Posts Tagged ‘spring’

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The View from Mattie’s Pillow

March 10, 2010

Spring Break

A week’s respite from the intensity of spring semester; I am getting time for real life.

This morning, as I write, the sun is warm on my back through the glass door to the deck.  Recently, it’s been high enough in the sky to clear the ridgeline behind us, so the corral is in sun till late afternoon, and it’s light enough to work outside till nearly seven and later each day.  This time of year sneaks up on us—but all seasons do in the north; they’re so extreme and transition so quickly.  Now, during this fallow week, I planned to get out every day to work with Mattie and Sam, but it’s Wednesday already, and I’ve only been out with them twice, and I can already feel the week slipping away.

On the shelf by the south-facing window are this year’s seeds, sorted by planting date, and stored in those clear plastic shells that cinnamon rolls from Lulu’s come home in.  Yesterday, I washed the old flats from the greenhouse, and today I will plant the first seeds of the year: Chianti Rose, Pompeii Roma, Sungold, and Camp Joy tomatoes.  Later in the week, I’ll plant the Little Prince eggplant—trying over on an unsuccessful experiment from last year.  Although the ground will be covered with snow till well into April or, if we get a few good March snowstorms, May, my mind is full of the joy of green things to come.

I imagine lettuce—I plant a cutting mix and a red and green romaine mix—the speckled leaves, the russet leaves, the frilled and smooth leaves, glowing as the sun slants through them in the evening. I imagine pulling carrots—I’m trying King Midas this year, a long variety, with the horses in mind.  I miss the taste of them, sweet, with just a hint of garden grit with the crunch of the root.

Mattie and Sam still stand in the sun each morning to warm their coats—it was fifteen below this morning.  In the afternoon, it will warm above zero and I’ll head out to groom them and do some longeing and groundwork.  I imagine I’m working them towards fitness for summer, but know that the weather, the cold, the packed snow melting in April to a dangerous slickness, the work ahead to finish the semester will all compete with my intentions toward them.  We have an ambitious lesson and clinic schedule set up for summer, including a three day Centered Riding clinic.  Between now and May, they need to be fit enough to take hour long lessons and the trail rides I hope to go on.  And so do I.

So, now, I’m on the couch, Jeter the poodle curled on his end, writing this instead of grooming, longeing, planting, dancing.  The sun has moved farther along the window now.  On NPR, there’s a discussion on the role of poetry in our lives in the 21st century.  There’s more coffee to drink.  Spring is still a dream, but a lovely dream.  We gather our energy now for the work ahead.

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Poetry Challenge 40

February 21, 2010

The Thaw

Here in the Interior, temperatures are sneaking above freezing at mid-day.  The snow is melting away on south-facing hills, birds are darting wildly through the air as if they think they missed the beginning of mating season, and the roads are slick and treacherous from the melting ice over still-frozen pavement.   People are shedding coats, eyeing the greenhouse, ordering seeds, walking out in the sun and thinking of summer plans.  All the while, we know our folly, for we are not yet out of February and not yet into March.  At the back of our minds, we hear the old song, “When It’s Springtime in Alaska, It’s Forty Below.”  Really.  We’re restless, joyful, yet preparing for this respite from winter to be snatched away from us by deep cold and more snow.

So, here’s the challenge–write about a thaw of some kind: an old grudge melts away, an intractable animal becomes gentle, a place that seemed ugly suddenly looks beautiful, or an actual thaw complete with mud, green things, dripping water.   Post it in the comments section and I’ll add it here.  All of us in the Interior are waiting.

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The View from Mattie’s Pillow

February 13, 2010

Warmer days here—up around zero. For those of you reading this in the Lower 48, that may not seem warm, but with the increasing sunlight, dry air, and low snow cover, it feels like spring is on its way. On campus, walking between buildings at lunch or between classes, people seem animated, smiling, holding doors open for each other in order to have a chance to say, ”Isn’t the weather great today? Isn’t the light amazing?”

In the corral, Mattie and Sam position themselves in the sun, dozing. This morning, Mattie stood with her head half lowered, while Sam curled up on the packed snow of his favorite rolling spot. Some birds, perhaps juncos, swooped long arcs in the air above us. The light spread across the snow, up the hill to the trunks of the spruce trees, and tangled in the red-gray twigs at the end of the birch branches, delicate looking, but waiting for the right mix of light and warmth to start sucking sap out to the buds like sugar water through a soda straw. Astonishingly fragile pale green leaves will unfurl from those dry-looking sticks one day in May, and we’ll be into the mad rush of summer.

But I get ahead of myself. Today, I’m heading out with brushes, mane and tail detangler, and a “waterless” shampoo to get their coats ready for shedding season. They look like long-legged bears, their coats are so long and thick. And I’ve been so caught up with work that I come home too tired and the late afternoon is still too dark to spend much time with them daily, except for the usual scratch on the neck and good visual once-over.

Today, too, I’ll go back to the seed catalog on line to look at the gorgeous photos of carrots, lettuce, tomatoes and the difficult things: eggplant, peppers, melons, and try to finalize my seed order so that I can start indoor planting soon. I remember that, last year as I started this blog, I was in the midst of my sabbatical and that my personal goal (as opposed to the professional) was to get a sense of how else I could spend my life other than the way I do at work. Here’s what I’m concluding: fewer meetings, fewer obligations other than ones I can concentrate my energies on to do well, more horse time, more time with my hands in dirt, more writing. The question is how to do this in a self-sustaining way, without fully “retiring.” I watch friends of mine who’ve retired in disgust at the intensity of their work life, but haven’t substituted anything else for it. This works out badly for them.

For now, I’ll juggle both, knowing that the academic calendar gives me freedom when I need it most for my “real” life—the months of May-August. And as the light grows stronger and lingers longer in the evening, I’ll have more time and energy (light equals energy after all) to prepare my semi-feral critters for all that I have planned for them this summer.

If you are on the East Coast—enjoy the snow before it melts. Send us some for our dog races and to shelter the roots of our plants as the frost line works its way down through our soil in the spring. When spring actually comes for you—crocuses and daffodils—we’ll still be basking in the dazzle of light reflecting back off snow. Send photos and poems!

Update:  I spent an hour with Sam, detangling his mane and tail.  The sun gleamed off the long hairs of his coat and he stood dozing while I worked.  After that, we did a little clicker work, training him to touch his red ball to the word “touch”.  We had done this with other objects before, so he picked it up quickly.  I wish I knew how to cue all the tricks he already knows, but I’m guessing the cues are rather confused for him at this point.  Sometimes I’m sure what looks at first like bad behavior is a trick he’s been cued to–but I may never know his history.

One more thing.  When I got out to the corral, I checked the water tank to see if it was low enough to clean out the scuzz that accumulates at the bottom: shavings, hay, a feather or two.  When I looked in the tank, there was a whole bird, a chickadee, perched nervously on the red plastic that joins the heating element to the cord on the outside of the tank.  He was just above the water line and he eyed me suspiciously as I peered over the edge. I could see that his tail feathers were wet and scraggly; he must have tried to drink and gotten wet and was now too heavy to fly up out of the high-sided tank.  I put the grooming tools down on the fence rail and reached in gently with my gloved hand to give him a boost.  He flew up high enough to get over the tank rim then perched on the stall divider on Mattie’s side.  She walked over with her nose down, sniffing him cautiously.  He flew up again, over  tank to Sam’s side, where he perched on the salt block and ruffled his feathers.  As I worked with Sam, I checked back on him from time to time, sitting there on the rust-colored salt in the sun.  The run-in shed faces south, so he was in sun with no breeze–the perfect place to dry out.  From time to time he would call out “Chick-a-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee” a hoarse call, perhaps warning other birds away from the treacherous water tank.  Finally, when I went to check again, he was gone, feathers dried, dignity restored.

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The Post of Don Sam Incognito

January 24, 2010

Every day the sun moves a bit higher in its trajectory across the southern sky.  For weeks past solstice and the New Year, it would blip up over the horizon, then slip behind the spine of the ridge that slopes down to Rosie Creek to the southwest of us, so that the newly lingering light of afternoon would be slightly muted and colder than it might otherwise be.  But today, the sun hung high enough above the ridge that it seemed to be climbing an eddy along the ridgeline and light bleached the sky and gleamed off the snow and off Sam’s white coat.

Sam hasn’t had a post here in a while, partly because he and Mattie have been on their long winter break. Since Thanksgiving, it seemed that I never saw them in daylight except for weekends, and then it would be too cold to do much besides clean the corral and chat with them while throwing in an extra flake of hay.  But today the temperatures rose to nearly zero—warm enough that I could take my gloves off to groom or to do some clicker reinforcement with Sam, who really needs it.

The horses get a bit feral during their winter break.  They hesitate when I come out with a halter, thinking it over, even though they know I have beet pellets in my hand.  Once, this fall, when the temperatures were headed to thirty below and I wanted to blanket them while it was warm enough (twenty below) to move my fingers on the metal blanket hooks, Sam took one look at me and walked away, swishing his tail.  Today, though, he came up to me and let me halter him.  He seemed glad for the attention, though he wasn’t entirely cooperative.

We worked on basic stuff—things he’s known how to do his whole life: stand in place, take a treat graciously without tooth-to-hand contact, back up, come to me (I use the command, “step up”), keep his head out of my space (the hardest for him).  With Sam, because he’s so clever and has gotten away with such mischief before, it’s always good to review the basic groundwork before getting him back in shape for summer, oh so long away.

Sam has never been and will never be a sleepy cuddly gelding, like the ones I’ve been riding at a local facility.  A group of us in Horsemasters have rented an indoor arena and lesson horses from a local camp and we’ve started riding every Saturday night.  It’s good to work with Stormy, the reliable Quarter horse gelding I’ve been riding.  He stops if there’s any trouble in the arena; he’s never pushy; he seems resigned to a life where lots of people of varying abilities ride him; and he seems grateful for the attention I give him, grooming, talking to him in my horse voice—a kind of soft banter I learned from my riding instructor when I was a kid—mostly “Good boy, good boy.”  After working with Stormy, I feel ready for Sam.  For one thing, it’s clear that it’s not unreasonable to ask Sam to develop good horse manners, no matter what he thinks.  For another, it’s clear that I do know how to handle a reasonable horse.  Sam just has his own ideas about things.

It was still too cold to use the clicker today, so I did what I’ve read that others do—a soft ticking sound with my tongue, not to be confused with the cluck or “kissy” sound of encouragement.  He got that it was the same deal as the clicker, and after a few review tries, he stood when I said “stand,” with his face straight ahead.  Because he turns his head away when I say “wait,” something we developed early as an alternative gesture to diving at hay at feeding time, I’ve defined “stand” as with his head straight forward.  This also counteracts his tendency to want to mouth or nose-butt me while I’m grooming him.

After we worked on “stand” I had him stand while I moved to the end of the line, and we practiced “step up”—easy—from the front and both sides.  And always, we worked on “gentle” or taking a treat with no teeth, something he’s motivated to learn, since the treat goes away when he applies teeth.  Strangely, though, he doesn’t seem as talented as Mattie is at picking things up with his lips and drops the beet pellets sometimes.

Mattie and I worked some today, too, though not with the clicker.  With Mattie, it’s always a matter of reminding her once again that nothing I do will hurt her, a slow desensitization every spring.  I groomed her, picked the ice balls out of her feet with the ice hammer, and worked on small circles on the longe line.  She doesn’t like to work far from me, though she was doing better by the end of last summer.  After a few circles in both directions a couple of times and some “stand” and “step up,” we were done.   A good first day of preparation for spring.

It’s dark now.  In a few minutes, I’ll make up their dinner dishes: beet pellets, supplements, and a small scoop of flax seeds for their coats.  We’ll haul a few buckets of water out to the water tank while they’re munching the hay.  Jeter, who looks like a café au lait cub with his coat all grown out and flopping as he runs, will come with us, bounding around, picking up frozen horse “balls” and running with them, pulling up in front of me with a sliding sit for treats.

We’ve made it through the darkest time.  All’s well.

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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 21, 2009

Spring? Here in the Interior we leap from winter to summer with a brief period of bleak brown and gray—-the soggy earth and the quickly melting snow—-in between. In the past three days the leaves have gone from tiny newly furled lemon-lime leaflets to shiny dark-green leaves. The woods are full of their flashing, the twittering of birds–not the electronic kind, but electric with the urgency and joy of mating.

After two weeks of Master Gardener class, I’m now ready to put the garden in, and, like every year, I feel three weeks behind, though we’re still a week and a half away from our traditional planting date, June 1. In the greenhouse, the tomato plants are growing sturdy stems and richly green leaves. The peppers are coming along, as are the broccoli, kale, eggplants. It’s yummy to write this, but they are all still tiny green leaves with a long way and much potential for misfortune to come before the yummy time actually comes.

I’m still starting seeds in the greenhouse—-lettuce, beans, things I could plant outside–but I’m trying to cheat the season and the potential for a late frost by planting them under the protection of the fiberglass roof. I also have flower sets I bought from a local grower, so the greenhouse is sweet with the smell of petunias and heliotrope.

This is an energetic time of year, fueled by the intensity of long sunlight. Thinking back to the dreamy slow winter days when I started this blog, it’s clear how the seasons in the Interior affect the psyche. In the winter, I’m introspective, writing in a near dream state, engaged with the senses in an inward way. Now, on the verge of summer, I’m so active—-gardening, riding, dancing—-that I fall asleep exhausted and wake a bit stiff (why I’m sitting and writing right now), then head out to do more digging, raking, brushing, saddling, riding, etc.

Last night, driving home near midnight, I was struck by the silvery light everywhere. I nearly wrote, “in the sky” but, like the light that radiates off the snow in winter, summer evening light seems to come out of the land itself, not from the sky. We are in the best time of year, two full months of these “white nights” when light lingers after the sun has slipped briefly behind the hills. It’s a long twilight that lasts for hours before slowly brightening into morning and sunlight again. On Solstice, the sun will dip below the horizon for three hours, but the light stays strong enough that we have our Midnight Sun baseball game every year from 10pm to whenever with no artificial lights, even when clouds complicate matters. Some years, when it’s a well-matched game going into extra innings, we sit in the stands watching as the sun lifts back up from the hills again, around 2am. We’re tired the next day—-if it’s a work day, everyone drags through it—-but happy to have seen something wonderful.

This time of year, I wouldn’t trade Alaska for any other state I’ve ever lived in—-and they all have their good qualities. But now, in all this sun we feel purged of the discontent that built up like a sludge in our hearts through the winter. The blood thins a bit in the warmth and runs more quickly. The skin absorbs and processes vitamin D—-they say it contributes to contentment. We grow our gardens and eat everything fresh we can get our hands on.

Jeter the dog sleeps by the open door to the deck in his newly shaved summer coat. The warblers call to each other. There’s a flute on the radio—-maybe Mozart—-and a slight breeze plays across the keys of the computer. All’s well here.

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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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The Post of Don Sam Incognito

April 23, 2009

Not much to report on the training scene right now as we wait for the corral to clear of packed ice and snow melt. Sam and Mattie are responding to the clicker training, but I’m not sure I’ve been trained well enough to make it stick at this point. When I click the clicker, Sam arches his neck down, knowing that a treat will follow. But he’s so smart and has been able to push people around for so long, that he eventually tries to get around me to get the treat without the work.

I spent some time on You Tube the other night watching videos of Andalusians doing high school tricks and movements. These were Mexican Andalusians, mostly, broad-backed, high strung, athletic. I watched the passage and piaffe to see what the riders did with their aids and whips. Some of the riders weren’t trying to be subtle, so I could see how they shifted their weight at each step and even cued the horses’ shoulders during the Spanish Walk. One horse crouched down in piaffe to launch into cabriole, leaping up and kicking his hind legs straight behind him.

I watched horses at liberty and under saddle; some were Spanish, some French, some German. Many of them did tricks, as well, bowing, lying down with the rider then getting up again. None of this is usual dressage arena fare, but it gave me some ideas of how Sam may have been trained at one point and why he’s so excitable about being asked to work.

Today, I decided to get back to working with them, despite the moonscape quality of the corral. Both horses are a bit too fat right now, in spite of my care in how much hay they get at each feeding. I’ve decided that the hay–from two different growers–has two different levels of sugar content. I’m feeding mostly from one side of the hay barn now, trying to empty out that bay so I can clean under the pallets and fill it up again with the first cutting of summer. But they’re doing too well on it, and now we need to cut back a bit and step up the exercise a bit.

Which brings me to today. Monday, I was in the corral with Sam trying to scrape some of the manure layer off the packed snow/ice layer. It was a lovely warm afternoon, and Sam wanted to play gelding games with me. I wanted him to be a cuddly horse, one that I could lean against, forehead to forehead, as I had once done with my childhood horse, Bambi. Sam is a trickster, and I knew better, but I was off my guard, and busy with the rake and shovel. He came over and put his face near mine and swung it toward me as I moved, catching me on the mouth. I got a split lip and more determination to follow through with the clicker work. I’ve gotten too casual with it.

Today, I had him on a lead rope, standing in the middle of the corral. I had the clicker and gave the command, “Stand” and clicked and treated only when he stood still with his head straight in front of him and not at my pocket or near my face. He tried backing up–no treat. He tried holding his head sideways the way I taught him to at the command, “Wait”–no treat. Eventually he got it, though it’s still a pose for him.

I managed to get piles of white hair out of his winter coat using the shedding blade and got him to stand untied while I picked his feet–even the hind, which he likes to feint cow-kick when I go to pick them up. After we did this, I tacked him up in longe gear: a nylon surcingle, cavesson, a longeing headstall and bit, sidereins. We’ve gotten a bit stuck in our longeing, something he used to do like a champ. Now he just wants to circle his hindquarters around to face me. I know I’ve done something to give him this idea, but don’t know what.

Instead of longeing, and in spite of being all tacked up, I just walked him around the corral with my hand on his neck, companionable, but maintaining the space between us. When we did this, he seemed relaxed and interested. When I tried backing off and moving him forward with the longe whip, he got the old doubtful look in his eye. So, I put the whip away and walked with him, but a little farther away, marking the space with a pointed finger rather than the longe whip. At one point he was far enough out on the line that he began to trot. He wouldn’t do this to the other side, but I decided that, given the ice and muck in the corral–not good conditions for going faster than a walk–that this was good enough. I ended the session by scratching him on the withers and down the groove in his back over his spine. He stool high headed, twisting his upper lip in pleasure. I don’t remember him liking to be scratched so much, but maybe he’s only now trusting me enough to let me find the spot. He was pretty shut down three years ago when he first came to us.

Then I worked with Mattie on “Ears up” and groomed her and worked with her at liberty–a trust exercise for her and for me. She didn’t trot, but walked well away from me at the pointing of the driving whip. Mattie is less of a puzzle to me because I know what she doesn’t know and she’s very clear–sometimes threateningly so–when she’s confused or worried about what I’m asking. Then I back off a little and try again in another way. In spite of this, she really does trust me and will let me lean against her and will rest her head on me in a way Sam won’t.

Lots of preliminary work, still, before the corral is in good enough shape to ride, but all in all, a good day with horses.

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Poetry Challenge 17

April 22, 2009

Now that spring is on its way here in the Interior, we’re watching for little changes that mean we’re really done with winter. Willow buds puff out into pussywillows; low spots in the road fill with water during the warm parts of the day; geese, cranes, and ducks flock in to feed and rest on Creamer’s Field, then straggle north to breed. The big, unmistakable change will be when the ice goes out on the river in Nenana and we learn who had the best guess–and a little more spending money for summer projects.

So write about the small changes that happen where you are that signify a larger change. It doesn’t have to be about spring, or not just about spring. Focus on the little things and let us read through to the big ones.

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