The Barn

Dreams chase me back and forth across the bed. By three I know I didn't feed the extra flake. Four a.m. I'm pulling on my hat, vest. The moon is steeping behind clouds. Wind against my blue pajamas. Dogs jump off the porch and scatter. No horses in the barn as I drop the flake in the manger. Walking back up, calling dogs by name: Al, Scout. Jenna's on the porch. Company is gone tonight. Don't know if she left in irritation. More company comes today. Tony comes tomorrow while I'm working the next three nights. He says he might sleep in the barn with me but then can't figure out how to coordinate the dogs.

Awake again at seven. Hiss at the dogs, quiet. Coffee in bed. Eyes leaking tears. I get my computer. Start typing a message to my cousin who likes horses. Who's going to start riding seriously now that she's retired, now that she's almost seventy, next time she comes back from Haiti.
And I tell her my first two horses when I was thirteen, when I was twenty were disasters, absolute disasters. Now I am so lucky to have somwhere to flee to. Two times this week I ave had to brush past all obstacles to climb on a horse and realign, reaffirm. I ask my cousin how other people do it?

Walk back up to the house, pale sun, red bushes. Get the crock pot going and sweep athe floor. three heads of cabbage. I'll put my company to work with me slicng for saurkraut.

I think I'll put a CD on. I'll turn it up loud.

Clean stalls in my blue pajamas while the horses are eating oats and barley. I'll be back I say. We'll all go out this morning. The arena's already raked. with my friends we'll turn this day around.

Tuesday

The horse shoer comes at nine thirty, more or less. Ten after eight, Mary is waking up, humming, clearing her throat. She is my company, my guest, but I am unsure about almost everything today. I sit on the porch in the cold, a blanket over my legs. The sky is so blue it is silvery. The service berry, currants and hawthornes are red globes in the staw grass. We all steam in the cold.

I am tangled in a bad night that won't let me go. My only salvation is my horse. And I run to her. Brush while she eats chews her hay. Put the saddle on. Give her an apple. Run out the door, open the gate, run down the flat septic field, the knobs of knap week. Run down the ravine picking my way around rocks until I finally trip but do not fall close to the driveway. I swing the gate open and turn to run back.

My horse takes me on a beautiful ride. She says she is very relaxed. We go to the pond where Beau had enough trouble yesterday to jostle my back this way and that and I finally got off. Today Kansas chews the reins out of my hands as she stretches her neck so long.

The shoer is here.

Second day of hunting

Horses cause you to dream. Besids velvet coat, muscles as thick our whole bodies, horses magic is to compose dreams. Horses whisper in your ears. They nudge you in your sleep. In your dreams you learn to ride. You take the next step.
Second day of hunting season and I can no longer stomache riding in circles, bending to the right, bending to the left, a little leg yield on the way out. Instead I brush Kansas every inch. Mix water and peroxide, dab it on the neck bite. Spray with Schriners. Carefully tie her blue beads, her silver bells around her neck and roach clip to her gray mane. Saddle up and mount from the front porch. We are a long legged vison passing the bright red service berry bushes, the orange gooseberry leaves. Black dog Jenna does not listen and dips under the neighbors gate. His dog is not out. Black dog Scout backs us up.
Kansas and I crunch over the gravel. I move my sit bones like stilts and in a straight line. I pull up on my right side that will sag the second I let my mind wander. My hands, elbows and shoulders are bungies. We make our way as far as the pond. It is a mirage of hues sifting over its skin. There are horses on the other side. I see a black and a brown behind a far fence. Two old men dig at the bank of the road hunting for blue agates. Their shirts have pulled free, stripes of pale skin. I yell: Can you say hi? One man looks up. I yell again: Can you say hi to us? And he gets it. He yells hi back, says it is a beautiful day and then he asks if he is talking to the horse or the dogs. The horse I say. Beautiful horse he answers. Come down he waves. Oh, we're going to turn around here anyway. This is our first time to the pond. Really he asks. Too bad he says.
When we turn around, there are black angus far out in dry field. They are calling to each other. Kansas dances to turn her neck. Her good eye is wide open on the cows. She twists around. When I nudge her forward, she backs up.
I hum to keep my breath even. I tell myself to lean back. I turn her toward the barbed wire and she steps forward down the road. there is no weight on her front hooves. And then she twists around again to oggle the cows. Hum, lean back, turn to the fence. We head back down the road. I call out to the dogs. Jenna does not even flinch. Jenna is making her way back to the neighbors.
It's not until I get off at the mailbox, stuff my sweatshirt pocket with envelopes, that I start to daydream on the walk up the driveway. Kansas does not interrupt. She hangs her head and might as well be tiptoeing beside me. Her eye is bright. Clear as day I can see her with me riding, travel all the way up the road we just came down. We walk past the pond, the men are gone, and make the turn to the right where the road is rutted. There is no more gravel, just the dirt and we are climbing all the way toward the trees, the pines until we pass through the gap in the hills and dissappear from sight.

Dark at seven thirty now. Hot tub feels more than ninty-five degrees. The water buoys me. Steam swirls across the surface. Lean my head against the cedar rim. North is uphill. There are three lights then the darkness of the forest. The Big Dipper sags across the horizon. Straight up, darkness is coated by the Milky Way. High, over to the right, headlights, then they disappear. Coming down from the mountain. In and out, thin shouldered staggering height of pines. Last week it was us coming home from cutting wood. Wood in the bed. Three dogs in the back seat. In the forest we could see our breath. Maybe we have enough for the winter now but all day I stoked this hot tub stove just to sit in the heavy, hot water to watch these head lights spark back and forth out of the evergreens and wind their way down the open slopes so steep your heart will catch. Finally tires hit the nearest cattle guard, the metalic clang. This is where we laid the two dead goat babies last spring. Like a sinking stone. But right now, in front of me this night, on top the first two set of slopes a light where there is never a light. I did not tell my son this morning on the phone, the gunshot that woke me up. I told my daughter. This morning I wore my blue pajamas down to the barn and Tony's big shoes because he's gone all week and the black dogs danced rings around me. I stopped a minute. Stood in the stall door, the weak sun, while thoroughbreds chew their oats and barley, beau's dribbling out the corners of his mouth, Kansas licking up every grain. Another gunshot. Deer running along the open spaces, the dry, white grass, below. Two deer going one way, switching back another way, not knowing. You can come this way, come this way to the creek I whisper. I wonder if they are near by as I shift in the hot tub water and the soles of my feet let loose. My toes are free and I listen to the creek. There is a deep sound besides the steady rush of water. There is the deeper gurgle and in my mind's eye I can see where the water widens a little pool then passing through the willow brush. This moment and the next, the creek is the only single sound. I said I would not build near this creek. Over there where there are rocks and nothing green grows except the Bitter Brush and the Sage, maybe some cheat greass. Keep this the way it is. But the witcher found well water here. The septic on this side. At least the house is tiny, yellow light in the windows, the string of blue Christmas bulbs outlining the porch and the barn holds its own against the sky. I'd like to try the bigger bulbs in red, orange and green. I told you that and you wondered how we'd climb up to the peak. Well, it would not be you Tony, it will be me that does the climbing. But right now, dark night, my first hot tub up here alone.

September 20

This year our television is bigger than we are. Today is September tentieth. Twelve years ago Tony and I left in the Frieghtliner together. Tony was in his last month of being fortynine.

Once upon a time, when I was a girl, I'd tremble waiting for my boyfriend. It was a miracle when we could finally spend the entire night together. No going home. Devastation felt like a fist in the belly that woke me up sweating night after night. And then the years, crashing into the world, into life, like falling down a flight of crowded stairs, slamming your elbow, the back of your skull, your bones, not being able to reach out, to catch on.

Tony and Penny: there are parts of ourselves that complement the quirks, the eccentricities. I have the horses, the goats, the dogs, the cat. I can not stop building the future. Tony knows how to sit still. I speak the words, the grammar, know the spelling, write the page, the next page and the next. Tony doesn't realize he hasn't answered.

Tony and I park the yellow Focus, the red pickup, so that when we wake up we can see the barn from our bed. We say it is a painting. It is our own painting.

The hike yesterday to Cathedral Rock took the entire day. Fifty miles from our house to the end of the road at Salmon La Sac. Potholes and washboard. But the new trekking poles took ten years off our steps. Nothing but up. Half way, Squaw Lake, clear as glass, green reeds at one end. A fish. A duck. Sandwiches, homemade sourkraut, fermented not the vinegar kind. Then up and up and finally Spinola meadows and the ponds with Cathedral Rock image on the surface. The dogs splashing and the reflection wobbles. We sit in the short grass behind a white rock blocking the wind. Dogs roll. Eyes close in the sun, our last hike of the year.

Going down takes forever. I stop to take a photo of Mount Stuart. I set it off center but when I push the button my hands shift to symmetry. This picture is dead center.

By the time we get to the gas station it's already dark. Up the driveway in the dark, the goats bellowing. My white mare is standing alone outside the fence. The gelding waits smug in his turnout. I say I'll get Kansas and close the gate. You'll feed the grain.

Kansas isn't scared like she was last winter when she found herself on the outside in the dark. She knows her home.

Will you help me in the morning? Eight o'clock, I'll load the pickup with my tack. Will you hitch the trailer? I'll brush Kansas and lead her up. Of course you say, of course you will.

Colorado 2011

We do not have the time. We do not have the money. Somehow we are driving 1,100 miles each way. Take the truck. Sleep at the top of Dead Man's Pass in Oregon in the rest area. Trucks all night. Different in a pickup than a big truck. Next night in the rest area above Salt Lake, it's getting quieter. There is a train. And then we make it to Dick and Kay's new place, Colbran. There are yellow flowers and Dick has on his irrigation boots. He is eighty one. Molly drives her two burros down from Oak Creek. Molly is seventy. She told her oncologist to assume she is sixty. Kay and I drink margaritas on the porch with one giant white dog, three border collies and one spaniel. Humming birds. Gold sun through the ivy. Two rams out past the fence, one has curved horns. The sheep are filing down the pasture to the barn. Red angus, fat and shiny.

Molly, Tony and I sleep in the bunk house. In the morning Fred will come in and take the plumbing apart. He pours bleach in the tank. We can't use the bathroom for twenty four hours. It's Fred's computer that has been moved out of the bunk house onto the porch. Molly and I tell Kay that Fred is passive aggressive. Kay says when we figure Fred out let her know.

We all hike the first day and four of us on the last day. Dick's neuropathy acting up. We hike at 11,000 feet. The land spills away from us on both sides. Kay says when she was young both families, both grandmothers, and all the cousins got together in the summer, every summer. Kay says that the older she gets the more important these times are to her. At the ranch she shows us the "no heat cooker". It is a two and half foot square wooden box. Inside is a round piece of granite, four inches thick. The rock goes in the fire then it goes on the metal plate inside the box. The round metal pan goes directly on the rock. Then the quilt and then the top of the box. The white paint is peeling from the wood. It belonged to Kay's grandmother's.

There is only one day out of the three that it rains. In the Rockies, the clouds are iron weighted and we are cold pricked by rain. We drive in one pickup truck, wending south through Delta and Montrose, the Chinese Buffet where Dick laughs and jokes while he puts grapes and noodles side by side on his plate. We stop in Ouray. File into the hot spring dressing rooms and out into the hot pools. Kay sinks against the hot water. One hundred and six degrees. Her feet are finally warm she says. A young man pulls himself through the water to hear Dick telling stories about the swather, the sixty years of haying mountain meadows. I do the breast stroke, over and over and over. Count the bubbles, the rhythm and pulse, float upon the water.

By the time I get back to the bunk house my tooth will hurt so much, I just go to bed. But we made it. We all made it this year.

We leave at eight, after dinner. After steaks cooked on the BBQ. Dick has his straw cowboy hat on with the sides tightly rolled like they do in Colorado and he has on his turquoise pearl button shirt. Danny, who lost his license again, and his girlfriend who drives him, bring grilled asparagus, potato salad and roasted corn from Palisades. There is watermelon from Green River. Barbara just came in from the zoo in San Francisco. She leaves in a week for the endangered animal school in England. Her hair is red, part of it caught in a braid. She has Dick's nose. She'll sleep in our used sheets tonight in the bunk house.

I look across the table, the smoke blown in from the grill. Kay is saying that my ex husband, when I was nineteen, that Terry, is the one who brought her home from the hospital. Three days in the hospital after the horse wreck, and Dick didn't even pick her up, sent Terry who she never really liked. My mouth is already moving, turning in Dick's direction and I am saying: I've heard Kay say this same thing before Dick and she's really angry. You better do something pretty soon Dick! Everybody is laughing. Kay is laughing.

Starting home we skip the interstate. State route 13, in the dark, the mountain sides, the deer, up through Rifle, into Meeker, finally Craig. All the names that have sat along beside me, in front of me, to the side of me. And there is the Sleeping Giant bathing in the moon light. Arms crossed over her chest. It's when I shut my eyes, there are so many doors I now see shutting, that have already closed. Tight. Yampa. Taponas. Dan-Dan-the Fish-Man found dead in his camper. But wait. Maybe, still a breath of air, a slight breeze blowing. Fingers working their way under the next door sill. We are not done yet.

Surprise Lake, 40 miles west of Levenworth, Stevens Pass

The bed-rock of hiking is finally the minutes when you have given up the destination. Purity of movement. Sweat soaked, blue checked shirt. The right foot passing the left, left passing the right.

Red columbine, blue bells, pale trillium and the Canadian dogwood pass within the dry suck of breath. Arms swing side to side propelling and knees are thick. I do not raise my head to look at the peaks, the clouds, how the sun shafts through the evergreen branches. I see my old brown boots, not picking the rocks, but splash through the shallow creek. I see the roots ahead then passing underneath, then my mind analyzing the slope of the next boulder, my eyes searching for toe holds. I hear the drum of the beaten trail as if the skin of the earth holds a hollow. These are the only minutes that I am no longer the observer but for even a few breaths pass into being another animal in the forest.

This instant I am not set apart.

At this lake I settle on a boulder, an island, eat the cheese sandwich and drink a quart of water. Then I curl up on the rock. Tuck my knees, close my eyes. Feel the clouds, wet and clammy, until the sun moves back, slides softly like warm silk against my skin.

August 28th - I am 60

I am betrayed. My boss changes the posted schedule without telling me. I am hyperventilating at work. It is Saturday. I write an email, leave a voice mail. Cancel the trip to Colorado two times? Put in one month's notice and work per diem in Seattle? What do I have to loose?

Being home each and every morning. Waking up to goats, dogs, cats, horses.

Tony is sleeping in the loft bed in the barn. Millionair daughter, Morgan, and her guy, Craig, are sleeping in our bed in the house. Only nobody's sleeping. I am waking Tony up. He climbs down the ladder. I wave my hands around my head telling him our trip might be cancalled. I shove my chair backwards and say I'm quitting and taking the winter off. We'll use our savings. Tony sits naked on the big tack box. Both border collies stare at one then the other of us from under the computer table.

We climb one after the other into our nest but I can not sleep and climb down again to talk to the computer. Finally I climb back up but the shouting inside my head startles me awake again and again. I spin on my perch just under the ceiling. This is my birthday.

In the light of day, I find out, Craig and Morgan did not sleep. The coyotes right outside the window. The Milky Way painting a stripe across the sky. The pugs barking and growling.
We all drink coffee and eat Danish Kringle from Larsons, the bakery where Morgan worked when she was eighteen. Where the woman backed right over her apple red, Honda scooter. I open the presents. Tony gives me the spoken word CD by Annie Gallup. There are twelve organic chocolate bars from Johanna. Cathryn has sent three books: Half the Sky, The Sharper Your Knife the Less you Cry and the Widowers Tale. I have seven artichokes blooming neon purple from Mary's garden. Morgan has bought me an etching from a well known artist living in prison. It is of a tall, lean horse dancing in place. There are also socks and a black, cotton belt stitched with pockets and grommets for riding tools or work keys. There are two chocolate bars from Morgan. I open my presents sitting on the wooden birthday bench. It is already hot and there is not a breath of breeze.

Craig is only here for my birthday. He flew up for the weekend. He does not own hiking shoes. He wears his Birkenstocks. Craig was born in Las Angeles.
Nothing bodes well.

Morgan resigns driving to Craig. He turns the air condioner on. It is nine o'clock in the morning. Eventually we pass through Cle Elum, we make our way to Roslyn. There''s a Sunday market. I would have stopped if this was not the sixty year old birthday hike. From the back seat I say nothing. We pass through Randal even though we don't really know that Randal exists. We find Cooper Lake. I do not tell anyone how lucky we are to still be on paved roads. I catch a glimpse of a straight river running out of mountains. Even though this is a first time hike, we find the trail head.

Two back packers are coming out. They say that it is still and stuffy in the forest. It is one hundred in Yakima I say. We all look stunned.

And that's pretty much it. We walk and we walk. The dust raises just from our footsteps but there are streams to cross, logs to balance. The river down below is crystal clear with the aqua marine carried from the melting glaciers. The evergreens tower. Tony and I have not seen so many Doug Firs since we moved over a year ago. We walk up gray knobs of bald heads and head back down searching bright green undergrowth for wild ginger.
We walk and we walk. The sound of running water up around the bend passes into the sound of water from behind us. Strings of back packers cross our path but in the opposite direction. Still we walk on with snatches of a glacier between two trees, no, now it's gone like it never was. Until, there is a taller rock knob and we go around and beside it, crossing behind it and there is the lake.

It looks like Goat Lake my daughter says. Well, all these Glacier Lakes look kind of similar. The water, my ankles are numb. Craig is yelling. I say we can do it Criag. Oh, you think so Penny? I change into my bathing suit. The boy border collie is already swimming loops in the water.

The bottom is silt. I sink up to my ankles. Every step sends a cloud of silt through the crystal water. I cut the bottom of my toe on sharp rocks I can not see. My ankles ache and I am pushing to rush up a rock, let my feet melt.
It takes five trips. A little deeper each time, lowering my entire body temperature. Then finally I fling myself along the skin of the lake, glacier water. The freezing temperature rips my breath into jagged bits and pieces. It is not until the next swim that I can get my head under, my hair soaked and baptized one more time at the age of sixty.

Tony and Morgan only make it up to their toes. The boy border collie, Craig and I are the only ones to make it in on my birthday.

When Morgan and Craig leave tonight, Tony and I will stand by the gate to close it after them. The sky will be gray and pink with sunset. Tony and I will be stiff and slow walking back to the house. I will stand on the porch watching the red tail lights moving away from me down the mountain until I can not see them any more. I do not know what is in store for me, perched between Table Mountain and the Ellensburg grasslands, and my millionair daughter. It will not become clear until we are both done walking.

Elk Haven, August 25

Yesterday I am talking to my daughter. So much topsy turvy. Boundaries she says. I say, you are not a business, you are a person. Always it comes back to trust. Trust is the currency for human beings and at this bank we are all poor. There are no loans. Four of our hands are empty. We both run out of words. Finally, all I can say: I am learning as fast, as much, as I can. I learn from my mare, Kansas.

During lessons Sudi says of course I am afraid when the canter gets bigger, when the walk gathers energy, corn pops underneath Kansas skin. Sudi says: that's a really big horse and I've been there.

The last lesson, finishing up in the pasture, the green grass, Kansas walk is huge, rolling waves. My spine swings. This is the walk that we want. Right now, this big, when she is not about to blow up. Imprint it Sudi says.

Today, we are not home in the dry grass with a fifty mile view. We are not caught and pressed between the wind and the sun. This morning we are alone at Elk Haven in Cle Elum. The grass is growing. There are the white heads of clover. The irrigation is spraying and puddling in the tire tracks. Pines sigh. The crow caws and Kansas startles.

More than a year since I have taken the halter, lead rope off. More than a year since we have stood alone in an enclosed arena. I tie the laces on my sneakers. Kansas and I walk together, turn together, run over the jump poles laying on the ground and then stop in one instant head to head. I am hers and she chooses to move with me. But I am out of practice, run out of breath.

Coming back to ride, saddle, bridle, boots, and there is still shade along one long side. The dirt is dark where the sprinkler hits one end. An old yellow lab lies down for us to ride around. In our years I have learned to put everything to use. We fit the dog as part of our circle, the cones to bend around, poles to step over. The shade is our friend, our canter. And today Kansas is smooth as butter. Canter and canter and canter. Gather her up, trot over the red pole, gather more, turn her head to the right first and then my own. The right is our stiff side. Start the bend to the right early. Ask her to move. Push her forward with legs, legs, legs, over the green pole. Gather her in. "Up, up, up," I say out loud, hold ourselves up and step under. Take your horse with you, Sudi speaks in my brain. First Kansas head to the left and then my own. Back and forth, back and forth, then canter wide and open. Trot the sun side. "Go, go, go," Henrik's voice in my head.

My cell phone falls out onto the dirt. I see it passing under. I wonder if we hit it, at least cover it up. We leave the arena and walk between the trees. I duck under the branches. The wind sways. But when the donkey brays, I absorb the flinch. I am the startle. "Get off," Ulla says in my head, "Never put Kansas in a bad position, always end on a good note." I jump down. My cell phone is still half covered with dirt in the arena.

And then I just sit on the picnic table. I drink all my water. I eat the sandwich with the pickled jalapenos and cheese. Kansas, stretches her pink lunge line, eats the green grass, the clover.

My lifetime, there has been so little trust in who I am. Is there something wrong with me? My mare has one brown eye, the other is blue. She only sees shadows moving out of one eye the vets tell me. She is a big horse. A thoroughbred like they used to be, bold and fast. I used to tell my horse that I'm the wrong woman for her. She deserves someone young and limber. She deserves someone who can go far. But my horse trusts me. She tells me that trust is the only currency. I learn from her one hard step at a time.

August 8th, 2011 Raod Grader

When tony gets up at three a.m. to pee he is more wobbly since he cracked his head. The last night he smashes into the bedroom wall so hard, I think he fell. Tony you have to use a urinal. No, he says. You used a gallon jub in the truck. I remember how much I hated that yellow jug, sitting in the bunk full of old pee. Unscrew the lid and I would gag. Tony does not want to use a urinal now that he's out of the truck.

Backing a fifty two foot trailer between two other trucks with a foot on either side is geometric choreography. Tony did it every night and every day for thrity years. The year before last he started having trouble. The only way he could back in was to close one eye. His eyes are no longer focusing intricately together.

My thinking was if Tony left truck driving, his ability to balance would be tested all the time. His muscles would build up. There was no thinking that in the truck, there was always something to hang onto. There are hand holds built in. That using a bottle to pee in was what everybody does.

Okay I say. It is three a.m. Turn your light on. Sit on the edge of the bed then stand up and just stand still. Don't take a step. I watch him stand. He is skinny now. His bones articulate. He weeves from side to side like a flag pole in a medium wind. Every night Tony practices and he stops slamming into the walls.

Both dogs sleep on my side of the bed.

Now that Tony has cracked his head, the world is a little bit sharper. There is more glare. Corners stick out. There are not so many ways to ignore what he is loosing a little faster than I am.

Stand up straight. Don't screw up your face. Why is your head tilted to one side?

Tony is sixty two. I stop to watch old men walk upright with ease. I am waking up at night again needing to catch my breath and I do not know if we are loosing or gaining. Starting the morning, we are both tired.

Humming birds come to the porch while we drink our coffee, wicker chairs. Dogs bark. There is road machinery passing up and down the gravel county road. There is a lot of work to maintain this road. School starts up again soon. The school bus has to drive all the way up to the right angle bend just to turn around.

a little more August

Remember the book "Giants in the Earth?" Norwegians, the Dakotas, freezing to death in snow drifts. Sod houses, always the wind. My friend Joanne's grandfather came to Western Minnisota. He and his wife, Swedes. My grandfather would have married the woman he loved in Minnesota if his girlfriend didn't get pregnant. Aunt Betty. What would I do without the eternal sparkle of aunt Betty dancing just out of sight? But listen, it isn't my friend Joanne that comes to visit. It is Doreen and Jim, Johanna and finally Cathryn. We toast Cathryn's birthday with Aquivit. They all come in a week. We have mango and watermelon, hand crafted cheese, pumpkin bread on the porch for breakfast, wicker furniture, flaking white paint, donated by Mary and Ron.

The wind never dies. We ride horses and go hiking. We find Tronson Ridge and look out over the mountains.

The squash and the tomatoes start to bush out. The cabbage heads are as big as my skull.
Sudi's dog dies. She cancels our lesson.

August parralels February. It finishes off a season that has gone on a little too long. Or it is the wind and the bright light? I wear sunglasses and straw hats with the car visor down. I hide on my bed between one and four.
Still I get more and more tired. Are we too old? At night I close the windows, close the wind right out. I turn on the ceiling fan for air and hold on to Tony to know there is someone else there. How long will we be able to do this?

I can hardly ride my horse today, lackluster. I put up one jump so low we just step over it but it gives us something to do. When we ride out, my horse has her opinions and turns where she never turned before. She shivers at the squeak of the gate in the wind. The wind moans behind us and I give up listening for cars.

My horse has two cracks, both the left side. One back, one front. I take a bucket of water and splash it against the dry horn of her feet. She jumps and mashes the second toe on my left foot.

August 5th, a small list

Tony falls 10 feet onto his head on a cement floor: $3000
Cancel Colorado vacation
Lightning hits our internet: $300
I wash my phone and dry it: -$300, +$30
Lessons are cancelled, Sudi's dog Gypsy dies

"Remember I wrote that message to you, Peggy? If we were still young, we'd just go ahead and do it. You'd give your notice and move to Boulder." The staff lunge has no windows. One wall is lockers. One has the bathroom door, no sound proofing, and a sink. I report off to Peggy from across the tiny table.

Peggy does remember. But now there are two mortages. Rent the house in Yakima. The Cle Elum mortgage is low. Nurses find jobs. Then I say, listen, just move to Boulder and fly back for your six nights on and back to Boulder for your nine days off. What? Keep commuting until you get a Boulder job. Peggy says it would hardly be more expensive. Peggy is looking off and not seeing the lockers.

I kind of did that last year. I owned this land here for five years. I built the barn and then I waited and waited and waited.
There has to be a line in the sand you step across.
The house was being built, we lived in the barn. The horses had two stalls, we had one. Water came from the neighbor's hose. Made my way through the mud, to the porta-potty,, hiking boots, clean pants with the cuffs rolled up, clean shoes in the car. Started driving through the mountains while the coyotes were still trailing it home. Came back three days later.

I don't know why it gets harder while you get older. It's said that you know more. What if it is just slow metabolism? You just don't have the fire. I say: then just pretend.

Hay Stack, July 19, 2011

I say “sit” but momentum grabs his shoulders and head over heels he disappears over the edge of the hay stack. Hold my breath but this time he groans, fuck. I am coming. Do not move. I am almost there. I butt myself down the bales like a slide. Come around stack. Tony is on his back, wedged in the corner. Blood on the floor. His knees are moving. His arms shift. Move your hands, let me see. Bald plate is scarlet with blood. It flows like a faucet. Clean cloth, where is a clean cloth. Towel in the tack room. I pull it out. Push it to the top of Tony’s bald head. Hold his leather gloved hand soaked with blood under my hand. Push. Push hard. I am running for the car. Border collies run against my heels. Open the hatch back, both dogs jump in. I am running to open the gates. My feet scratch against the gravel. I am running to grab my purse. Little yellow Focus to the barn door. Can you walk? Dizzy against me. Stagger to the car. I am running around the side of the car. I am driving. I am out to open the next gate and running to close it as soon as the Focus is through. I am running to the next gate and running to close it when the Focus is on the county road. Drive fast. Do not slow for curves. How are you. What is your social security number? Do you have a pen to write it down?

The border collies lick the blood off the back of his neck.

They put a collar on him. Tell him not to move. They ask him if we were fighting. If I pushed him. Why is he so skinny? His ribs show. I sign the papers. They say it doesn’t always hurt, a compression fracture of the atlas, just when you turn your neck: and then that’s all she wrote. Paralyzed. Don’t let him move they say to me now. CT scans will give us the bare boned truth.

Nurses, gray scrubs, are wheeling him off to radiology.

Then I am driving home to get the animals in before dark. I am leading them. Talking like this is nothing. Do not worry animals. Do not be nervous. Flow with me. The border collies run in front instead of behind. Border Collies know the truth. I give the other animals their grain. I leave the goat door open. The dogs get food in the kitchen. They both look at me with astonishment when I close them into the house. And then I am in second gear down the gravel driveway with all the gates wide open.

A broken neck. Paralyzed. Cross that bridge when we come to it I say in a phone message to somebody.

Tony is lying on the stretcher. The collar is off. He is covered with warm flannel blankets. No break he says.

The next day, Tony and I talk to the Mennonite tractor dealer. We tell him the old John Deere is not exactly what we are looking for. He says his father used to have one just like it. They have their place. We tell him about the accident. He tells us about almost getting crushed by a baler. God was talking to him he says. I watch his wife, her cap, white apron, the way her dress blows her across the parking lot. Sun so bright it sheers.

July 19, LaPush

This is a place to come with:

Six different dogs
Three husbands (6'2", 5'8", 5"9")
Pound dog's first adventure
Shadow of the forgotten tent centerpole
Kids sleeping under an orange rainfly
A new blue Harley and an old greeen Harley
Enough sun to swim once in thirty years
A Polish teacher
Bucket of mussels
Blue coat for morning rain
James Joyce, clouds march across the sky
Three grandsons (5, 3, 1)


I yell across the drum of the surf to my grandson: the waves will fill the entrance in, we have to run Okay?
And we do. I laugh and stumble. We beat the tide. But it is a shallow cave, still a cave, but kind of disappointing. You start right in digging for fossils, for signs. Clouds fasten against the ocean. In front of me, sea stacks, ancient islands. Waves come in the front door. Hiss on the sand. My glasses are spattered with rain. I look over the rim; everything is unclear.

July 18, Monday

I will look at my horoscope before CPR refresher today. I will sit in the hospital cafe and drink a latte.

Where are we now after the Ocean? Three days, thunder waves, dogs run free, reservation fireworks twenty four hours a day. It rains every morning in the rain forest.

But back Tony and I are storm clouds. We are trying to talk and Tony says life is about trying to achieve dreams. What are your dreams Tony? Tony doesn't know. My life is about connection. Now it is about connection with animals; I give up on people. I give up on Tony.

So much talk of loneliness. Loneliness is where we all live. Despair becomes destructive.

I see Tony coming home with the hay wagon full. I go to CPR.

July 2, 2011. My brother's here

Home from work, one in the morning. There is a sweep of stars in the sky. And even though I forgot my sweat shirt, there is not one shudder of cold struggling up out of the car to open the gate. Of course the air shifts and moves, it dallies and splays across me, but only cool. Park at the house, I walk past the window where Tony sleeps. He will not hear me. He never hears me. Half deaf and on his way to sevety. The dogs hold steady inside. Gravel crunches as I walk past the white pickup dwarfed under the white camper. My brother will have his hearing aides out but he will hear me. My family sleeps light and he wrestles with the ghost of his recently dead wife. That portal is still open for him with tentacles passing back and forth like the flow of seaweed.
The barn is lit up. I can see the cat from here. She moves like a squat shadow against the ground. Drop and roll. I let myself in through the empty stall and Little-Miss-Rue, girl kitty, meets me at the door, escorts me to the tack room. The goats are silent. Three does and two males. I let myself out the outside tack room door to find my pee bucket and then I am done for this night. Little-Miss-Rue watches as I pull myself up the loft bed ladder and then she leaves by way of the cat door. We are three aging humans, the men like two solitary bulls and the one old woman clustered with the other animals in the barn. Sleep springs over me in my high up bed.

Thunder and lightening, three in the morning. Eighty five pound dog climbing in bed. Nails clicking back and forth from the other two. I let them out. I let them in. Later, the morning is edgy and tainted, both hot and still. Beau and I ride in the arena. After the warm up walk Beau twitches his head and strikes out with his front hoof at everything all the time. I lurch forward. I butt into the front of the saddle.

There is a place, center of my being. I don't like to go there. It takes all the other parts of me over. It is fusion. It engages, I am strong, focused and I will not give up. My voice is low, stern, loud. I am shouting: Go out into my hand. And I push, plie, squeeze with my lower legs. As Beau's head tosses, I squeeze. Beau stutters, stamps, move a backwards step, take the inside rein and walk a tight circle. Take the other inside rein for the other direction. Then trot and push. Push him on. Ulla's voice is in my ear saying: It is always hard to do, push them forward when there's trouble. You want to hold them back. No, you have to push them forward. I do not feel the connection in the reins but I keep squeezing and playing for his mouth.

We are both wet. Beau's red chest and neck hair matts with sweat. Under my arms to my waist, down my back, my tee shirt is wet. Usually we are moving forward at a steady pace.

We walk out the arena and head for the county road gate. Careful, careful over the rocks Beau. I open the gate, do not close it, too tired for a new kind of frustration. We walk down the road. Loosen my shoulders, follow with my elbows, feel his mouth. The sun is hot, glares on the gravel. There is dust in the air. Feel his mouth. Notice if my shoulders move.

Padding feet. Beau's ears prick. I turn, catch black border collie falling in place at our side. Farther back, big black lab. We are all together. Don't worry Beau. And then the turn up the driveway. Crushed gravel. Let him nibble the reins out of my hands. Stretch his neck down.

Pile his saddle, the shims, soaking wet pad, adorondeck chair off the front porch. Peel his blue medicine boots off his front legs, the black off his back. As the bridle comes off, slip the purple halter on and lead him to the back corner of the house.

What's this? He pulls back as I wrap the the lead around the metal tee-post behind the new little lilacs. The hose unravels as I turn on mostly warm, a little cold. Water sprays out and Beau settles in as I spray him inch by inch.

Horse flies as big as my thumb come searching the horse, the water. We go down to Beau's stall where I buckle his light blue netting over his wettness. The fly mask with the red border. And he runs and prances. He rolls in the dirt, stands to gallop and buck.

For me, stripping the soggy clothes, I lower into the luke warm hot tub used last night. I have a full mason jar of water sparkling between my hands. My eyes close.

In this hot tub last night we talked about death Tony. You don't want to keep loosing ability, not to be able to do more and more. For me, at this age, death has more than one face. so far, not my own face. I don't see death in the mirror. I see it in the clouds and watch it cover the mountains, sinking lower and lower until we are both in the fog. I hear my own voice tumbling down, out of the fog. and I am calling, calling the horses. Tonight you and I sit up to our necks in hot water. There are no stars tonight. There is no wind. At least we made it I say. Tony at least we finally got to move here.

summer solstice

First hike with a trailhead, not stumbling across the rocks, in a year. The snow is still melting. The streams are high. We have to search out the logs, find forks, jump smaller branches. The dogs run back and forth through the water waiting for us to find our way. You use your walking stick for balance. I don't look, pray for no broken bones that would stall us in our tracks at home. We skirt circles of snow and golden patches of avalanche lilly and walk across the larger drifts until we are stymied by unrelenting snow. And then we sit by the meadow and eat cheese sandwiches. I take pictures of myself with the dogs. I am laughing so much, I don't know what I look like anymore

I lay back on the dirt, the pine needles, the sun.

A hike is always a metaphor I say. I never thought of it that way you answer. But it is. We have to search out our way, keep looking for the way across and we find one. Finally, we aren't finished yet. We're not at the end.

When we get home, we get grain for the goats, the horses. Cindy Lou, the goat, is by herself in the barn. She is holding her ears at right angles from her head. What's up Cindy Lou. I say, we need to put Cindy Lou by herself. Right now? Yes. And then she starts groaning. Can you get me a chair from the loft? I'll make some tea, get towels, hang out with her. I'll be right back.

You are still in the loft when I get back. I don't think it's going to be long you say. Then you say, there's a bubble.

Cindy Lou thrashes out. She flips on her back and kicks all her legs straight out. She is very powerful.

The baby is born. He is white with a tan head and dark brown on his hips. He is slick. And I am drying him off and putting him in front of Cindy Lou. Cindy is licking and I am rubbing and it is the first day of summer.

1st lesson, Kansas and Beau

Circles within circles. Sudi is asking me to reown the plie but she is calling it softly posting. When I ask her how to softly post, Sudi does a plie in the sand and rubber arena in her black riding tights and paddock boots. The wind is whistling, blowing away her words.
And I want to turn away, remembering my knees bending as I breath in, lowering while the top of my head appears to rise. And then growing into the pliant straightening, legs working together, torso lifting, and breathing out.
Beau is lovely Sudi says. Lovely she repeats. How did you get him? His rider grew up I say. Went to college. His owner wasn't ready to give him up. Beau drifted. Ulla stepped in. She told the owner to give him to me. Ulla told me to take him.

Now Sudi is connected to this wheel.

I'd like to ask where it is all going. Tomorrow when I get up and ride my bike to town before work: endurance. I'd like to ask why.

Listen to me: I've been on different parts of this circle all my life and slipping and sliding right off. This time I have to trust these horses. The horses will lead me.

But when you get to the end there is no discernable prize. How do you know when you are finished?

While I am climbing through this circle I will write in the tackroom, with the loft bed, saddles and bridles.

June 11, 2011, 3/4 moon

After the grandsons. After our first bath together in the hot tub, I come out by myself. It would be dark except the moon. It is a three quarter moon. The moon coats a film across the water. Themoon coats me in the water. There are three stars but the first one is the one I wish on: to be a good rider. I want to be a good rider.
Nineteen year old Beau is caught in his fly-head-tossing thing. Maybe Tootie is right: An evansion and a half. But the answer is not to push him through so fast that he strains a tendon. No, at work on the psych unit, we used to say, you can't take something away without giving something to replace it. Beau has been doing the fly-head-toss for years. What can I give him in return. Riding I watch his head, I watch his hears. His head comes up, I wiggle my fingers, his head goes down I gently lift it up. He strikes out with his leg, I try to catch the instant and push him on. Go out Beau. Go out into my hands. Go with me.
I very well may be completely wrong.

June 5, Trail-ride game

Work as charge nurse four evenings in a row. Bring Ms Rue, Warrior Cat down to the barn. We will both be working later tonight.
The hot tub only cools down from the night before to ninty degrees. Saturday and Sunday noon, I climb in, float for twenty minutes before the hour drive to the hospital. I believe I am bursting with health.
Sunday after report, I am bursting with diahrea. I beeline for the bathroom every half an hour. The other RN I'm working with says: so you got it too. Then she talks about wanting to go home early. I get home Sunday night, pull myself up into the tack-room, loft bed. Ms Rue, Warrior Cat greets me. Every night I hear mice squeak before she bites their heads off. She leaves the bodies for me.

Between my stomach and my mistakes, ill-at-work-Sunday, I do not go in Monday. I call in sick. I sit on haybales and talk to Robyn, the farrier. She says they are giving horses B complex for anxiety. I used to get weekly B12 injections forty five years ago from my psychiatrist. I do not mean to tell her this. In this new place, I want to fit in.

Tueday there is enough of me stored up to get on my horse. I tell her we will just go easy. The wind tries to yank the helmet off my head. The wind blows hair in my eyes. Half an hour I see Tony and both border collies going down the driveway in the ATV. If I yell: close the gate, he will not hear me. I start riding after him. Kansas ears pick forward. She gives a few jog steps. We keep a distance but then the distance is growing. We trot a minute over the gravel, catching up. Slow down to a walk not to get too close to the machine. The machine is getting away from us. We trot. Kansas starts to look interested. We are stalking the ATV. It is our first trail-ride-game of our entire lives.

Overnight Beau looses a shoe. I am on Kansas traveling in circles waiting for the first lesson with Sudi at home. The wild mustard is blooming. With every bloom it is spreading. No rail around the arena. No letters on the rail. Who said I could do this thing? It always is too much for me.

Kansas and I see Sudi come up the drive way. She is out of the car. She walking. It is beautiful here she yells up. It is so beautiful. I say thank you because maybe it is. I say what I see is so much....The other way, she says, is just to enjoy it.

And then we ride. This time we try cantering in two point, those central core muscles, find them, hold me up above Kansas withers. Sit back. Right hand raises to her gray mane. Sit up in two point. Let go of her mane. Sit down. Show her the way.

Somewhere in here my arms unlock for a few gaits. My arms move with her. Give her more rein for now. Make it looser.

A circle at this end. Canter up the long side. A circle at the other end. Moments when I relax. Moments when Kansas can relax.

Memorial Day 2011

Tony and I end the day in the hot tub. Hot, hot, the water. Fourteen minutes to get my shoulders in. But before that. Before the BBQ with copper river salmon, chicken and steak, two kinds of salad and the four egg, two layer cake, one sticks to the bottom of the pan. Before I make butter frosting with leftover Canadian whiskey from my brother's visit. Before thirteen year old Grace, and ten year old Emily are heart struck by the cuteness of goats. Before Cathryn and I walk across the wild flowers and talk about getting too old for the violence on psychiatric units. Before Ron, Mary and Vern ride their bicycles from Cle Elum to our house - I ride the tall horse Kansas down the gravel driveway. We turn up at the mailbox. Her gray mane ruffles. Thunder storm clouds in the sky. My white hair, my back with the dark blue vest; there is a dull red pickup, a cloud of dust, coming up from behind. Cowgirl, black dog, white muzzle lifts her head from the ditch. Sniffs the air. Man in the pickup says: there's an old woman with her dog, riding a tall, gray horse up the road into the mountains. And then he passes by.

May 24th, House sleeping

Driving in the center for enough room. Can't follow a straight line, black country roads. the corner of my eyes, forms tumble across the hay fields. What are they? One in the morning. Another night, the same hospital. Sour with discouragement. I do not make the barn but crawl into bed naked against your body. Skin on skin. Is this enough for you?

You do not wake up.

May 23: Wormer

Tony is checking CDT vacine for baby goat. Hey, we are late on wormer. You didn't buy a drencher? Money issue waiting for social secruity check. Learn to talk to me Tony. Okay. I won't ride before work. This is how we'll do it: Use the 20 cc syringe if we need to squirt it. Try to sprinkle on grain. Formula 2 for Cindy Lou, no abortions. Other 2 adults Wormwood and half a spoon for baby Rox.

It takes us 1 1/2 hours for 4 goats...

Mighty pressure, unstuck the syringe, squirt the 12 ft high kitchen ceiling with Wormwood. Sprint to barn for the tall step ladder. Washing Wormwood off the ceiling, my foot on top of the hanging kitchen cabinets, I fall from the ladder. My elbow. My elbow. My finger tips are skinned and swell. Who skins their finger tips?

Just once I want to hear: I am so lucky I married a woman with good balance! I want to hear it. I want to hear it.

My elbow is on an ice pack.

May 22, Wild Flowers

My friend is lost for one and a half hours trying to find us. I drive to the end of Smithson and lead her back. Tony is tense. He is making fruit stuffed pork chops. He says: she's coming, she's not coming, she's coming. We have gin and tonic all around. My friend is seventy. Both knees have been replaced. She tells me she has been paralyzed with depression. This is the friend who taught me the names of some wild flowers on long hikes. The next day we ride in the pickup high into the Ponderosa Pine. She tells me the names of Arrow Leaf Balsm Root that cover the hill sides in bunches of yellow. She shows me the difference between the golden Glacier Lillies and the yellow bells. I say come back once a month. She says "it would be fun to see the progression of wild flowers all through the summer. Yes, it would. She points out the fuzzy white spikes off the Death Camus.

Two people, never lived together, retire to the mountain side where it gusts fifty five mph. Time management: Tony Long Haul Trucker, if time management was a priority no body would drive trucks. Penny Bunches, thirty years a nurse: Prioritize, prioritize, prioritize. Tony Trucker's family: Portuguese fish wives in Provincetown. Yell a list of to-do's at husbands. Husbands grumble then do them. All speech is surface level. Penny Bunches' family: sit around the dinner table talking. Still talking over coffee.

Last summer, house construction I am yelling so much I am hoarse. Port-a-potties, one hundred mile commute, no shower, sleeping in the barn, a bill for $6,000 a bill for $11,000. Tony Trucker is bitching about me handing out fruit.

Winter slows down. Winter. The end of winer tony signs up for two classes at the high school: Cooking Sauces and Nonviolent Communication.

I get a job on the psych unit in Yakima, fifty mile commute. Two horses, three dogs, one cat and the third goat has babies, two of them die and the third, a girl, lives. Tony is sixty two. I will be sixty this summer. I am learning to ride bareback on my thoroughbred.