One of Life’s Perfect Moments

We went up to Orcas Island on Saturday to camp overnight and maybe do some work. I had big plans—dig out the fire pit until it was the island-safe six feet in diameter and pave it with cement bricks; clear more area in the willow copse and build shady rustic stairs with some of the boulders strewn around the base of the trunks; water and prune and generally care for the plantings we put in last fall. I was tired, though, presumably from the oceans of stress hormones I’d been bathing in for weeks, and so was easily convinced that the current fire pit, once the thistles and snake were removed (me: “ A SNAKE!” Ian: “Is it a garter snake?” me: “Uh . . . it’s brown.” Ian: “It’s a brown garter snake.” Me: “There aren’t poisonous snakes here, are there?” Our friend Erik: “Not native ones.” ha ha, Erik. Me for the next ten minutes: “Oh! Was that a snake? Aagh! Was that a snake?”), was entirely safe enough for our purposes.

Late in the afternoon, having leaned over our deer cages to water the plants (instead of the infinitely more laborious removing of the deer cages to water the plants) and having recovered from the snake scare, we three humans and our two dogs hopped into the 4-Runner and drove up to the north end of the property, to see about clearing space in the copse. Throughout the afternoon Ian and Erik had been discussing, considering that we didn’t have refrigeration yet, nor ice, the most effective way to cool three of the pounders of Rainier Ale we had stored in the outhouse. Each can in a wet sock, held in a breeze (i.e. from the motion of the car) was deemed to be the most effective way, using the magical powers of evaporation. Ian duly sacrificed three of his socks (the clean ones) to the cause and we bounced slowly away over deceptively lumpy ground and through five-foot-tall grasses, almost running over a young buck that apparently assumed, until the 4-Runner was breathing down his back, that if he just lay still we wouldn’t see him. Well, it’s true, we didn’t. In the nick of time, he leapt up from under our right front bumper and vaulted away over the grass. We pulled up by our pear tree, absolutely laden with pears after the rudimentary pruning we gave it last fall.

As I roamed around marveling at the fruit (a plum tree was also bearing, evidently also due to our bumbling attempts at plant husbandry), Ian managed to sneak into the copse and thus set up my Perfect Moment.

And here is where I’ll, for only the space of a few lines, lapse into full-on travel blogger descriptive language ridiculousness.

When I arrived in the center of the copse, having pushed my way through sun-warmed Vitamin C-and-rose-scented clinging vines, Ian was standing next to our hammock, which he’d smuggled up from Seattle and strung in the dappled shade between two old willow trunks. “Here, sweetie-pie, do you want to try it out?” he asked. Uh, hello! Yes! All thought of heavy labor, of clearing brush and building boulder staircases, fled from my mind.

I climbed into the hammock, lay back, and felt myself—body, mind and soul—ease into bliss, a fear-free bliss I hadn’t felt in a long time. Fresh green leaves trembled in the breeze above my head, irregularly framing a cerulean sky. The temperature was perfect—not a hint of hot nor cold. The hammock, a brightly-colored, tightly-woven one Ian had brought from Brazil three years ago, supported my body completely and gently—no rope mesh digging into my tender flesh. I lay there in a pool of shade in a lambent afternoon, surrounded by love, surrounded by peace, surrounded by quiet land and birdsong, in a bit of nature that I have somehow had the extraordinary good fortune to call my own.

And then someone handed me a—well, if not perfectly chilled, at least somewhat less warm than the afternoon—can of stale Rainier Ale, and my satisfaction was complete.

And Just Like That . . .

I’m done. Today was supposed to be a long day—my last long day of cancer treatment. I was supposed to be at the clinic from, essentially, 10:30 am to 7:00 pm (with a lunch break, of course). I’ve been going to the clinic for five years now; every week for the first six months, and every three weeks for the past 4 ½ years. That’s a long time. In fact, it’s a longer amount of time than Ian and I have been married. It’s more time than Spackle, our dog, has been alive. It’s more time than I spent in college, almost (but not quite) counting my MA. It’s half a decade. I’ve been in treatment in two decades in my life—my twenties and my thirties. In fact, if you count my first round of cancer treatments, which, to my utter disbelief and bafflement, started in 1999 when I was twenty-six, well then, my time in treatment has spanned two millennia.

And now it’s done. After a fitful night of sleep, I awoke this morning, attempted (badly) the Thursday New York Times crossword puzzle, and then restlessly roamed the house waiting for 10:10 when I could leave to get to my blood drawn. Ian came in at one point and suggested something, I don’t know what, and I lashed out at him, tears in my eyes. “I’m going to be a little snappy today,” I told him unnecessarily.

At 10:30 at the clinic I had an IV poked into my left forearm and blood drawn. An hour later, after Ian had met me in a waiting room, and we’d sat around well, waiting, me with my heart in my throat, the proverbial weight on my chest, making it hard to breathe normally so that I occasionally took a giant conscious breath, I finally got in for my chest CT. As soon as I was done, we rushed off, ignoring the request that I stay around 10 minutes in case I developed a reaction to the radioactive iodine. Well, I had developed a reaction, and it told me to get the hell out of that clinic, at least for a while.

I felt like a bug put in a jar by a benevolent but clueless giant. There were airholes, but all around me I was bumping against invisible barriers between me and the life I wanted to lead, and I’d been in the jar for five years. For the last several weeks my feelings have been an exhausting mixture of euphoria and dread—when I reached the 22^nd of June, I’d be set free! But what if that killed me? What if I couldn’t go it alone? But what if I didn’t have the chance to be set free, anyway? Maybe the cancer had come back in the last few months since my last meeting with the doctor. But maybe I’d just be free—free to travel when I wanted to, instead of planning out, months in advance, trips that would fit within my three week grid. Free to rock climb any day I wanted, instead of having to wait 4 days after every infusion until my body expelled the extra saline and my fingers returned to normal size, and didn’t feel like popping when I hauled myself up walls. Free to feel like any other healthy 33-year-old.

At 1:00 pm, Dr Livingston would let me know.

We had an hour to kill, so Ian and I went to lunch, meeting Mom, at a lovely Italian place called Serafina, 3 minutes from the clinic. I think I behaved moderately respectably; I hadn’t been able to eat anything in the morning, but I knew my tenuous hold on my composure would become nonexistent if I met the doctor on an entirely empty stomach, no matter what the news. So I ate, excellent bread and olive oil and salt, ravioli with ricotta and pine nuts, a cup of decaf. A salad. I think my table manners were passable; it’s a nice restaurant and our server (who, albeit, had dreadlocks) never looked at me askance. I probably behaved okay, although I felt, dimly, that I was stuffing bread into my mouth as if I hadn’t had a meal in days.

And then it was time to go, and within minutes we were at the clinic, then I was getting weighed (even in the throws of almost blinding anxiety I was able to joke about taking off my flip flops because they’d add so many significant ounces to the never acceptable total), then they took my blood pressure, my temperature, checked my pulse, and suddenly the doctor was there.

“You look fine,” he said. “Your CT is normal.”

And I burst into tears.

He comforted me, then left while I got undressed for the physical part of the exam; when that was done, we sat around and talked. About birth control (not the Pill; barrier methods). About nutrition (“Your brain needs sugar. Your heart needs sugar.”). About alcohol (“There seems to be legitimate evidence supporting the use of alcohol for heart health”). About the fact that Dr Livingston is leaving, moving to Tucson in August (“You stayed around just long enough to make sure I’d be alright, right?” “Of course I did,” smiling at me).

Finally, he stood up. “Are you accessed?” he asked, wondering if I had an IV in my port.

“No, I’m not,” I said.

“Well, then, you’re free to go home!”

I stared blankly for a minute. “Um . . . I’m not going to get the last infusion?”

“Well, why bother?” he asked. “Of course, you can always go up and say goodbye to the nurses. I’ll send someone up to tell them you won’t be having your infusion.” Then, smiling, he gave me a big hug.

A little dazed, Ian and I made our way up to the fifth floor, where my nurse for the day, who had given me the IV and blood draw in the morning and had waited for hours to give me my last infusion, insisted on flushing my port anyway (I’m going to keep it for the time being; and it needs to be flushed every 4 weeks—but that’s flexible!—to make sure blood clots don’t form), and when she was done and we pulled back our curtain, a choir of nurses flung a pink and silver feather boa around my neck and sang a “You’ve finished chemo!” song that someone wrote. Ian teared up, and I teared up, and then they took pictures of us, and then the song finished and everyone cheered, including the lady in the infusion chair next to me.

And I hugged everyone and walked out with Ian, feeling much the way I did upon arrival in SeaTac last December after the ten hours of trans-Pacific turbulence hell, namely, a sort of grateful—and yes, euphoric—disbelief that I am still alive.

I’m very much looking forward to living the rest of my life outside the jar.

A Day Out of the Past

I grew up in King County, and from the time I was a toddler, my family had boats. The first was an 18-foot Larson bowrider ski boat that my dad and my uncle bought together. Every summer for a few years, we rented a cabin on Shoal Bay on the north end of Lopez Island, hauled the boat up, and for a month a parade of aunts and uncles and cousins tramped through, clamming, crabbing, and whizzing with us around the 450 or so San Juan Islands.

When I was a little older, maybe nine, we bought a new boat, a 26-foot Fiberform cabin cruiser that “slept five” (or would’ve if we’d all been between the ages of seven and nine like me and Deane. But it did sleep the four of us more or less comfortably). We named it the Rusty Duck, after a restaurant in Edmonds that went out of business soon after (a coincidence I’m sure). The Rusty Duck had, as a tender, an 8-foot Livingston dinghy with the sail package—center board, rudder, and small triangular red, white and blue-striped sail. In a fit of 9-year-old inspiration I suggested calling it the Rusty Duckling (or Deane did?) and it was so baptized.

In 8^th or 9^th grade, we upgraded again, to the Finnish Maiden (named by the previous owners) a 36-foot aft cab Uniflite which slept, comfortably, six, and had all the accoutrements of luxury—two showers with hot water, flushing toilets (after a fashion), blender, wet bar, and an 11-foot Boston Whaler dinghy , the Flying Viking, Coast Guard approved for a 10-horse outboard, but outfitted with a 35, which gave it enough power to pull a water skier. Yeah, we kids, and our friends Sonja and Erik, and I daresay my dad, and even frequently my mom (when she wasn’t worried about kids capsizing, anchors drifting in the night, and the cost of fuel) were in heaven.

After my father passed away in 1992, we sold the Finnish Maiden and for the last 14 years my trips on private boats have been achingly few and far between.

It’s torture living six blocks from Lake Union, having the skill, the desire, and even, if I were to so choose, the money to own a boat, and not having one. The reason I don’t is that I’m just barely too practical. The 4-Runner could, if necessary, tow a ski boat, but we really have no place to park it. Moorage is possible to secure, but it’s $300 per month on Lake Union, and, frankly, I know I couldn’t possibly use the boat enough to justify that. Larger boats cost more for fuel and moorage and, really, are RVs on the water . . . and I’m only 33. And so, I’m boatless.
But yesterday I was invited to help move a boat—a 32-foot Bayliner—from a yacht brokerage on Lake Union to one in La Conner. A friend of ours is selling it . . . and about six hours in, by the time we were nearing Oak Harbor, I was almost convinced I needed to buy it.

From start to finish it was a true Northwest boating experience, minus any of the trouble like blowers that don’t work, bumpers falling overboard without being tied on or fishing line getting tangled in the props. We went through the Ship Canal, we crowded into the small locks with two other boats and slowly bobbed down to sea level (and much to my relief, the lock operators didn’t yell at me; they were only mildly condescending when I passed the 50-foot bow line under the rail the wrong way, then tangled it up trying to undo my error). We stopped for fuel in Shilshole and I got to jump for the dock, then we stopped for fuel again in Edmonds and again I got to jump for the dock (the pump moving gasoline from the shore to the dock having broken down in Shilshole). We looked at charts to make sure we went between Whidbey and Camano Islands (D: “This is my least favorite stretch of water in Puget Sound.” Me: “Because it looks like suburbia.” D: “You’re right! It’s the 405 of Puget Sound!”) instead of between Camano and the shore—a big, long, inconvenient dead end. It was a little rainy for a while, a little gray, a little sunny. We drove from the fly bridge, and from the cabin. The water was almost calm, no whitecaps, barely even any swells from shipping. We saw a bald eagle and many seals. We drank beer and wine and water, we ate chips and cheese and Pirate’s Booty (for the nautical flavor) and sang along with Dire Straits.

And today, I was back to my tortured, humdrum existence with no boat.

A Toast to Friendship

For twelve years now, since 1994 (with a trip in 1991 that we call “The Pilot”), my college girlfriends and I have been spending Memorial Day Weekend together. The first few years were all on the Oregon coast (we went to Lewis and Clark), and included many people—both boys and girls—besides the core group. The first year we brought—and finished—a keg, and we had to (had to!) buy more beer. Since then, the amount of alcohol intake has gone steadily down (although we still drink more beer than during, say, an average three-day period), and the quality (and quantity I daresay) of food intake has gone exponentially up—including not just chips and salsa and a large pan of lasagna and Tootsie Pops, but gourmet made-from-scratch mac and cheese with greens, grilled salmon and veggies and chicken, breakfast casserole and fruit salad, homemade split pea soup and black bean-rice salad, homemade apple pies and lemon pound cake . . . and the list goes on.

A few years after college, most of us had left Portland and scattered ourselves around the US, so we started scattering our Memorial Day Weekend trips too, and reduced participants to the current seven. We went to New York City a couple times, Las Vegas (no one lives there, but you gotta do it once), Arizona (a mountainy part), Lake Michigan, Point Reyes, Seattle. We have one main rule, namely, everyone has to be able to come. About five years back this meant that we actually celebrated over a weekend in June, but celebrate we did. It just wouldn’t be the same without the seven.

This year we returned to Lincoln City for the first time since 1997, which meant that Laura and I didn’t have to fly anywhere—which, for reasons I’ve gone into before, made me very, very happy. Still, it meant that after six hours of driving from Jerome Creek to Seattle and one hour at home, I had another six hours mostly in the car (traffic traffic) until we reached the Portland airport and met everyone/collected arriving out-of-towners, and it was midnight before I was bedded down on my couch. By the next afternoon when we’d driven another few hours and arrived safely at our beachside rental, I was exhausted.

Part of my exhaustion was, of course, simply the fact of 15 hours of alert travel the day before, but that wasn’t all.

In the past when I’ve taken care of Jerome Creek, it’s been almost exclusively idyllic—in fact, the spare peppering of “incidents”—i.e. a corral rail that needs a nail, a tumble off the side of a horse into soft bushes—make the trip all the more perfect because I’ve been given a few minor ways to practice my problem solving. I’m also usually alone much of the time, so I have plenty of space to recharge my social batteries and putter around writing.

This time, I had only three days alone out of 15; many, many “incidents” cropped up day after day; and I started my country idyll already drained—dear friends have been going through a separation, and it’s been very, very difficult for everyone involved, which of course is not just the couple in question.

So by the time we arrived at our beach house and unpacked the cars, all I could imagine doing was lying down and taking a nap. I don’t sleep easily, however, and I couldn’t sleep then. I lay on my back in the blue and white room, listening to the crash of the waves, tears leaking out of my eyes, thinking over and over about attacked horses, dog fights, divorce, and the end of cancer treatments, trying to calm my mind, trying to get some rest. Finally, I gave up. I can promise to be a safe driver, I thought to myself, but I don’t have the energy to be anything more this year. I got up and wiped my face, went downstairs and curled up in the corner of the couch at the other end from Lee, across from Laura on the other couch.

“How are you, Ducky?” said Lee.

“Okay,” I responded, hugging my knees into my chest. It was all I could say.

“Did you sleep?” asked Laura.

“No, not at all.”

Lee looked at me carefully. “Would you like a backrub?” she asked.

“Oh, yes,” I said, starting to tear up.

“Can I get you a beer?” Laura asked, standing up.

“That would be great.”

And there you have it, folks. I was at the end of my rope, and they saw that, and they didn’t just pull me back in; they came out to get me. I didn’t have to say that I only had the strength left to not commit vehicular homicide; that I couldn’t be counted on to counsel anyone through their current challenges, that I didn’t have the wherewithal to cook a meal, or really even to clean up after one. They knew because they love me.

I didn’t have to say anything at all.

Jerome Creek Wrap-Up

These “last things” entries are always longer than I expect them to be, and this one will be no different, I’m sure. And so, diving in:

Doucely. Doucely, it turns out, was never gone. Well, she may have been gone for a couple days because I definitely went to the loft more than once and didn’t see her, but she returned and it was definitely her. When A. called from Barcelona the day before I left, I cleared up the two main mysteries, namely 1) Doucely is a small, black cat. 2) She has never worn a collar. I have no more information about gray cats or collared cats. I suspect that my own personal memory of petting a collared cat was merely my brain retrofitting Doucely with a collar when circumstances led me to believe she’d had one.

Toby. Toby is fine, and will be ready to ride any day now (in fact, has maybe been ridden already). Shadow has attacked her before in close quarters, long ago. A. very kindly comforted me with a bit of advice from her vet, shared long ago when Shadow had bullied Toby up a bulkhead and scraped all the hair of Toby’s legs—“They are independent creatures, and try as you might, you cannot always control everything they do.” Too true. Oh, too true.

Janet. Janet is fine as well, none the worse for wear from her fall. In fact, the morning after, as she was packing up to go, she kept swinging her arms and saying “I’m euphoric! I can’t believe I was ever scared of accidents! This was great! I can’t wait to tell everyone at co-housing!” And, to answer the obvious question, no, she had not fallen on her head.

Me. I, too, am physically more or less fine. I have an appointment with a body worker next week to work out the remaining spine-crushing (metaphorically speaking of course) kinks from my fall, undoubtedly exacerbated by the 2,000 miles I put on my car in 17 days. That makes me sound crippled and really I’m not.

Until next time . . . I remember something more to write about, that is.

Two experiences which, together, reminded me that my bright ideas don’t always translate into good animal behaviors

The last full day that I was in Idaho, I brought out the three pieces of rawhide I’d been saving up for the three dogs, and distributed them, one to each, which is fair. Of course the dogs all wanted each others rawhide, and the tenuous truce established between Kit and Loper wore to a ragged thread that I, unfortunately, didn’t notice until Kit cornered Loper in Sikem’s stall, which had only one exit, and proceeded to attack him, snarling and screeching and baring his teeth and biting. I threw a horse brush into the fray, which did a total of no good at all, then ran in kicking indiscriminately. I caught Kit in the flank, which surprised him enough to let Loper go, and Loper high-tailed it out of there (actually, Loper, like most dogs, slunk away, tail between his legs. The phrase “high-tailed it” could refer to the local deer, however, who do leap away with their enormous fluffy brush tails pointing straight up). I marched up to Kit and got down in his face and said “NO. You know that’s NOT OKAY,” and he looked up at me defiantly and he growled at me. Boy was I not going to stand for that, not even for an instant. I grabbed him by the collar and marched him to the porch and made him lie on his bed, and I left him in time out for about ten minutes, while I collected the rawhides I could find and put them safely out of reach. The next morning when dogs, people and horses were wandering around outside, I heard a low growl and looked over to see Kit with the rawhide I hadn’t been able to find. I strode over and took it from him—he did not argue—and put it out of reach. The dogs were perfectly fine from then on, even in the car for the six hours until I dropped off Loper.

The evening after my first riding lesson I thought, instead of taking a long ride around the area, I’d bridle Shadow in the pasture and just meander around there a bit, before catching the other horses and bringing everyone down to bed. Knowing that, if I didn’t come up with something more enticing than carrots, she’d just run down the hill and leave me to carry both the halter and the bridle down myself, I put some grain in a small bucket and took that with me up the hill.

First problem—it’s hard to halter one horse when she and two others all have their heads deep in the bucket of grain you’re holding over your arm. Still, I managed to grab Shadow, who knew what I was up to but still couldn’t resist the siren song of that sweet, nutty grain. She was moderately surprised when I quickly picked her hooves, exchanged halter for bridle, and hopped on, but she was willing enough to canter around a bit. Toby eventually flung the empty grain bucket, in a huff, away from her, and she and Sikem drifted back up toward the baby trees where they’d been grazing before I lured Shadow in.

After about 30 minutes I’d had enough and decided to catch Sikem, who I would lead while riding Shadow, trusting Toby to follow. And then I realized, yeah, there wasn’t any grain left. Or carrots, or anything but me, and I know from experience that I’m only interesting when I’m letting the horses out. I rode Shadow down to where I’d left the halter and the bucket, led her over to a pile of logs so I could jump on easier, and made my one good move of the afternoon: I carefully placed the bucket on a tall round of firewood so that, did I manage to collect Sikem, I could then collect the bucket without having to get off the horse.

So, holding Sikem’s halter in one hand and my reins in the other, I rode up the hill. Of course, as soon as I hopped off by Sikem and Toby, they turned away, just barely fast enough that I didn’t stand a chance of catching them. I sighed, jumped back on Shadow, and headed back down the hill, suddenly wondering how I was going to carry bucket and halter and reins and how, in fact, I had meant to lead a horse and carry a bucket and hold my reins, all bareback.

When I reached the bucket, I leaned over and dropped the halter in, then picked up the bucket. I gave an experimental shake—yes, to my ears, the buckles on the halter sounded more or less like grain swirling in the bucket. Maybe this would still work, and I would not find myself trudging back up the hill for the other horses once I’d deposited Shadow in her stall.

Shaking the bucket, I rode Shadow off down the hill toward home. I glanced back hopefully once or twice, but Toby and Sikem continued to graze, unperturbed, ignoring me as I rode away. Ah well. We dropped down out of view and continued along.

Suddenly, I heard a deep, quiet thunder. I turned to look over my shoulder. Nothing. The thunder grew louder, and became clear—galloping hooves. I glanced over my shoulder again, and saw Sikem and Toby cresting the hill, running flat out after me. Shadow tensed up, flicked an ear at me can I run too? I kept my seat loose, calm, and tapped the reins. No, not right now. Not with the bucket!. Sikem pulled abreast of us and slowed down to a wiggly trot, and immediately tried to stick his head in the bucket. Of course he did, because he thought it was full of grain. Shadow danced around, I gripped with my legs and shooed Sikem away, and eventually made it to the corrals without further incident, and Sikem and Toby didn’t race back up the hill and were easy to catch.

Which, I agree, makes for a rather mundane ending to a story, but with all the other drama going on, I was happy to be able to learn a lesson—i.e. think things through from the horse perspective if you intend to include horses in your plans—without danger to life, limb, or liberty (mine, that is).

Fastest trip change in the West . . .

The reason I’ve left you all hanging about various events at Jerome Creek is that the striking of that set and the staging of the next trip happened very, very quickly and, as usual, at the end of trip two I didn’t leave myself any recovery time at home before plunging back into day to day life in Seattle (starting with a trip to the dentist a mere twelve hours after my return. And I have a cavity. Doesn’t get much more unpleasantly mundane than that.).

Specifically, I arose at 6:30 am and left Jerome Creek at 9:00 am on Thursday, 27 May, dropped Loper off at his home at around 1:50 pm, made it to Seattle just before 3:00 pm (yes, making remarkable time. I was very, very careful, but speedy), threw farm things out of the car and into the laundry area willy-nilly, shoved beach things in more willy-nilly yet, kissed Ian (at least, I think it was Ian . . . things were happening very fast . . . ), showered (or rather rinsed off), patted Spackle, scratched Kit (who had made the trip with me to be delivered later than evening to K&A, fresh from Barcelona), and was out the door at 3:45 to pick up Laura at work and drive to Portland to meet up with college friends for a weekend at the beach. Finally made it to bed, upon one of the most comfortable couches on which I’ve had the pleasure to sleep, around midnight. I’m tired all over again thinking about it.

AAAAAAAAGH!

That's my mother-in-law on the ground behind her horse. This was not planned. Yes, to add to my two weeks of, well, more challenges in a small amount of time than is ideal for a vacation in paradise, Janet took a spill off Shadow today mid-canter. Sikem, back far enough to see only that something had leapt out of the woods and attacked Shadow, stopped short--I mean immediately--from his fast canter and I flew over his head in what I would like to believe was a graceful arc, but certainly in what was a complete somersault. I landed on my bum, and bit my tongue hard. Not a perfect ten dismount off the pommel horse.
My immediate fear that I'd bitten off my tongue (seems my teeth aren't so strong afterall) was immediately distracted by the moaning of my mother in law, lying in a loose fetal at the side of the trail. Shadow was up ahead, unconcernedly cropping grass. Not leaving, but it was clear she wasn't needed at the scene of the accident so she'd just stay out of the way for awhile, you're very welcome.
I didn't quite manage to keep ahold of Sikem's reins through my acrobatics, and he danced away when I lunged at him, before even standing, before even looking at Janet, before even testing to see if my tongue was, in fact, still attached. Freaky person on the grass grabbing at my head, said Sikem, I don't think so.
I stood up--it seemed I could--and called over to Janet. "Where did you land," I said, then "good boy, Sikem, come on back, baby, " turning the other way.
"Here, on these large muscles," said Janet, gingerly reaching back to rub her left glute, "with a little bit of back involvement."
"Okay, don't move. Stay there, I'll be right over!" Janet moaned a couple more times, then suddenly was silent. Panicking, I glanced over from where I was trying to lure Sikem to my hand, with grass I'd pulled just for that purpose. Janet told me later that the moaning had felt good, but then she worried that it would worry me and stopped. Which worried me because then I thought she was dead, or in a seizure of some kind. I thought briefly that even with the Leatherman, and the Epipen, and my digital camera, I was woefully unprepared for disaster.
Things more or less resolved, fairly quickly, from then on. Evidently, the grass I was waving, shakily, in Sikem's direction--yes, the same grass he was eating all by himself, safely out of my reach--appeared to be better, so Sikem wandered over and let himself be caught.
"Do you want me to hold him while you go get Shadow?" valiently offered Janet from the ground where she was still lying in an almost imperceptibly looser fetal.
"No, I don't want to risk him pulling on you. We'll be able to get her and be right back." Which was true--Shadow accepted that she was now needed, left off eating, and meekly allowed herself to be led back to her fallen partner .
And then, adding much to my already great respect for this woman who bore my husband, Janet got herself up, and then got herself back on the horse.
"Shadow," I heard her say as I remounted too, "I've never fallen off a horse before! You were my first!" 

I like paper as much as the next guy, but . . .

I took Sikem through last year’s clear cut the other day, out through Maple Creek Meadow and up the east side of Maple Creek—a gorgeous trail that I’d never been on despite coming here five years in a row. It’s a surreal experience to ride through a finished clear cut. It looks, to my un-bomb-educated eyes, as though a bomb went off, leveling the forest and incinerating everything remaining. I assume the loggers burn so that they can control the fires, instead of letting incredibly good tinder lie around baking in the sun, waiting for a rogue spark from an ATV or a cigarette to catch and send uncut forests up too, but it makes for a distinctly end-of-days atmosphere.
Horses, like virtually all animals, don’t like fire all that much, and this weird, barren place smelled a lot like fire. Sikem was not at all convinced that we should actually walk through; particularly (although I could be projecting) since all the burnt stumps looked like bears. Evidence that he’s maturing, though, and that I, perhaps, am a sufficiently competent rider, was that even traveling through a burning mountainside crawling with bears, he trusted me to keep him safe (mind you, had there actually been burning and bears, I certainly couldn’t have been trusted to keep him safe, and our trip would’ve been much different).
He almost lost it nearer the end of our ride, when we were beginning a canter up a long-familiar trail and encountered two deer, or rather, startled two deer into leaping away, leaving us with a brief glimpse of their phenomenal fluffy white tails, which are about the size of baby seals. He was one stick snap away from bolting, his ears pricked three inches taller than normal, his neck bathed in sweat, and ignoring me completely when I tried to explain that the deer were even more afraid, and even more harmless, than him. Eventually, convinced that they were not going to jump back out of the woods at him as quickly as they’d jumped in, we were able to continue along.
Back at home, he proved his maturity once and for all by allowing me, with no argument whatsoever, to maneuver him into place so that I could reach down and extract the formerly scary, rustly newspaper from the newspaper box. Or the stresses of the evening had simply worn his defenses completely down.

The 4-Runner Loves the Palouse

24 miles to the gallon this last tank, which is quite a bit better than the 18-20 promised. Not bad for an SUV, eh?

The Cat Came Back?

Here’s the thing, the thing that makes it abundantly clear that I am unsuited, to put it mildly, to take care of cats. This has nothing to do with my allergy to cats, which varies from cat to cat in intensity from none to asthma like I’m going to die, even taking Benadryl. No, the reason I am unsuited to taking care of cats is that I—all you feline aficionados take note—evidently do not know for sure how to tell one from another. You see, there’s a cat here. She was here last night, and she was here just 20 minutes ago when I went to the loft to check. She was even lying in the milk crate—documented behavior of Doucely, Miss Missing. The problem is that this cat doesn’t have a collar, and the first cat did. Now, the same things that cause farm cats to go missing can cause (much less dramatically) collars to go missing, so the fact that the first cat had a collar and this one doesn’t is really neither here nor there. The other problem, though, is that there are varying opinions on how the first cat looked. The cat that Laura and Sonja talked with was gray and stripy. The cat that Ian talked with was gray and stripy, too. When I mentioned I thought the cat had been black, Ian said no, but maybe dark gray. Now, two nights ago I did briefly see a flash of gray and stripy cat leaving the loft when I went up to check for Doucely . . . but that cat skittishly behaved very much like a stray. The little black cat that’s here now doesn’t, however. She was quite happy to be held and petted, and purred intensely all the while. So . . . I think the cat that’s established herself in the loft is actually Doucely, albeit naked, re-establishing herself. But it embarrasses me that I can’t be sure, and that I’m going to have to ask A, next time she calls, what, in fact, her cat looks like.

Update

Doucely is still MIA.

Kit maintains an armed truce against Loper, who maintains a clueless truce.

Toby's owies are in better shape today, and all swelling has disappeared. She's going to be fine.

New Solution

Instead of the nylon rope formerly failing to hold this gate closed, I twisted up some wire using the tool shown. Spackle observed, although not what I was doing. There are some chickens in the next yard over.

New Challenge

One day I went to collect the horses and saw Toby in the creek pasture, which is not where I had put her. Further investigation showed that the Rambunctious Youngsters had not actually jumped the fence a few days before but had, in fact, pushed through this gate (the tangle of barbed wire looped around on the ground).

Trouble in Paradise

Today was not quite, in balance, a good day. Certain things were good—my friend S, still a new friend but rapidly becoming a long-term friend, is here, and we’ve been getting along great and she’s been enjoying the company of the dogs and the horses. It rained today, which may seem bad but is actually good, as it keeps me from feeling guilty about not watering the Arbor Day trees in their little blue tubes and the daffodils around the house (spring comes later here than in Seattle), and it created the perfect opportunity to sit on the couch with my knitting supplies and start the mathematically laborious task of working out the new pattern I’m creating. Also, rain doesn’t go on endlessly here—it rains, then it stops and the sun wetly appears and everything steams and suddenly it’s hot again, and then the sun starts to go down and suddenly it’s surprisingly cold. And on our evening ride we came upon a litter of coyote kits, trotting busily about in the waning light.

But the bad things are multifold. First, Doucely the cat has vanished. Doucely is an outdoor farm cat, and in coyote/eagle/barn owl country this is, almost without exception, eventually a death sentence . . . but nevertheless, no one wants to be responsible, even by proximity, for flipping that final switch. Doucely was a very sweet kitty, at least as far as I could tell from the first several days here. She was last seen about 4 miles north by neighbor G, day before yesterday, climbing a large lodge pole pine. Since then two different stray cats have availed themselves of her food . . . but they, I suspect, will be no acceptable replacement. I have not given up hope completely, but S and I have accidentally started referring to Doucely in the past tense. Not a good sign.

Second, Kit has decided that Loper is not, in fact, always welcome. Yesterday there was an episode of angry attack, which I broke up by sounding even angrier than Kit, and today after dinner there was an even worse episode. Spackle was already in the kitchen, Kit was in the kitchen, and Loper was heading nonchalantly in himself when Kit, with no warning, leapt at him snarling and barking. I leapt at Kit snarling and barking myself, and stomped up stairs after him to where he had retreated behind K&A’s bed where we’ve been sleeping, and made him sit, then made him lie down, then glared at him for a while. He stared back at me, not entirely unrepentant, and eventually reached up and licked under my chin. I read Julie of the Wolves, so I know what that means. And about time, too, I say. Eventually Spackle appeared as well, then Loper, then S, and after a bit of residual deep, throaty growls, Kit subsided and we all trouped back downstairs for a civilized evening of wine (S and me) and naps (the three dogs).

The third, and worst part, is Toby. I’ll say right off that it’s not serious in the scheme of things, and she’s going to be perfectly fine, but she’s out of commission for at least a week. Late last night, I was sitting in this very office, typing away at my recalcitrant email and listening to the frogs singing outside. Suddenly I heard a CLANG-WHACK-CLANG. The dogs snored on. I put my ear to the open window and listened intently . . . nothing. I assumed a horse had banged into a gate and left it at that. Soon after, I went to bed.

This morning, I got up around 7:30, the usual time, and when I went to let out the horses, saw that Shadow had pushed herself into Toby’s small corral. She was standing under the overhang, out of the rain, and Toby had stuck her head out of her stall, but Shadow was blocking her exit. I led Sikem down to the pasture first, then returned and extracted Shadow, then Toby, to lead them down together. As I haltered Toby and led her from her stall, I noticed that the sliding door between the stall and corral was askew in its tracks. I took the mares down to the pasture and released them, then returned to survey the stalls.

Shadow had managed to get herself into Toby’s corral, the inner of the three, and couldn’t get herself back out. She had wedged a gate and a door together, and it took some muscle to get them apart. Inside the stall, Toby had pooped quite a bit—which I know made her unhappy because she is the horse that leads all the others to poop way down at the bottom of the yard away from where people and horses sleep, when given the chance. Clearly, she hadn’t had a choice because Shadow’s menacing presence was blocking her way. Lastly, I saw that some kicks had evidently been aimed at the wall of the stall—two boards had been knocked out on one end, knocking this other sliding door askew on its track. I hammered everything back together, cleaned up the poop, rehung the doors, and sighed with relief. It could’ve been worse.

It was.

S and I walked up to collect the horses for our afternoon ride around 5:30, taking the long way through the tree farm to appreciate the views. We approached the horses from an unusual angle; if anything, this made them all the more set on eluding us and making us carry the halters. I noticed, from the distance the horses placed between us, some marks on Toby’s side, that looked maybe like dirt, but more like injuries. And then they took off down the hill toward home. We trudged along after them, eventually cornered them in the little square of pasture on the creek, caught Shadow and Sikem, and finally saw that Toby was, in fact, not covered with dirt at all. She was covered with bites—but all of them are on her off side, so I hadn’t seem them when I’d haltered her.

Shadow had bitten her, or she’d scraped herself in her stall trying to avoid Shadow, probably a dozen times. None of the marks is awful in itself; hardly any showed any blood at all; the only puffy one wasn’t hot to the touch. Fortunately her legs weren’t injured at all and she’s walking fine and eating fine. I slathered her sores with Bag Balm and crooned to her, and fed her a bit of extra grain. She snuffled my hair and my chest, and seemed to have forgiven me, or never have blamed me. It was my fault, though. I had failed to fasten the gate between Shadow and Toby’s stalls, and Shadow (is it part of her Machiavellian nightly routine to push on each gate, just to make sure?) took advantage. And when I heard the quick CLANG-WHACK-CLANG I listened, very carefully even, but I didn’t go check on anything.

I’ve spent the evening feeling kind of sick to my stomach.

Photo Essay of some high mountain desert wildflowers, Part II

I eventually had to stop with the photo essaying--I started to get car sick staring at the ground so hard as I strolled briskly along. I also got carsick watching the New York Marathon a couple years ago . . .

 

Photo Essay of some high mountain desert wildflowers, Part I

 

Yes, Kit, that leg *is* the same color as yours . . .

 

The Solution

 

The Challenge