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.