A Return, again

We have returned to the place where first visited decades ago, back then drawn by a desperate need for a bed and food after wandering around the mountains for days, sleeping in tents and eating freeze dried food. Back then we stumbled upon Snowbird Mountain Lodge by accident after dark, fairly late at night, to find the dining room had closed. The kind inn keeper fed us anyway and gave us the last room available, a tiny closet in the far corner of an outside building away from the lodge, now a utility closet. The next morning our sack lunches were packed and ready for us to pick up to take on our journey for the day. Our stay had been brief but we had felt the strong healing spirit of this place then and it made for the best of brief memories. Decades forward we are here again, a new inn keeper is in charge, the place has changed little, and the spirit that induces rest, is still here. 

Anytime I leave the farm, the animals, and all of the daily responsibilities that tie me to the place and my way of daily life, it is hard. As the deadline to leave gets closer I feel my stress levels rising in anticipation of all of the possible things that can go wrong while I am away and spend my time trying to find ways to divert their happening, or if they do, I leave numbers and instructions on how to deal with the situation. It is a pointless waste of my energy but it can’t be helped. I can not stop that which might happen despite my wishes and best efforts to counteract them. At some point I have to realize that the only thing left to do is to pack my things, and leave. On Saturday, we did.

We drove north, by north east, stopping by a water fall in north Alabama on the Little River. This not so tiny river flowed through a deep canyon which had been carving out the rocky sides for centuries. Now a National Reserve it has been made more access able to those who aren’t so adventurous to climb down slippery trails to get to see the beauty of the place. Above the falls on the flat slow moving water with scattered deeper pools families were enjoying the cool water, children splashed, and adults basked on the rocks.

They were sitting on an uplifted geological story book. The hard rock that I stood on had obviously been many things in the time since it began to be. Layer by layer it had been formed and in each layer the story of its incarnation was revealed. The lower levels of this sedimentary book showed primitive shells of varying types and shapes of a time when this ground was under ocean water. A strata above that showed evidence of fallen trees and acorns or some type of round nuts imbedded into what was then perhaps a marshy forrested place. Each layer was different and laden with different clues as to what changes this ground had seen. Now it was a massive rock formation which defined a fall line and was the precipice for the water fall that we had come to see. The air rising off the falling water was cool and refreshing in stark comparison to the feeling in the parking lot which was thick, hot, and damp. We got in the air conditioned car and drove on.

Mark was scheduled to teach a workshop at Snowbird Lodge for the week ahead. Our check in was Sunday night, and so we headed towards the cooler mountains, and the place we were revisiting, again. It was my birthday, again, and having this destination as the place to be spending and celebrating the occasion at, made the day’s driving a gift in it self.

Over the course of the day I had occasionally checked my phone to see if all was well back at the farm, and was amazed at the kind good wishes for a happy birthday on my FaceBook thing. It really was a bit humbling to find so many had even noticed, and had responded to the FB alert and so many had sent a plethora of sweet messages. Most of my days are spent in semi hermit like reclusion, not because I don’t care to be around folks, its just that maintaining the farm, riding the horses, and such take a lot of time and we live a good ways from town. There are many days where I feel a bit alone and friendless, so to find such an overwhelming bunch of happy birthday wishes was wonderful and a very nice gift to have received from all. Top that off with a week ahead at Snowbird, it was the icing and the candle complete.

There is always a magical feeling when we drive into the narrow drive at the bottom of the hill on which the lodge is sited. The open road gives way to deep shade and then suddenly bright green colors appear in a vivid and shocking glow from the trees above and the bright mosses on the ground below. A tiny stream meanders from the right, under the road, and disappears around the curve of the hill. There is small house shaped box to the left which looks all the while like a troll might peek from behind it and demand a toll, but hasn’t yet. With a turn to the left the car strains to rise up the steep drive, and once out of the car at the top the gravel crunches softly under my feet as I walk to take in the mountain view. My shoulders always drop with a big sigh, and for here and now, life is good.

In the pattern of the Neal Simon play where Alan Alda and the actress, whose name I can’t remember just now, met at a lodge each year for a weekend together, each time being a scene of their lives together at this place, we caught up with our friends that we had met here many years ago and again, renewed our friendships over wine and dinner.  Afterwards I was brought a hunk of chocolate yumminess with a single candle on it and I blew it out, but forgot to make a wish. A good night cap and a game of dominoes and we called it a night and fell into a deep sleep. It was an excellent birthday and great start to a week ahead.

Mark is teaching his workshop now while I take the luxury of time to write and enjoy the lack of responsibility of doing absolutely anything. It is a tough job, but somebody has got to do it. I am just glad it is me. Life will have its say when I get home as it always does, but for now, older and questionably wiser, I am relaxing.   

On Norman Bridge Road

written on Wednesday....

About three pm yesterday, it was getting darker as clouds approached and I hurried to get the horses fed in a gentle mist that was being dropped by the leading edge of yet another rumbling afternoon storm.  Back in the house again, the lights, not surprisingly, flickered and went out. The skies opened wide and began dumping more rain on the already water logged ground below. Lightening cracked and thunder rolled in yet another in this summer’s month long pattern, but this one was different.

News got to us that the charming neighborhood in nearby Montgomery, Old Cloverdale had been hit extremely hard by a wind sheer from the storm and that many of the ancient giant oaks had gone down. Roads were blocked, houses totaled, cars smashed, and power lines lay strewn everywhere. Our daughters both live in this neighborhood of charming cottages and oak covered lanes, as does my brother and his wife. They all escaped harm and damage, but  all around them, was devastation. Today I learned that my grandparent’s old house, also in this neighborhood, had been totaled by a fallen massive oak, a tree which had shaded the yard that my father grew up in and where I played in as a little kid. 

Since I haven’t seen the scene, I don’t know which of the oaks it was. It could have been the one by the sidewalk that we walked by each time we came to visit. Or, it might have been the one in the back yard with a thick horizontal branch to which long ropes were tied to hold a simple wooden board swing that my grandfather spent hours pushing me high up into the sky on. There were others in their yard, but these two stand out in my memory as the largest and most stately. 

It makes me incredibly sad to think of this house in ruins and one of the big trees laying atop it with its roots ripped from the ground. There is so much that I remember about that yard, and that house, and the wonderful times I spent there with my family and cousins. It was a tiny house with strange hallways and doorways, but it was full of mystery and charm, and mostly it was filled with the unconditional love of my grandparents.

The yard was my grandfather Bibb’s, pride and joy. It too was tiny but I never knew it until later when I viewed it with adult eyes. It was full of wonderful plants and flowers that Bibb tended like a zen master. A narrow sidewalk of coarse old red brick lay in a cross hatched pattern running from the garage to the back door steps and gave definition to the yard. Red roses grew on the side of the garage and I used to play a game of hopscotch on the bricks, jumping to make my feet echo their pattern. Mature camellias of varying shades of color and shapes were dotted around the yard and I would walk with Bibb as he examined them for bugs and scale, and just to admire them. But always, there was the presence of the towering oak trees passively, shading, cooling, and standing guard.  

The one by the street leaned a bit towards the house and its image is clear when I remember the day we had an urgent call from Miriam that something terrible had happened. Miriam stood crying under that leaning tree as we drove up. Their little white house had caught fire and the contents of the porch/library had all been lost. The crisp white walls of the house were charred and streaked with soot and everything was still dripping with a sickening sound of water from the firemen’s hoses. I had never seen my grandmother cry or be upset by anything and this image of her so distraught frightened me and made me cry from my lack of understanding. 

 I learned later that, having lived through the Great Depression my grandmother held no confidence in banks and that here, all of her saved up money, in cash, had been tucked into the pages of the books in her library, hidden and safe.  In a deja vu moment of earlier times, this money of hers had vanished in a puff of smoke, fire, and water. 

My aunt Mimi, Miriam and Bibb’s daughter and my father’s sister, used to come home from Atlanta and I would go and

spend the night at their house when she came. There were two small bedrooms upstairs and we would sleep in hers, the one on the right with the deep purple wall paper that covered the walls and ran up the slanted form of the roof above. Looking out of her window she taught me “Twinkle, twinkle, little star. How I wonder what you are....”, and she taught me to make a wish on a star, the biggest I could find in the dark night sky.

Under the stairway was a dark and narrow closet that I loved exploring when the grownups were busy talking and I was forgotten. It was Bibb’s shoe closet. Bibb wore a suit every day of his life that I know of, and all those suits had to have shoes. Wing tips and spats, formal laced up leather shoes of every style and color rested in this dark seclusion in all of their original boxes. 

There was a drawer that Miriam kept her snap together beads in, white plastic beads to snap together into long flapper style strands, short chokers, or any length desired for the occasion. There were antique toys, wire mesh baskets that could be shaped into different things, a paddle that held a group of wooden chickens that pecked the paddle by string and a pendulum that spun in a circle, making click, click, click as it spun. My favorite was the Pick Up Sticks can filled with

thin colored wooden sticks that one twisted into a bundle and then let them fall into a pile on the floor, with the aim of picking them up one by one without moving any in the pile.

All of the games, the toys, the yard, the swing, the trees, the very mood of the house that sat on the corner of Norman Bridge Road and Park with all of the people who lived there and who enriched my life, simply made time slow down. What a precious ability this was, to make life last by the moment, savoring each delicious second as though it were the only one that mattered. It was a haven for my soul and it taught me how important it is to remember to go there.........

written today...Friday

Today I went to town to see the sad remains of the old house and, to my surprise I drove up to, not only finding it standing, but relatively unscathed. There were workers sitting under the shade of the carport which was covered by a huge blue tarp and there was evidence of huge limbs from trees that had fallen on it but had been cleaned up. The new owner was there and after introducing myself, he happily showed me the remodeling he had done on the place. It was great fun seeing the changes, a hallway closed up and wall taken out to open spaces, newer paint and new bathroom downstairs fixtures, and the old sink that Bibb used to shave at every morning in his sleeveless t-shirt was upstairs. Mostly, though, it was the same. In looking down the stairway that looked exactly the same I half expected to see my grandfather walk through the front door, cigar in

mouth and newspaper in hand.

I was thrilled also to see that the leaning tree was still standing, wider in girth from the years, but the owner said that the tree that had held my swing had been gone before he had bought the house. It did make me happy to see the place again, and it being not too much worse for the possible damage that could have happened. It has been a nice ride down memory lane for the past few days, thinking about it and remembering nice times in connection with this house and these trees.

Our grand daughter stayed with us last night and I watched her in a new reflection of my own surge of memories jogged by the storm, as she played and explored her grandparents house. I wonder what she will remember of this house and what it felt like to be here, years from now when she is older and we are perhaps gone. If she is lucky she will have wonderful memories if they are half as good as mine. I hope so.

Tomatoes

It is nice to have had a break from my past posts of eulogies and tributes to the fallen animals in my life. In that time since, summer has rolled along, soggy, heavy, and hot and seems to be locked into a weird pattern of continual rain, and have been so for nearly a month now. The vegetation has responded and the world outside looks like an emerald tropical rain forrest. Grass in the pasture is so lush that it has needed to be cut just so the horses don’t gorge on it and founder, and the grass in the yard begs for mowing daily. Moss, mildew, and algea abound on every surface and a walk to the barn in this humidity, even if it’s not raining at the time, results in soaked clothing that must be removed and replaced. On Monday I decided to take advantage of a few hours of what looked to be clear skies for a minute and so headed out the front door with a glass of iced tea to go ride some horses. I got to our front steps and started down.

Our front steps are wooden and have been there since we built the house in ’94. They are now shaded by very large pink blooming crape myrtles whose limbs are draped with strands of Spanish Moss making for a nice dark entrance way. They are also under the drip line from the roof and have seen no dry moments in a long time. They are glazed with a green slick slime and they are scary slippery. I knew that, but being anxious to get to the barn I took them anyway. And yup, right at the third from the bottom, being super careful, I found my left foot suddenly leaving me and I went down the remaining three steps sliding in the wet mess, and landed with a not so graceful thud.

I had been very careful in my fall to make sure my tea did not spill. Time does funny things in moments like that. I had time to think about the tea and whether or not Gracie, the Yorkie, was behind me or not. I thought about how hurt I was really going to be after this dumb move. My right arm shot out to block some of my fall and it also slipped on the slime and banged hard into the edge of another step. I sat at the bottom to assess the damage, and drank some tea.

As I assessed, no broken bones, no arteries severed, a major bruise was forming on right arm, left hip area yes, banged up quite nicely, it occurred to me that if one was to take a tumble, and bust one’s butt that to do so on a day that one had already had an appointment with a chiropractor was a silver lining. My appointment had been made at my last visit weeks back but how fortuitous it was that my busting my rear happened a few hours before I was due to get my normal getting put back together. This visit she would have something new to work on. I got up and headed on off to the barn and decided not to press my luck further by riding the horses lest I have even more for my chiro to work on by getting dumped by one of them. 

Barn world is always full of visitors, some by day like the cat who cleans up the spilled horse food and the geese who drop their feathers and copious amounts of poop at the pond’s edge. Then there are the sneakers who come in the dark and maraud and steal, leaving few clues as to who and when. Lately we have been the target of a pair of resourceful raccoons that have found one of my feed cans to be easy to raid and have done so despite my continued attempts to get the lid to stay on. It has become clear that they are better at getting it off than I am in thinking about how to keep it on, and they are eating a lot of my horse feed.

At first I suspected coons but could not imagine how one might get the heavy weights off the lid that I put on after feeding each afternoon. So one night last week Mark snuck quietly down to the barn late at night armed with the southern basics, a flashlight and a gun. As he came around the corner to the feed room he saw the lid was open, again, and to his surprise up popped the masked faces of two of these thieves from inside the can. I was not a witness but he claims to have shot and wounded them both, one he left for dead in the wash stall, the other took off into the darkness. Confident of his success he was sure they would not return. Not. The next morning the dead one was gone, and the can lid was open. Short of putting an anvil on there to keep them out, I am perplexed at their ingenuity and persistence. They are definitely ahead of me on this one.

These are also probably the culprits who stole the entire crop of sweet corn out the garden too. I had hot wired the area about the time the rainy season began with a solar charger that Mark had picked up to power it. The problem there was that the charger needed a full day of sunshine to get a good charge, and we haven’t gotten a full day of sun, the charger didn’t get the power, so the coons just waltzed through the wires and got fat on the tender corn. 

Between the Asian stink bugs that ate my beans and the coons that got my corn and  horse feed, not to mention the unknown predators who robbed my Martin nests, I feel like I have been at war with nature, and am losing. The one saving thing this summer is the tomatoes. They, thankfully, are thriving.

After two years of disappointment of the vines wilting from viruses and zero tomatoes from the garden, this year I tried a new tactic. I wanted them close to the house so we could watch them carefully, and to get them out of the contaminated soil, so we pulled up the shrubs that lined the walkway up to the previously mentioned slime covered steps, tilled up the soil and threw some plants in, and waited.

They are all a mixed variety of heirlooms with the idea that maybe these old types would  be more resistant to the evils of growing. While not in as much sun as they might have needed, (but this summer what is?) they have grown tall and have begun to put out delicious fruit of varying colors, shapes, and flavors. We had a brief battle with a few horned worms who nearly devoured an entire plant in a day, but beyond that they have been a redeeming reward for the anguish of the coon infestation and no summer corn. There are few things better in life than a still warm, sliced tomato, right off the vine, arranged on a slice of white bread that’s been slathered with mayonnaise. A shake of salt and pepper, and covered with a top slice of mayo covered bread and that is sheer perfection. One a day, is not too many.

Tomatoes are the real reason summer exists and why I can tolerate evan a little of it. Sadly, the sun will move on and summer will end and tomato season will be gone for another year. But for now, they are at their peak and I am seriously enjoying this part.   

The Spirit of a Horse

In my beginning, there was always the horse. The horse was my inexplicable passion and curiosity. On the mobile which hung over my crib, I distinctly remember the parade of the fuzzy bellies of animals that circled my head as I lay there. There was a sheep, a duck, a pig, and a horse, all wound up there in a continuous circling motion while soft music played in an attempt to lure me to sleep. My focus always, was on the horse.

My grandfathers both were horsemen, but my mother’s dad still had one when I was old enough to be placed on a horse’s back. His mare, a plain bay walking horse, was named Old Lady. I have no idea how old she was but all through out my childhood and later until college, she was simply there, every summer when we went to visit, a magical creature without  any apparent signs of aging. My grandfather bred her several times and she produced three pretty foals, the second of which was to later become my first horse. I never heard any word of Old Lady’s passing and it is hard for me not to imagine that she is still there on the land that my grandfather once owned and farmed, with her large cracked hooves and long flowing mane waiting for the ears of hard corn that he brought her to eat.

Last week I lost a long time friend, another horse. Limerick, was what I called her, her registered name being some silly garble of stuff that came with her when I bought her as a weanling. Limerick had just passed a major milestone a few weeks back in passing her thirtieth birthday and was in relatively good health and spirit. Sadly an old set of lungs and a dreadfully hot and humid day, combined with the provocation of the hatch of a plague of blood sucking horseflies making her leave the comfort of the shade to avoid their bites, put her in peril. She succumbed to the heat and we found her gasping in heat stress out in her field near her favorite cedar tree, unable to rise. It was the end. We kept her as cool as possible with a steady train of water bearers to pour their buckets over her while we waited in the heat for the vet to arrive to give her the final relief. We shaded her with  umbrellas and I fed her an entire bag of carrots which she enthusiastically chomped down to the last one. Finally it was over, and the kind man who had buried Joline last year, laid yet another great mare to rest.

Thirty years. Most horses don’t make it that long. Most relationships don’t either, but Limerick had been my friend for basically her entire life, and a good bit of mine, this time span of thirty years, three long decades. I had bought her before my youngest daughter was born, broke her, trained her to run and jump and dance with me in the sport they call combined training. Together we campaigned for many years and she won us many championships, with ribbons and trophies that line the walls of my tack room. Together we flew.

It was in this campaigning, this weekend traveling to shows, and more in the daily training to be able to win at them, that our relationship developed. I was ambitious  and she was talented and so we made a tight team. At a moment of memories while waiting on the vet to arrive, I laughed that this mare was once so athletic that she could unhorse me on a whim. One of my coaches once said that to be in the right position going over a fence one should pretend that  if Speilberg could magically make your horse disappear from underneath you that you would land standing on your two feet. Limerick was able to that with me. I could be riding along and the next moment, standing there wondering where my horse went. It was all in good fun to her, and I usually appreciated her sense of humor and timing. She definitely had spirit. Funny that despite all of her winning and practice having ribbons tied to her bridle, she never liked them flickering in her face, and very nearly bucked me off on several of our ceremonial victory laps.  

There was one show that I learned more about her character though, in Nashville. I had taken my oldest daughter to it with me this time and we had arrived on Friday afternoon to a darkening sky and approaching storm. The stabling was under a giant tent and we put Limerick in her stall and I went to unload things from the trailer leaving my daughter in the tent to wander around and see all the horses. Thunder then gave way to lightening bolts and heavy rain. I had taken safe haven in the truck for the moment and I could see that the wind was whipping the tent into a moving, flapping, out of control creature that was looking like it was going to leave. This was not the most settling situations for any horse but especially for a young horse like Limerick was at the time. Concerned for my young daughter, I hurried to get back in the tent when things settled a bit. I found my daughter quietly sitting on a flake of hay in the corner of Limerick’s stall with that mare calmly standing over her, unafraid of the chaos with the tent flapping, thunder and wind, and horses and people hollering and moving about. I was stunned then at her protective instinct, and she showed this type of reading the situation on many occasion to me, and later, to her foals.

After her career in showing, Lim became a brood mare and was an excellent mother to first Kudzu, then Orion, Rubiat, Tango, and finally Vixen. When she was too old to carry her own, she became the baby sitter, the boss mare that would teach manners to the weanlings, and especially to the colts who thought biting and climbing on anything or anybody’s head was fun. She always kicked them high, body blows so as not to hurt those pretty legs. When the last of the weanlings grew up and left, Limerick remained in the pasture at the little barn on the farm, retired and free from obligations until last week’s sad day. 

In Limerick’s passing through this life with me,  as both my vehicle and my friend, she took me places I would never have gone, and afforded me friends both equine and human that I would not have made, many of whom I still have. Through her I have memories of wonderful times that we shared. She listened unconditionally as animals are wont to do, to my struggle with life lessons along the way, gave no verbal advice, but was stoically just there. It helped. Thirty years of experiences, not ownership, is what having a horse for thirty years is about.

They say of all of the animal spirits that the spirit of the horse is the strongest. It is the stuff of legends and myths and for good reason. To gaze into their eyes and read them reading you and assessing your mood, thoughts, and intent and to have them trust you to do your biding is an amazing relationship, one built on things intangible and magical.

Limerick had a very strong spirit and I am lucky indeed to have known it. Like Old Lady at my grandfather’s farm, I think her spirit will always be over there under her cedar tree wrapped in its shade. I can only be thankful for our having joined up so long ago and so say a fond farewell to Limerick. She was, and always will be, a great horse, and my friend.

A Most Recent Odyssey

Recently Mark had been tossed a tentative photography job up in Long Island by our dear friend and Master Chief, Joe diMaggio, Jr, a culinary genius, an artist, (and yes, kin to the name sake, his uncle, and looks just like him),  an absolute riot to be around, a wild and crazy man with a huge heart that we had come to know when he opened a restaurant next to our gallery a few years ago. Mark had done the food shoot for that place and I had been given the default job of chief assistant and stylist, despite the fact that my knowledge of food styling at that time was fairly nil and I could barely fold a tripod leg up. My shortcomings were masked by Mark’s incredible photography skills, and we did a great job for Joe, on that shoot and others that followed. Joe was now opening a new restaurant up in New York, and needed the skills of a good photographer to shoot images of the food they would be serving for web and publicity things, etc., knew Mark’s work, and gave him a call. It would mean a long drive, three days shooting, and another long drive home, so we gave it thought.

After the incident with Gracie and Heidi written about from my last post, it did seem to be a good time to leave town and let things rest. Gracie could stay with our daughter, husband and granddaughter, and their dog Stella to let her wounds heal and have some time around a smaller, friendlier dog and the energy of a toddler. If she could stay out of the talons of the neighborhood owls I thought it might be a good plan for her, to get a change of pace and forget the Heidi thing. I also, just needed to leave the farm with all of the recent sadnesses and get away, so driving eighteen hours to Long Island, and then back, surprisingly sounded fine. We said yes, quickly packed and headed north.

We traveled as we usually do, interstate for sheer mileage until we can stand it no more then off onto a country lane to

enjoy the slower pace and scenery. I think we were in northern Virginia when we got off the fast lane in. The scenes out of our window were now of smooth rolling hills dotted by pristine simple houses with tall narrow windows in shadowed yards. The houses were flanked by large organic expanses of barns and silos that were tucked into the swells and fallings of the hills. Surrounding fields of wheat, hay, and young corn were tidy and lush and the eye was easily led down their perfect rows. The light was low and golden and its beams bathed the houses and their barns in an etherial moment of beauty in its pure simplicity, until finally the sun dropped and darkness took its place, and onward we bound.

Near Lexington, VA, the place where both of my brothers went to college, we ventured off the path again sort of in search of Natural Bridge, a stone arch that I had heard my brothers speak of from their time up there decades ago. Finding it to have become a sad tourist trap, we chose to move on down the road. Over the top of a hill and down, there on the left was a hand painted sign as we rolled past it,  that said it all. ”Foamhenge”? After a quick u turn we bumped our way down a short driveway to the bottom of a hill. There on top, ahead of us it loomed, Stonehenge, in all its glory and mystery. The celtic symbol of whatever they were doing back then with all that pagan stuff, the circle of stones that nobody can explain, was magically here before us in rural north Virginia, improbably made of styrofoam and spray painted to look like weathered old stone. It was absolutely convincing, and looked totally real, in an amusing  and befuddling as to why, sort of way.

After a leisurely eighteen hour drive up we found our destination in Sea Cliff on Long Island, at the house that we were to stay at for the next three days for the shoot. A long time friend, one we had known from many previous incarnations, Julie, or Jules, was to be our host. Julie, who had also known Joe from previous restaurant work for him, was there to get the mechanics of this restaurant going. Julie just handles it, all, and smiles. Her charming house became our home base and was a lovely retreat in this little village on the north edge of the Gold Coast, where families walked past our porch view in the morning taking their kids to school, and later strolled with their dogs saying hellos to those they passed. It was a cloistered neighborhood of beautifully painted Victorian homes mixed with charming cottages and picket fences that were footsteps away from incredible dining and the view of the Atlantic. It was a place hard to not enjoy.

At the new restaurant we spent the next three days in total absorption photographing and setting up shots and scenes with the dishes, all masterfully crafted and produced by both Joe and a tall, quiet fellow who we were told was the designated Head Chef for this new restaurant, John Milito. We later learned that this John guy, whose incredibly lovely dishes we had been admiring, styling, photographing, and tasting, had been the former Chef at Tavern On the Green in Central Park until its recent closing. Who knew? Here I was pushing around the food of two renown culinary artists, with my limited credentials, and was damned honored to be doing so. 

Joe and John continually produced amazing dishes which we set up, photographed, tasted, and kept the flow going for the entire three days solid. It was very hard and intense work, but delicious, and very gratifying work made

easier with Joe’s direction and his ability to convey exactly what he wants, or not. We arranged small pizzas with little stuffed toys for the kids, and Mark shot incredibly elegant pieces of salmon, shrimp, and a tomahawk ribeye steak that would feed a family of five for a week for the appetites of the the grown up customers to be. Starting a day shooting a luscious piece of Tiramisu and letting that be your breakfast with coffee is not bad work, if you can get it. Job finally completed, we packed, said adieus after three wonderful days of work and play, and began our trek south by southwest.

The return home was quickly marred by our guidance system thinking it was hilarious to route us through south Manhattan island to put us off in the arm pit of

New Jersey where we spent the next two hours going stop sign to stop sign in an endless sea of small neighborhood after neighborhood trying to find an interstate. It was an absolute navigational hell and there was no way out once there. We were both cussing our plight and searching for alternatives on cell phones, and finding none, grew angrier by the moment. The northern version of the seventeen year cicada had hatched and the whirling drone of their music lent a further surreal atmosphere to our personal twilight zone.  At long last we made it to a larger road and faster pace again, and then suddenly, stopped once again at perhaps our thousandth stop, I turned to our right and there looming before me was the epitome of  the equestrian supply mecca, Dover Saddlery. Sanctuary had been found and praise was made.

We spent some quality chilling out time there and I found some things that I hoped would help with the saddle fit issues that I have been having with my mare. It is never a bad thing to savor the smell of well tanned leather and the retail therapy was good. Once our humor was mostly restored, we ventured the remaining sixteen hours uneventfully back to town,via interstate this time to make up for our lost time exploring NJ. Gracie had had fun with Margaret and Stella and had returned to her brighter self, and, armed with our new experiences and memories, we all made our way back home to the farm.

  

Decisions...

Yesterday was beautiful in its opening moments. Bluebirds were sitting on my shoulder and the hardest decision I thought I might have for the day was what flavor my smoothie for the morning might be. Then I had planned for a bit more of the saddle experimenting I had begun earlier in the week trying to see what fit Cistine. I fed Heidi, the GSD, and Gracie, the diminutive Yorkie, and sat to watch them and drink my coffee. Heidi finished her bowl and was wandering around the kitchen and eventually ended up near my stool. Gracie came over to join us. Then, out of no where came the attack. Heidi placed a huge paw on top of Gracie’s back and suddenly Heidi had Gracie in her mouth.

Gracie’s shrill screams were curdling and I instantly, but in that freeze frame time standing still mode, pounced on Heidi and tried desperately to get her to release the little dog from her teeth. I don’t know how, but did, and Gracie ran away with the screams of an animal in sheer terror piercing the now not so still morning air. I put the shepherd away in our room and went to find Gracie to assess her injuries. She had some bite marks on her neck and she was already in obvious deep shock so I grabbed her and left for the vet’s office while my daughter called ahead to let them know to expect us.

I drove in a daze. Where had this attack come from? And why? These two unlikely pups, theirs a pack of two, had gotten along so incredibly well since Gracie joined us, playing together, and even the day before I had seen them cuddled up in the cool grass under the martin houses, waiting for me to finish barn chores. This, I had not seen coming, and I was stunned.

The attack had not been Heidi’s first to other dogs over the years, nor second, each time violent, terrorizing, and brutal but always with some provocation. A shepherd bites once and holds on and requires a very serious effort to get them to release their prey. Fortunately for Gracie this attack had been made from a very old dog with broken teeth and her death would have been the most likely outcome had it come from Heidi in her youth.

I left Gracie in the hands of the vet, but before leaving I spoke with my vet about the possibility of euthanizing Heidi. I knew that my thoughts were emotionally driven but I had to admit that I could not allow the risk of another possible attack, to Gracie, any other dog, and certainly not my grandchild who frequents our house. Even though Heidi had shown nothing but tolerance for little Margaret’s climbing on her bed and cuddling up with the “big dog”, my trust in her was gone and even the thought was intolerable. I drove home devastated in my dilemma. It was my responsibility and my decision to make, and either way was not good.

Over the years of dog ownership I have had way too many suffering animals put to sleep. The first was another shepherd, the dog who never left my side during my high school years. I returned from college once to find a pitiful suffering shell of my old friend and I took her to the same clinic Gracie was taken to. I held that old dog in my arms and felt the life slip silently away. Since then I have had to repeat the same painful dance with life and death many times, each time excruciating in its sadness of loss but with the knowledge that in their death the dogs were relieved from the bounds of their suffering or illness.

The contemplation of euthanizing Heidi was different though. She suffered daily getting up and down stairs with joints that no longer worked and hurt her constantly despite the pain meds I stuffed her with, and her quality of life was very low. The difference was that she had not given up yet as the others had when it was their time, relieving me of some of the difficulty of the decision . My decision for Heidi was a heavy and overwhelming burden that weighed on me through the rest of the morning. Heidi was my best friend, my shadow, my companion. She was my, dog. How could I really imagine intentionally killing my buddy? I spent the hours in a blind funk until I made the choice, and then I cried deep and hard.

Knowing her hours to be her last, in a very surreal way, I spent them focused on making them good for both of us together. Heidi knew something was up and never took her eyes off me nor left my side. We went to the barn for her last visit. She swam in the pond and even watched, the ever vigilant shepherd that she was, as we dug the grave we would put her in later in the afternoon. I groomed her thick coat and fed her a full bowl with chunks of steak mixed in, this her last meal. Finally the call came from the vet that Gracie could come home. I loaded the big dog in the back seat of her truck and we headed down the too familiar road to the vet for her last ride. My head was throbbing and tears were burning my face and Heidi sat contented on her bench seat, her throne for ten years, doing what she loved the best, going for a ride.

As we pulled up to the clinic, she must have smelled the place and knew it. Heidi let out one of her typical shepherd sounds that is part sigh and part question, looked at me, and then back out the window. The vet came out to the truck to give her the first shot which sends them into a deeply relaxed state. We held her and patted her broad and beautiful head and said our goodbyes. The vet gave the final shot and with a few lingering breaths, then one last exhale, she was gone. My beautiful, gorgeous, intelligent, friend was gone and would be no more, forever. We gathered the very lucky to be still alive Gracie and left to go home with a now silent shepherd laying behind us.

In the hours after I had let my anger and horror subside at the attack, I pondered so many things, weighing them all and came to the terrible decision that I made based on two things. One, I could not trust the dog to not repeat this behavior, and two, that she was miserably making it through each day in pain that I can not gage because she was the most stoic beings I have ever been around. I feel horrible and have a pressing guilt that perhaps if had done something different in her life that it wouldn’t have had to end this way. I will never know that answer. It was what it was, imperfect, beautiful and at brief times horrifying, but I loved that dog and she me. We buried her with her favorite toy so that she can play with it forever in her final sleep and we covered her with dirt and tears.

Today Gracie is more alert with the pain meds fading, but is traumatized, scared, and confused. She timidly keeps looking for her buddy, the buddy who taught her the ways of being a dog, where to potty, what to avoid, what to chase,  and how to survive being a farm dog. Heidi was the one who took her under her wing and was always her back up. Theirs was a complicated and comic relationship with their size differences and  breed types, and despite that it was sweet and good. Heidi was Gracie’s buddy and mentor, but who, inexplicably attacked and very nearly killed her. Gracie’s trauma, on many counts, will take some time for her to heal.

 It will take time for me to heal, as well. 

RIP Heidi.  

  

Saddle Whoas

Any kid who has gone through a basic science class knows how experiments are run. There has to be a set of controls so that a theory can be tested and in the end all things can be measured, evaluated, and a conclusion or hypothesis can be resolved. That is  until that resolution is proven to be a false answer by a further experiment. It is a logical way to deduce and figure stuff out. That was my plan of attack today, but variables played a rather large factor, regrettably, and so my experiment for today was inconclusive.

No beakers, no burners, and no white coats in a lab, what I needed to begin to figure out began in the barn with the backs of three very different horses. As of late I have begun to notice a pattern of behavior that was running in similar fashion with each of my horses, to varying degrees, but with enough of it that is was time to find out what the issue was. My suspicion was leaning towards a saddle fitting problem, as I have three mares with three very different backs, and one saddle that has one fixed shape or tree.

A saddle is basically a frame that rests on the long muscles that run the length of the rib cage on a horse. It is covered with leather, usually, and padded on the bottom to accommodate the shape of the horse’s back. It has to clear all of the bony processes and provide a comfortable way to lug a live load around. This is no small feat and the evolution of saddle design is long and is far from over. Like a hiker wearing a heavily loaded backpack that is ill designed and which inevitably causes sores, bruises, and strains, so too is the importance of a good basic fit and design for a saddle. It must fit both the horse, and the rider, so that they can work together in harmony, and both be pain free. 

My saddle is a Stubben, one of the best made, with top quality leather and workmanship on a spring, or semi-flexible, tree. Every time I climb aboard it is like sitting down into the most comfortable leather easy chair ever, which always makes me sigh. It has zero leg rolls, (which place a rider’s leg in a predetermined spot on the horse’s sides), it has a fairly flat seat, and the leather is soft, supple, and is a well tanned black. My saddle allows my legs and my seat the freedom to go wherever I want them to go and not be rigidly held in place as though I was off to go jousting, like some saddle versions do. I bought the saddle years ago and have thrown it on everything in my barn and have had no issues with it fitting any horse, until now.

As I mentioned before I have three mares: Kitty, the oldest, an alpha of the herd, a short , round, bright eyed bay; Sunset,

next in age, a red tank with lots of chrome, with a work ethic that never stops, solid, and is a part time clown; and last a younger mare, Cistine, a very tall, elegant, sensitive, and very willing mare that floats over the earth she covers with her long strides. The first two have similar backs, broad and well muscled, they are power models. The younger mare is a thinner and longer lined build and has steeper withers which drop off to a much narrower top line, and this, is where my quandary began. Remember the one size saddle doesn’t fit all thing?

Horses are notoriously bad liars. I have known some dogs who were pretty good and pulling the wool over my eyes but horses, no. If they are scared of something they either leave or go nuts trying. If they are hungry they eat, and if they feel bad, they don’t. If they are sore or are hurting they will let you know that too. Lately I had been getting similar signals from all three that something was irritating them and the common denominator was regrettably, my saddle.

I borrowed a saddle from a friend to use in my experiment to see if indeed my saddle was the cause of my horses‘ new behavior. This particular saddle has no rigid tree and in theory shapes itself to any horse’s back bringing comfort to any equine back. My plan was to A-B this saddle with mine in as controlled of a situation as possible. I had let them all have the week previous off to rest any sore muscles and hopefully have a clean slate to test with.

My hope for a controlled situation was first vexed with a cold front that popped through over night and brought in chilly temps and gusty winds, just right for making the steadiest of beasts more excitable and stupid. The second was that my neighbor across the fence thought today would be a good time to run their four wheeler through their back pasture. The driver and another person were talking and moving about causing the horses much distraction even before we got started. Her head was high and muscles were tense on Kitty, who I saddled first with the borrowed one, as we walked out to the arena. My plan was to lunge them, one, so that I could see how they moved and what their opinion of it was, and two, avoid being tossed if they either really liked it and bucked, or if they really  didn’t like it and bucked with determination. Either way being a bystander seemed the more observant, and safer, way to run the experiment.

After finally sort of getting Kitty’s attention, difficult, her reaction to the saddle was difficult to determine. Another variable I had forgotten was that my older two girls hadn’t seen a lunge line since they were started many years ago, so this whole process was going to be exciting to them. It was. Kitty took off around me, though careful not to pull too hard, bucking like a rodeo bronc, digging her short little legs in and letting go with explosive jumps and leaps and bounds. I was very glad I was merely observing these airs above the ground, but I could not draw any conclusion of whether she liked the freedom of the saddle or was just being a nut because of the weather and distractions. I put her away and got out Sunset  to repeat the process.

Sunset was less distracted by the neighbor across the fence but when I asked her to trot a circle around me, there was a pause, followed by her taking off in similar leaps and bounds as Kitty. I was befuddled now because these two mares have had saddles on them since their youth and have never bucked with me on them and I don’t remember such theatrics when I did lunge them. The borrowed saddle didn’t look any different but something was causing them to find the sky, and the question remained as to whether they thought the saddle was yucky, uncomfortable, or if it was really super comfortable and liberating. It looked like it fit okay but I did notice that on them it tended to slide forward a bit, so maybe that was an issue. Still unclear on this test I put Sunset away and tacked up Cistine.

Cistine seemed to like the shoulder freedom at the trot and her stride lengthened but at the canter I could tell she found the new shape weird and she tightened up her back considering a buck, and kept a cocked ear in the direction of the saddle. I put her old saddle back on to compare and her stride shortened up again, but she seemed happy enough. I put her back in the barn and was left to ponder my lack of any conclusion at all.

Tomorrow is another day and another experiment. Perhaps the newness will have worn off, the wind will die down a bit, and the neighbor will refrain from being a mysterious distraction so that I can draw some bit of information from these horses. I think I will remain a grounded observer until I can tell if their action today was buoyancy or annoyance, or both. If only they could speak, what would they tell me?  

to be continued....