

August 7, 2009

Smoke, a Journey, and a Horse Named Cindy

A few weeks ago, my brother called and asked how I’d like to come to New Jersey in August. Having grown up in that part of the world, I told him that New Jersey in August was part of the reason I live in Alaska—the garden is ready to harvest, the horses are in shape, mostly, and summer is winding to a close. Still, he’s a quadriplegic and needed help for a week only, and as we were making plans for me to travel, the smoke from spreading wildfires settled across the Interior, dropping ashes on our cars, the garden, the horses’ coats, blocking the sun and making it difficult to breathe. Everyone in the household, including visiting dancers, seemed to have smoker’s cough.

So, I agreed, and now, here I am, in a condo in Voorhees, NJ.

As I flew out a few days ago, I could see a wide column of smoke from the plane window—perhaps the Murphy Dome fire or the Railbelt fire; it’s hard to tell direction from a jet. We passed by Denali and over along the Alaska Range and into Canada. All through the mountain ranges, we could see smoke drifting through the valleys. The peaks we flew over seemed brown and more bare of snow than usual. The snow itself looked dingy and smoke-tan; the glaciers streaked with dark rock. I was astonished at the extent of the smoke. Some was from smaller fires that we could see pluming up from the trees; the rest seemed to be blown along inland by the prevailing winds. I was reading an old collection of Alice Munro stories, Friend of My Youth, appropriately Canadian, given the land we were flying over. When I looked up again, we were over Minnesota: green squares of land bordered by rows of darker trees. No smoke.

So, now, New Jersey, a place I left long ago. To make the trip more interesting, I made appointments at two dressage stables: Holly Tree Dressage, and Transitions Farms, one to the northeast and one to the southeast of here. Yesterday, I drove to Holly Tree to take a lesson on Cindy the Quarterhorse.

Driving is not my favorite activity—I prefer riding. Here in Western New Jersey, the roads are often the remnants of old farm roads, widened a bit to accommodate urban sprawl. The names: White Horse Pike, Eveham Road, Old Indian Mills Road—have been the same for two or three centuries. But they intersect broad, fast “highways” built in the 50s and 60s and linked with traffic circles (known other places as roundabouts). And, as happens in other places, too, directions often depend on some prior knowledge of the place. So my first mistake was to assume that I had made a wrong turn when I seemed to be headed south even though I needed to go north. Fifteen miles the wrong way later, I was straightened out by a friendly woman in a gas station. I made it to my lesson an hour late and having covered more than twice the road I needed to. The way back was worse, since I reversed the directions I needed and kept turning the opposite way I should have.

But the ride was great. Cindy is a chestnut Quarterhorse, a well-trained lesson horse. I was warned she might throw a fit when she realized I wasn’t a total beginner, but it was mild. We worked on applying the leg (inside leg to outside rein—one of those sayings in riding that takes time to actually feel in the body), and on canter, then I cooled her off and let her graze on the lawn by their outdoor dressage arena.

The place was built in the late 60s/early 70s as a race horse training stable. The barn is long and made of cement blocks with an indoor track making up the aisles of the stable. While I was there, a girl with pink hair was riding a series of colts around the track, accustoming them to life under saddle. The colts, Thoroughbreds, were tall and long-legged with that muscular, knife-like quality that racehorses have. They were alert and curious, if a bit skeptical about the world of work they were being introduced to. A dark bay colt, with a crescent of white showing over his eye, dumped his rider into the dirt of the indoor track on his way past the barn door. Another girl caught the reins of the horse and everyone there rushed over to see how the rider was. She got up and brushed off, and the business of the stable went on. Outside the barn, the farrier had pulled up in his truck, and I later saw the colt standing fresh from a hosing down, having his shoes pulled and his feet trimmed. The rider, by then, was on another horse breezing along the outdoor track with another rider and her horse.

Cindy and I were in the grass by then. She seemed glad to have at the green stuff. Her back is far better muscled than Mattie and Sam’s—the advantage of a year-long riding season. Her coat was silky and still short, unlike Sam’s which has started to grow, anticipating fall. She went back willingly to her stall, but I guess she’d rather have stayed outside on grass or in turnout. I’ll ride her again on Monday. Tomorrow, I take a new set of directions to Elmer, NJ, to ride Clovis. Wish me luck!

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The View from Mattie’s Pillow

July 7, 2009

Here in the Interior, we’re having unusually hot and humid weather. Usually our air is dry, which makes both hot and cold temperatures more bearable, but now we’re in wildfire season, and, all throughout the Interior boreal forests, fires are burning and smoke drifts across the valleys and up the riverways, bringing with it humidity and the lingering smell of wood smoke. Looking out across the valley, the hills and the jagged tops of spruce trees fade into a blue-gray haze and the air feels heavy to move through and breathe.

Still it’s not as bad as it was a few years ago, when the smoke of six million acres of fires hung over the Interior for nearly a month and people stayed inside or went out with scarves or facemasks over their mouths and noses to keep from breathing the air. That summer, during the worst days, Mattie and Sam would stretch out flat in the sand of the corral to nap, stay cool, and breathe the clearer air along the ground. This isn’t nearly as bad as that.

We’re not used to heat here—85 above zero is hot for us—and it’s a bit debilitating. And we know that these long sunny days (it still never gets totally dark here and won’t till the first week in August) are a brief respite from winter and we want them to be perfect so we can spend as much of our time outdoors as we can—on the rivers, at fish camp, at night baseball games, hiking, gardening, riding. This clear but smoky weather is supposed to stretch into next week, and, though we complain about the heat and smoky haze, we’ll complain more when it finally rains if the rain lasts more than a day. We want it all.

Which is one answer to any questions those of you outside Alaska may have about our soon-to-be-former governor’s recent erratic behavior. In summer, Alaskans are manic, frantically trying to accomplish as much as possible: gathering firewood, catching fish for winter, gardening, and trying to fit in as much fun as possible. We don’t sleep much, not only because of the light, but because we know we have to get it all in before the rainy days of August or the first frost of September. Our summer is driven by winter. So, perhaps, this has affected the governor, too. Sarah’s gone fishing, and we’ll be picking up the pieces in Alaska for some time to come.

In the mean time, there’s mulching, dealing with slime mold, staking tomatoes, composting horse manure, riding and training, getting in some trail rides, barbecuing on the deck, and sitting in the first base bleachers at the Goldpanners baseball games, tooting out the tune of Happy Boy on kazoos during the seventh-inning stretch. Smoke or no, Sarah or no, summer is good.

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The View from Mattie’s Pillow

June 30, 2009

Busy days in the garden and greenhouse.  After days of rain clouds, we have blue sky again.  The horses are so bored by rainy weather, they have chewed a post on the pass-through between them nearly through.  At night I hear Mattie chewing at it, rattling the metal fence attached to in in a rhythmic clanging.  Sam eggs her on.

Now it’s back to the garden and back to riding.

Here’s a poem from a few weeks ago:

——-

Visiting Sue Dean’s Garden


Irony is a rock garden:

light filters through petals,

the sky-colored poppy,

the deep pink fireweed,

a rose, an iris, the extravagant

plumes of fern—all glow

in June sun, against the cool

chocolate planes of quarried

rock. You point

here and there, to small plants

growing, tiny flecks of yellow,

or white, or pale blue flowers,

name them and the ones

who gave them to you.

Among them, a pond

that rocks outline lies still.

An insect floats there; algae

spreads. The plants sprawl out:

years of re-blooming, covering

the rough edges of rock.

You dream as you walk,

and speak of dreams.

We could sit here all day,

listening to the hum and buzz

of insects exploring sweet

caves, flowers, letting sun

fall on our arms as we bend

to pull out what we don’t

desire, tuck what we do

into dirt.

We slice fruit, nibble cheese,

turn compost, hope

for more and more to bloom

to rise from what hard things

rocks are, what nourishes

from decay.

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The Post of Don Sam Incognito

June 1, 2009

The other day, I met a woman walking her dog and baby stroller along our road. They stopped to let the dog, a curly coated Chesapeake, play with Jeter.

“So you own the white horse?” she asked. “My daughter thinks he’s a magical horse.”

“That’s Sam,” I said, “and he is a magical horse.”

Sam and Mattie came through the winter in fine form and are now sleek coated and getting some muscle definition—at least Sam is. After a long stretch of clicker training, both horses seem to have responded in ways I hoped them to—especially Sam. He hasn’t been head butting—except for the occasional slip up—and he knows the command “stand” and remembers to use his lips, not his teeth to take a treat. Mattie has her ears up more, but she and I need to go back to the clicker now that I’m saddling and mounting—both things she has lots of anxiety about.

Life is great for Sam, however, since he met Casey, who is part of a campus horse club. She’s an experienced rider without a horse and she’s coming out twice a week to work with and ride Sam. It’s great to see him respond to her. He’s bonded with her quickly—I have to remind him that I’m his person, too, sometimes—and he comes up to her and behaves like a gentleman for her, mostly. Because she’s willing to come twice a week to ride him, I can concentrate on solving some long standing issues with Mattie, including mounting and saddling.

It’s summer, summer, summer. The days are warm, the horses gleam in the corral, the garden is slowly getting planted on schedule (today’s our last frost date, so traditional planting day). Except for the earthquakes and tremors we’ve been experiencing the past few days, this is the best time of year here or anywhere.

Need to get back to the greenhouse, now.

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The View from Mattie’s Pillow

May 7, 2009

Things That Go Fast

This past week, for one. Last Friday, after a dance class taught by my dancer son, Ira, we all sat out on the deck at the Pump House swatting early season mosquitoes and watching the Chena River rush past. There were small ice floes, some just flat sheets of ice, some upended pieces that had once been frozen to river mud, now showing the bottom, tinged with red-orange silt and cratered from air pockets trapped there. A few ice sheets had ice chunks sitting on top of them where they had split off of another ice sheet and been shoved one atop the other when the river ice upstream had broken up. The river had been nearly still just the day before, the water rising where it had backed up from ice jams down river.

“The ice must have gone out in Nenana,” I said. We watched branches and more ice chunks float by fast. Then, upstream, we noticed something black, triangular, bobbing at intervals, and moving more slowly than the rest. From time to time it would rise from the river as if to see where it was going, then sink back to a low profile. As it got closer, we could see that it was the corner of a flat object, possibly a shed roof, floating with the current but trailing some part that created drag—or maybe reached the river bottom—and caused the whole thing to lift up occasionally. We watched it for a long time, a slow, unseasonably warm evening beside a fast river.

When we got home, we discovered that the ice had gone out in Nenana at about that time, freeing the Tanana and its tributary, the Chena and flushing the Interior of ice, dead wood, shed roofs, and other detritus that had ended up near the riverbanks. It’s so unusual for the ice to go out at night that only two people had chosen that time and will split the pot. Other years, dozens of people have split the pot, so this was a good year for the winners.

And the next day, another fast thing, Mine That Bird, an unknown horse who came from the back of the pack where, it turns out, he was just cooling his heels, biding his time, waiting for the cue from jockey Calvin Borel to dash past all the tiring favorites and run away with the race. I watched the race on a grainy screen at the Exhibit Hall in the Center for the Arts where horse people were gathered for a tack swap. Next to me, a 10-year-old girl, who knew all the details of her favorite horse and several others and who sat riveted during the race.

Friends who ask me about my feelings about horse racing expect me to talk about abuse or illegal substances, but I’m a bit goofy about watching Thoroughbreds run. They are lean, fit, high-strung horses–teenagers, really–and they love to run. Young colts in the wild race and play together; horse racing takes advantage of this impulse. And horses are honest—to see them stretched out running so fast just because they can—it makes me smile. The Kentucky Derby is all about potential. These horses are growing so fast at three years old that they will be completely different horses in a couple weeks for the Preakness, and even more different—some of them even taller—by the time the Belmont Stakes rolls around. I like to watch them all. They send me back to Mattie and Sam, determined to work through our stuck places and get them and me fit for the riding season. They remind me that anything is possible and to enjoy the moments of summer (and winter, but that’s another subject) as fully as I possibly can. The excitement of the crowd reminds me that it’s time to crawl out of my winter hole and share these moments with my friends.

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The View from Mattie’s Pillow

April 29, 2009

Finally warm weather. The snow is mostly gone, though still piled in a ridge where it slid off the roof over the past month, and still spread in shady spots in the woods. The corral is now mostly wet sand, boggy in spots where water is still draining off the hillside above, and pocked with the holes Mattie and Sam’s hooves have made when it was softer. Today I examined what had looked like a big patch of unmelted snow and discovered it was Sam’s white winter coat spread out in a spot where he had been rolling.

The tomatoes are four inches high and in their flats in the greenhouse. Soon I’ll be transplanting them into larger pots, one stage away from their final pots–square kitty litter containers, good for saving space in a small greenhouse. I have lettuce in a pot for the deck and a pot of basil I couldn’t resist planting. The deck is warm, the sky is blue, the geese and cranes are staging for their last push north to the nesting grounds. Spring, really, finally.

For those of you who associate spring and flowers, however, spring here is a grimy pause before the bursting-forth of summer. The ground is still soggy, not quite melted below the surface. The trees are still mere sticks, except for the willow catkins or pussywillows, the first hint of what is to come. The roads are muddy and flooded in spots. Everything is brown and gray without the relief of snow. The migrating birds passing overhead: geese, cranes, swans, ducks-are what we have instead of daffodils and crocuses.

Downriver, the tripod still rests in ice, though there are leads in the river and the ice is too soft to walk out on now. If this warming trend holds till Saturday, the ice will go out in Nenana and someone will win a share in the Nenana Ice Classic.

This year, again, proves that there is no predicting spring here in the Interior. When we bought our Ice Classic tickets April 5, only three weeks ago, we were all complaining about what a cold spring it had been. It seemed foolish to predict breakup before May 1. Now, an early ticket just may be a winner. It could be going out now while I write this.

We’re all waiting. Once the ice is gone, our brief spring will start and go. In another week it will be early summer, with bluebells and wild roses, pasque flowers, robins and thrushes, and all the wonderful work of gardening, conditioning and riding horses, and sitting on the deck with friends into the long pale night.

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Poetry Challenge 18

April 24, 2009

Small Chores

Our lives are full of small maintenance tasks that we do without thinking about them much. These tasks–brushing teeth, washing clothes or dishes, cooking–form a framework that the other “meaningful” activities we do can be built on. If we rush past one of these tasks and forget it, things seem out of kilter.

For example, today I had a routine visit from my farrier, Tom, to trim Mattie and Sam’s hooves. Standing there holding the horse while Tom trims and rasps, I notice how each visit marks the passage of time–today we stood in soft mud; last time it was 10 below–and how the horses relax into the moment, as if they know we are tending their welfare. For a few moments, they and we have the sense that all’s right with the world.

Write about a small maintenance task, the objects involved, the textures, smells, shapes, etc. Don’t worry about the big picture. It’s always there in how we do small things.

——–

Response from Glow:

Toklas
no question
over 6 years
8:00 AM, 8:00 PM
insulin shots for the cat
4389 times in 12-hour spaces
rhythms our lives settle between.
On this rhythm our careers were cobbled
patchwork research, loving, cooking conducted
travel parceled out among one of us at a time
tenure built and won while one of us ensured insulin
documentary film created while one of us measured glucose
trips to the vet, crisis consultatons, kindness doled out
litter boxes organized, filled, emptied, a kind of skill
meanwhile dinners fixed, lunches packed
love made, showers taken, groceries
alloted among shelves packed with
cat supplies, needles, bottles
special canned food, best dry
new small round dishes
flowers, fruit, leaves
best size for bites
of tempting treats
designed to lull
diabetes to
sleep

———-

Here’s my response to this prompt:

Opening the Greenhouse

Last summer’s tomatoes
pale as skeletons,
brittle leaves:
lace handkerchiefs dangle
from bony fingers.

My fingers itch
for dirt. I tug the stems
pull the dead roots
from last year’s soil,
these plants I tended
each day, wept
to give over to frost.

I tip the planters
so dirt piles
in a plastic bin;
stack them to be washed
and the vines to compost.

I sweep the wooden bench
of dirt and leaves
where the plastic flats
hold new tomatoes,
inches high, stretching
for sun.

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And the Horse

April 23, 2009

This is not an excerpt from the book of essays, but rather a note of sorrow for all those involved in the loss of the polo ponies in Florida.  It’s hard to imagine what it was like to watch horse after horse collapse.  It’s harder still to imagine what life in the barn is like now while all are awaiting the toxicity report.  There’s speculation that the horses were given a tainted vitamin injection–something routinely done, minus the taint, to help horses maintain muscle recovery after the stress of athletic competition.

No one would have wanted this to happen.   We can only wait to find out how it did and how those involved will respond.

Mattie and Sam send their condolences.  As do I.

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