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.