P.S. It's Effing Hot

Family trip to Palm Springs. Eight cousins, some bigger cousins, two aunts and an uncle.

Water park, 120 degrees. Lilly and I are waiting at the top of a water slide and she turns around and looks like a wilting flower. "I don't feel too good, Mom," and I get the water slide dude to give her some of his water. She for sure was about to pass out from heat stroke. We learned after that to carry a water cup with us, and drink it all on the way to the slide.

The kids made me go on the Tornado which is like a huge bowl you get dumped into down a chute with 3 of your best friends on a raft together. The best part is they weigh you as a group before putting you on the raft. We wondered if there was a Fatty Alarm that went off and how horrible that would be. The only way I got through that ride was looking at Lilly's grinning face across from me on the raft through the scary falling part and the zooming upward part. Sometimes joy and reassurance comes from the easiest places, right across from you.

At the top of one slide I asked the guy as he's putting me on a raft if they made them wear long sleeves to hide tattoos or if it's for the sun. He says his boss has a lot of tattoos so he doesn't think that's the problem. He said he does it for skin cancer. "Because that shit is for real," he said.

We survive the hotness and get to the night where we're all cramming around one table with not enough chairs eating hamburgers some of us actually hovering because there's no place to sit.

When we should be going to bed, instead we're playing frisbee in the empty resort street because it's a fake vacation neighborhood and there's no cars. They tell Dima the 5 year old not to run in the street and later we're taking the street again to get to the pool and he says it's okay he's not running in the street, he's jogging. We go play tennis at 945 at night because it's only 107 out.

The next day I can barely walk, but there's more hot pool and frisbee, more food, thrift stores, the only Trader Joe's where you can park without any traffic (I go here 3 times just for the parking). At night I am laying on kids and a niece on the couch, while eating melted chocolate chips out of brownies that are on a plate on my chest. I take a tiny piece of the brownie and stick my whole hand into Bruce's milk, then put the whole dripping thing into my own face. The dripping is what makes it worth it.

There are no other things to do here like clean or maintain, really. So we just get hot, get waterlogged, eat, listen to people talk loudly, play a new card game, play tennis, play frisbee, swim, never wash, and finally get in bed.

Lilly and I seem to be the only ones who miss the regular routine of our lives, maybe because we like our actual life. The noise here is good, the family is good. But we like the maintaining of home, we're good at the peace of everyday.

Take Me to the River

Maggie and I and the Beck dog are off to the water trail alone for the first time. We've done short solo rides close to home around the neighborhood, maybe 4 times now. It's time to try the longer ride into the dam. Maggie is 6, she is saucy at times still. It's 7 am. On the brink of being scorching summer hot. My goal is to get down the snaking path, through the woods, through the water, back safely and happily.

At the bottom of the big rocky mountain I see an old trail buddy on her horse and so my plan of going solo is overlapped with one and then 2 old buddies as they police escort Mag and me through the tunnel, up the hill and then down the hill into the first part of the water trail. I like catching up with them, I never ride with them anymore because I'm a renegade, so it's good to see and talk. But then we pass the overgrown trail that I want to take and I feel a little sick, because that's what I came to do, not to follow along on the old lady rideathon that it's looking like it'll be.

"I'm gonna go do that other trail, and see how she does alone," I call out to my friends, who are already ahead. I have no idea if Maggie will have trouble leaving the other horses. Luckily we have the dog for company, I call to her and we turn back and head down the haunted wood trail all overgrown that we've done plenty of times with Dewey ponying behind us.

Maggie is perfect on the trail. Once we get to the water, she suddenly realizes that maybe she should call to Dewey and tell him she's alone and where is he. The calling makes me nervous because you can feel every muscle in her back tense to talk to him. All those muscles could then decide to tense and jet rocket me forward as she runs crazily toward home. If she thinks of that. And decides that.

I relax my body and keep my tension in my torso, where she can't feel it. I lengthen my leg, and wiggle my toes and scratch her neck like I'm not worried at all.

We get through the water, and she calls a few times, and she has a little excitement in her feet, so I turn her in a few circles, and aim her slightly sideways to take the forward speed out of her step, and I allow her forward, and we canter up the hill because she can't get away from me with the gravity of the hill helping hold her back, but I can get out her energy.

She is actually fine all the way home. I just am more aware of her quicker step because we are alone. She listens, she turns, she calls a little to Dewey, but she doesn't run away. She stays with me and Becky. She stays, she's mine, she says. Bossy, but mine.

We get on the secret path to home, she calls to Dewey and he calls back. I see in her ears, she smiles to herself, her boys are there in the barn, just like she left them.

She gets a carrot, she gets rinsed off, she wins the first long ride out, missing her buddy but not leaving me in the dirt.

Next time it will be better, because we are through the first, and the rest is just building blocks.

Flying Solo

I like that your self will tell you when you're ready to do something.

It's been a year and a half with Maggie, and I knew it was time to take her out all by herself.

She's never in her life been out without other horses.

But lately I'd gotten tired of always having another horse on the end of a leadrope, it made it hard to work with the horse you're riding, if you're worrying about the horse you're taking along for the ride next to you. I had to get bored enough of one thing before I would try another thing.

I took Becky out with me. The trail dog is the key to success. She didn't know it, but I knew that if Maggie was just following Becky like she usually did, leading the trail, she might not realize that Dewey was back home in the barn. She'd have comfort.

So I just saddled up and we went out. I gave Dewey his favorite alfalfa hay, just a handful, like giving him a handful of Skittles. It's the candy hay he doesn't usually get. So he didn't cry for her when she left much. He had candy.

And then as we started down the path, following Becky, I just psyched myself out. I kept saying, it's just a regular ride. Dewey is right here with us. I pretended we had done this a thousand times, not the first time. I think because I was playing these relaxing things in my mind, my legs and body were relaxed, and then Maggie felt like it was regular ride because I was relaxed. So she was relaxed. Also, the day before I had been hanging out in the barn just looking at the baby chickens and deciding which ones were going to be roosters, and not paying attention to the horses, and then they both came over to me and begged for attention. In a way I hadn't had them do before, like I was gently one of their herd. They put their faces on me, and demanded their butts got scratched, they smelled my cheeks and put their heads on my shoulder. Because of this bond that I didn't realize we had, really - we'd been working every day for a year, the three of us, but you know when you're working, strictly working and you don't notice that you've sort of built something? I was surprised, feeling that.

Anyway, that gave me the security to trust her, and go out alone. Trust the whole situation. It turned out perfectly. Like we'd done it a hundred times. We did our little trail loop, following the dog. No big deal. Because we have done it a hundred times. Just not alone.

It's true what they say, every moment with your horse you are training it. We have learned some things, even things we didn't know we could do yet. Then when we were ready to try it, it was already there, done, waiting for us.

Centaur

I've channeled all my horse adventures into a weird western I'm writing. I would like one thing I've written to get out there and be important to other people. Or entertaining.

I still get on the horses everyday, even tho my body kind of hurts like my skeleton isn't too happy with my bones on horse bones. But I ignore that as much as I can, and with Maggie I've been able to forget I have legs and just use her legs as my legs. Centaur? I think? It's weird as a rider, how I've ridden now for like 40 years, and I'm just starting to figure out my body and the horse's body working meshed together. It takes so long to forget yourself, and trust you horse, and then you kind of flush yourself down into the horse and then the horse moves better because you're not resisting so much, you're with her. It's just I'm SO GOOD at resisting anything good for me. Maybe because resisting keeps you safe, keeps you scrutinizing, keeps you keeping everything else OVER THERE so you can function in your little way, just nicely, right here. In your tiny circle. But letting yourself NOT know what you're doing, that's also a freedom. Allowing things to be.

Anyway, things are blowing open, I guess I'm crossing through something. The horses are easy to trust, they are idiots but they are always interested in going a new way. As long as eventually they get to go home, and they didn't have to work too hard, and there are carrots or some kind of treat. They make me happy and they never, ever talk.

They just feel.

Mares Are a Pain in the Ass

Maybe not beating the horse. Is what I'm learning.

I've never had a horse that slowed down when you ask her to trot. Maggie will actually slow down.

So I get off, put her on the lunge, and she does everything I ask, like of course I'm perfect. Then I get back on and ask for a trot, and she gives me the finger. So I'm thinking, well, maybe she's sore. Maybe she doesn't enjoy balancing a rider. But we've been riding together for a year now.

The last time this happened in the arena, I thought I was going to make her into sandwiches, and feed the neighborhood, and be done with her. But then we went trail riding the next day, and she was perfect. She is bold and fearless pretty much on the trail. She'll go through anything except hesitating at muddy water for a minute, or getting startled momentarily if something jumps out from behind a bush. But 90% of the time she has the mind of a cigar chewing Cuban mafia boss. Judges carefully, and then just busts right on through regardless.

My great trainer friend told me to make the desired trait easy, and the undesired trait uncomfortable for the horse. And to use forward motion, and variety, to keep the horse's mind fresh and focused and happy in her training. And, she said, mares are a pain in the ass.

So that is turning out to be exactly true, every word.

I'll try and ease up in the arena and figure out what makes her go. On the trail she seems to have less problem with go. I have to figure out her mind, and work from her softest part.

Mares make you work harder. But she is also the most curious.