We had a fun afternoon Wednesday at Alison and Bruce’s in Colorado. We took Alison to late lunch at the toney Wisdom Tea House in Monument. She brought us up to date on the Fort Carson Hounds (they’re getting some more hounds from the Arapahoe Hunt and are probably going for registered status or farmer pack status with the MFHA) and with her Wuff-It invention (a GPS dog collar that has applications in the hunt field with a virtual fence that can see which hounds are on riot and which ones are out of place when working and running), which is selling well.
We loaded up Wednesday afternoon and got away by 5:30 p.m. (4:30 PCT). We took the I-25 to I-470 (loop road south of Denver) to the I-70 westbound. We could see storm clouds rolling in from the west, but I pressed on, with no idea how it would affect the trip, the mood, and the muses.
Lightning and rains picked up as we crossed the Continental Divide just before Frisco and the ski areas, persisting from there westward, through the afternoon, evening, and into the late night/early morning. Feeling it was unfair to ask someone else to drive in those difficult conditions, I stayed at the helm until the weather at last cleared in the morning, driving nine hours for the first stretch. Naturally, this made me incapable of sleep when Beth did spell me from five to seven a.m. Still, it was nice to at least close my eyes, plus, we finally were out of the weather and, as day dawned, were able to see the dramatic landscape unfolding around us through central Utah, northeast Arizona and Nevada.
The mountains were muscular rather than settled, an eerie moonscape rather than comfortable familiar, fascinating to watch the ranges roll past. In eastern Nevada we started getting into high desert—scrub-land flats surrounded by rocky mountains—interesting in their own way, but you can’t look at a place like that and think that it is an easy place in which to live. I took over again as dawn broke, and Beth and I talked about how much more impressive now were the stories of native Americans scratching out an existence in that region and of European settlers who were the earliest to cross the 10,000 foot mountain passes just to see what there was west of the front range.
The horses, as before, traveled like champs. They practically leapt onto the trailer (to get their dinners and to get on the road again Wednesday afternoon) and continued eating, drinking, chilling and generally being good citizens throughout the long haul. I communed with them a bit each time we stopped, assuring them this ride was at last drawing to a close, and promising that we we’re almost there if they’d just humor me a few more hours. Though you all know I’m no fan of mares, both Ali and Kit were zen-like in their grace. I felt energized rather than sapped as we progressed west.
I got behind a bit by taking it easy in the lightning storm/gully-washer that crashed into Colorado (a considerable distance) and Utah as we drove that night. I could tell we were slightly behind schedule but though the traffic was non-existent across Utah and Arizona, it was heavy the instant we crossed into California, and there was no making up time. We pulled into California (on I-15, then joining I-40), a good two-plus hours later than I expected, but all was in good order for an early afternoon arrival.
Close Quarters
To his credit, John has been a trouper on the whole route, not complaining (much) nor agitating (much) in the backseat. He slept the night through all three nights, and has been a pretty good companion. Shannon gave him a backseat activity book before he left home, and there are plenty of interactive games we’ve been playing across the country. Categories is a good one, Hangman another. (I worked out a way for me to play it blind so I could participate.) I taught them the alphabet game, and John spent time creating a travel journal to document our trip. Jackie gave him an old map so he’s cutting out little dioramas of each of our stops, and each notable occurrence on the way.
Thursday morning when he woke up, he was more antsy than ever though. The trouble started the day before when he got a retractable spyglass at the mining museum in Monument. He was…well…retracting it in the backseat. A lot. Beth was asleep so it was me, John, and an incessant clicking noise as we barreled down the highway. I stifled a blowup and asked him to stop. He did, under protest, but for my punishment he asked—the first of many times—if we were there yet. Still, I give him an E-minus for excellent effort on what had to be a hard ride for an active seven-year-old.
The Pacific Ocean in View
We called owners Greg Steele and Miranda Mayfield around noon when we pulled through Santa Barbara, coming into the Santa Ynez/Solvang area a half hour later. Greg was cute, bouncing around with his camera, recording our long-awaited arrival. He hovered like a protective new father, snapping pix of Kit as she unloaded. As she walked to her small sand (holding) paddock. As she drank. As she stood at attention, watching his other horses. He’s like a kid at Christmas with his fancy new east-coast foxhunter—charming and infectious. The look on his face made the arduous journey well worthwhile.
Miranda (the horse manager for Santa Ynez Valley Hounds Master Steve Lyons’ Kick On Ranch, where the hunt kennels are located) met us at Greg’s place to get Ali. She hasn’t seen her mare in over two years, and was thrilled with how she looks and feels. Kit cried when Ali walked away (and loaded up and drove off), but I tossed her a thick flake of western alfalfa and she quieted right down.
Greg is taking us out for dinner in Solvang tonight (Brooks Firestone’s place, the namesake of my Quarter Horse Brook), and tomorrow I’ll help him get Kit integrated into Greg’s herd. His gelding Gavinda might cause trouble (he jealously guards his current herd of two mares), but we’ll separate him into the sand lot and let Kit join the two mares, first. Saturday I’ll school Kit for him, and then Beth will give Greg a lesson on her while I take my trailer down to Santa Barbara to load some furniture that’s coming back east to a friend-of-a-friend’s new place in DC. Then I’ll go to the Los Angeles Equestrian Center to load another lady’s household. (She’s a USDF gold medal-level dressage trainer/rider I’m helping relocate from LA to Baltimore.) I’ll leave my trailer there and return to Solvang for a day on the beach Sunday. Beth, John, and I go on the Pacific Coast Highway, Yosemite, Sequoia, and Hollywood and will end up back at L.A. Equestrian Center for our adventure home next week.
We were pretty buoyed to see the Pacific when we summited at noon. The water is a crystalline aqua—most unlike the Atlantic—and the Channel Islands barely visible to the west give it a mysterious aura. John said he had, literally, traveled from sea to shining sea.
Now for the Hard Stuff
It was bound to happen. You sit alone and awake, primarily in the dark, hyperalert, all but motionless, you are likely to become reflective. Two incidents before leaving Colorado Springs on Wednesday conspired to raise that to introspective.
Wednesday morning I’d taken Alison’s kayak for a paddle on Monument Lake. Beth and John returned there that afternoon while I slept, splashing in the cool mountain water and walking along the graveled shore. Beth told me, later that night, about something that happened there, though, that made her cry, both for the world of nature and the world of humanity.
As John played in the shallow water, Beth sat alone on a rock, watching a heron circle the shoreline on the far side as ducks bobbed near the fishermen by a small dam. She said she couldn’t help but tune her ears to the loud chatter of a circle of teenaged boys jostling each other and joking around a few yards down the beach. They were carrying something in their hands, she said, and she was mortified to hear their words as they got closer to her. They were boasting, Beth reported, and cruelly joking, about having killed a clutch of baby ducks they’d found in a nest on the shoreline. They were teasing about how the mother duck had reacted, and they laughed mirthfully as they talked about how easy it was to kill the tiny hatchlings.
Beth was pretty sure John was unaware of the conversation. She went over and talked to a man fishing nearby to see if there was anything to do about it—maybe find a game warden, she said. While the man was slightly concerned, she said he shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘boys will be boys.’ Beth stifled tears and told John it was time to go back to the farm so we could depart. It really upset her—the boys were punks, she said—but it was the pack mentality that really seemed to drive that kind of horrifying game.
It was late at night when she finally told me about this. Not surprisingly, it affected me just as much, even in the retelling. Beth drifted off to sleep in the passenger seat and I drove on through the dark. Rain slashed against the windshield, suitable tears from heaven, I thought, mourning the loss of life.
Rain persisted as we crossed the Continental Divide just before Frisco. I-70 goes through a long tunnel under the highest mountain, where a little marker mid-tunnel announces the spine of the Rockies. We popped out on the west side, thickly in the mountain range. As we curved down into the Keystone and Breckenridge ski areas, I noticed several police cars passing us in the heavy traffic. We rounded a steep bend and noticed on the other side of the interstate there were a dozen emergency vehicles, lights flashing, and the line of cars eastbound had been stopped. I prodded Beth, and she sat up in the seat. I couldn’t take my eyes off the road, but she gasped and reported to me that the oddly twisted metal reared up against one of the light poles near the center median was actually a car, split nearly in two. I couldn’t make it out; it did not look right, but I couldn’t tell what it was. Beth crossed herself and told John to say a prayer. No way, she said, no way a person could survive a crash like that.
Beth and John went back to sleep and I drove on, reflecting on the trip so far, and all the excitement we felt, seeing the nation and this continuing series of adventures. When we set out, I’d expected adventures along the lines of kayaking in a mountain lake, walking on the Pacific coast, not pondering the fragility of life and cruelty of human nature. Weighty questions like that can sap the life out of you. I mourned the baby ducks, I worried about the eastbound driver (I Googled it just now: the 53-year-old driver was killed in a single car crash, the Denver newspaper reported, that shut down I-70 for hours. It was a product of “traveling too fast for the driving conditions,” police told the reporter.)
I thought of friends back home. I thought of our trip. I thought of my family. I thought of my late husband, John’s namesake. I thought of the chain of events that had brought us all together for this trip—three travelers and the two horses, plus the connections on each corner of the country. I thought of the brevity of life and the frailness of human nature. I thought the “no caffeine energy boost” drink I’d taken an hour before was playing tricks on my mind.
And still the rain fell.
Alison had told me before we left that the region was usually quite dry this time of year, with grasses dying and streams drying. They always welcomed this type of storm, she’d said, with soaking rains that would feed the crop lands and refill the rivers. I was happy for the farmers in this dry part of the nation. I was happy, too, that the storm provided this perfect backdrop forcontemplation. It’s pretty rare, really, that you’re alone, really alone, with your thoughts. Usually, there’s enough stuff going on—at the farm, at work, in a social setting—that you don’t have to think; you just exist, make your way through life. I remember spending lots of time just thinking when I was a teen, writing angst-ridden poetry, even, that charted the developing id and ego. But since real life had taken over after college, I’m not sure I’ve had even an eight-hour stretch with nothing to do but ponder. I mean, hell, if I have eight hours in a row, in the dark, in a rainstorm, especially, I’m likely to be sleeping, not hyper-awake, thinking. Though it was a hard drive, a long drive, upon consideration, this is emblematic—exactly what this journey is turning out to be—an adventure inside and out.
States traversed:
Colorado, Utah, Arizona (northeast corner), Nevada, California.
Observation:
Things improved dramatically after Alison Brown loaned us her unused Sirius system as we departed Colorado. My passengers had threatened full mutiny if I played Led Zepplin Out of the West…one…more…time. I locked on Sirius #14 (Classic Vinyl) and was a happy captain once again. Beth cracked wise that the station was ‘perfect for Lenny,’ which sparked my admiration for him. She meant it the opposite.
Reflection:
Utah’s Arches National Park looked like a place I’d like to revisit. Las Vegas looked like a place I’d not.
Shout-outs:
To Laura for her continued email support (interesting pertinent facts from the real world) and to Tom for taking at face value my plea for late-night/early morning phone calls just to hear a friendly voice (and, sometimes, to talk-me-down from this sort of contemplative solitude.)
To be continued….
August 3, 2010