Once upon a mountain—

Here I am, Feb 2012, looking back at this.  I had to reinsert the images.  I’ve gone through it on the fly.  To this day, we relive this in our dreams.  To this day, we’ve none of us had a closer call.

I’m always a little amused when we talk about “the last days.” I figure, just about any day that comes along, I could be hit by a truck, and that would be the last day as far as I am concerned.

I am sitting in my corner of the couch, a little sorry about the thunderstorm that sent me hustling to unplug computers—so much promise, so little delivery. Over now—the wind of the coming front blew itself out in a matter of five minutes; a blessing for some, I am sure. This has been a long and wearingly hot summer (global warming?) following an astonishingly long and frigid winter (global warming?). But tomorrow is supposed to be twenty five degrees cooler—more than acceptable, if just as unlikely, considering this pussy-cat of a storm.

Yesterday, we went for our first ride of the summer, which would actually count as our last ride of the summer, since it’s now September, and the only reason we were galvanized to go is that the mountains are already turning red. Oh—Geneva’s always galvanized to go, but I can’t leave home without taking everybody, so this time, Geneva’s plans and mine met in the middle: I dragged the family along.

Murph right behind me here.  Friends behind him.

In the end, it was just three of us: Guy, Murphy and I—Chaz having seen better days, and Cammon and Lori being too many people per horse. And Geneva, and Rachel (two of my dearest angels) and Linda, Geneva’s mom-in-law and Kelly, one of her students (first trail ride for her?). Two of Geneva’s horses—Copper and Finale—are very young, and on their first or second trail ride. A third, Kenya, has been fight-or-flight all summer (we can’t figure out why). My three—Zion, Dustin, Sophie—are all old hands (hooves) and Geneva’s huge Kane was able.

Getting out of the valley is always an event—it takes lining up babysitters, catching horses, making sure nothing essential (saddle girths, helmets, bandages, duct tape, scissors, medicines, water, snacks, cameras) is forgotten (a little reminiscent of what it takes to go anywhere with one child under a year old). We did pretty well, though—only an hour and a half late getting out of the valley: two trailers, seven horses, up the mountain on Labor Day.

It was a gorgeous afternoon—maybe a titch hot, but that’s what the sunscreen is for. We got up there, oooooo-ing and ah-ing at the maples, trying not to think about the fact that the trees were turning a week before September first.

Rachel and Kane, Moutain and Sky

Okay. Note that this is not the right picture for the caption.  But I’m backing up to my Drobo and can’t get to the right one.  Kristen, Geneva and Rachel.  And grass.

Our canyons are Disneyland on summer holidays—every parking lot of every park full—and this was the last of the free days, summer now officially dead and gone. Kids with rubber rafts riding the river, families with picnics and dogs and frisbees, mountain bikers, swimmers—we sailed past all of that, a parade in ourselves—two large vehicles towing two large horse trailers. I have to admit, I do love it when I hear “Oh, my gosh—look—HORSES,” and I heard it all the way up the canyon in voices that covered the entire spectrums of age and gender.

The horse parking lot was pretty full, too. But we found our place, unloaded our equines (who had unloaded all over the trailer on the way up) and began to saddle up. I think, really, this was the easiest tacking-up we’d ever done up there. Not sure why. Dustin didn’t pitch a fit and end up under the trailer—that was nice. But maybe we’re actually getting to be old hands ourselves at this. Not just newly-weds anymore.

So, with mom in her kerchief and I in my bed, there we were, all seven of us on seven good-lookin’ horses, ready to head up the mountain. But first we stopped, and we prayed.

Some people may find this puzzling, I guess. But when you know horses, you know that every ride is a toss of the dice. Horses aren’t dangerous in terms of aggressive hostility (not usually). The danger lies in their nature as an animal of prey—if there is any perceived danger, it’s a horse’s business to jump suddenly to the side—or to whirl, turn tail and fly—and when they do these things, they forget that you’re still up there on their backs. On a mountain trail, this can be doubly worrisome.

But then, I pray every time one of my kids leaves the house.

So we got together, and Geneva gave the Lord our thanks for the day and the place and the company and asked him to be mindful of us.

And I have to assume that he listened.

Murph and Sophie

This Big Springs is a nice trail, maintained by the county—you can follow the maintenance road which is one car wide and rocky, cutting up across, over and around the mountains in slow loops, or you can take the short-cuts, straight up the shoulders of the hills—also rocky, and crowded with trees, but so beautiful and very exciting to ride. The road itself is a dedicated equine trail—closed off to vehicles by locked gates at the top and bottom. Very safe as far as safe goes.

First, there is the long slope up from the parking lot—that’s where you sort yourselves out. Horses are like any other intelligent species—their personalities run the gamut from shy and back-hanging to aggressive and forward. My Zion, for instance, always has to lead. Unless he decides not to lead—which is to say, unless he gets tired of the responsibility and steps firmly off the path till somebody else takes over. The lead horse’s job is to be eyes and ears—and the mountain forests are full of all kinds of creatures. I’m not sure that a ground squirrel moving through the leaves sounds all that different from a mountain lion—both live up there, as do bears, moose, badgers, foxes, snakes—whatever. So the lead horse has to tell the difference and when things are just too suspicious, keep the rest of us from being eaten.

I’m not really sure that responsibility is the attraction here for Zion. I suspect what he’s really going for is not having his nose stuck in somebody else’s tail.

There were three front horses: Kane, Sophie, Zion. Rachel, on her first trail ride in a long time, was on giant Kane. Murphy was on Sophie, I was on Zion. I can’t tell you much about what order the other four kept, as my back was to them most of the time. But all the horses got along pretty well, and nobody got kicked.

We rode in a line across a wide grass field, ranks and rolls of mountain and forest all around us. I stopped the rest, near awestruck as I always am when I’m in that place, deciding I wanted a picture of the whole line. I asked Zion to pick his way slowly out across that gopher-riddled field, while I dug my camera out of my saddle bags. Then there was the jostling, jockeying, hilarious business of lining up. I’ll show you the pictures. If I were the kind of person who could hold still, I’d have sat that horse in that place the whole afternoon, trying to understand what my eyes were showing me—the size of it, the magnificent and delicate beauty of those mountains, and the changing of it with every moment’s change of light.

This was “processed” before I knew how to do it.  TERRIBLE.  I’ll fix it later.

See all this futzing around? Chatting and messing off. I finally got them lined up and had the picture taken.  How glad I am it took as much time to do as it did.

This wasn’t the best light. To show off the mountains – I have to put the riders in complete shadow.

We started off again, after that—heading down the last little bit of our shortcut to where it joined up with the road again, just where the road takes a ninety degree turn to the left and cuts steeply up through the trees. I was riding with Rachel and Geneva, and Linda was up there, too, the four of us talking and laughing. It occurred to me that we hadn’t stopped to check girths for a while, so I said that out loud and slowed down, leaning down to slip my hand between girth and horse.

In that moment, there came a sound. Murphy, who had dropped back to ride with Guy and Kelly, heard it before I did—a rushing—like an airplane, Murphy said. I sat up, and I guess I heard it, too, finally—looked up—this all happened so very, very fast—and saw metal moving through the trees, coming down that road. An SUV, heading down that road right toward us.

In the space of three seconds, I had gauged his speed—which was ridiculously fast, considering the road, the slope and the blind corner—realized that he was coming at that sharp corner without slowing down, and that he would not be able to see us until a second before he hit us.

Rachel and Kane were not twenty five feet from the corner, standing frozen in the road, barbed wire on one side, a grassy drop-off on the other, and Geneva and I were only fifteen or so feet behind her.

That silver Tahoe came roaring out of the trees—and he finally saw us. It was impossible. I remember only the feeling that it was too late for any of us to do anything about this—that the kind of thing you never dream could actually happen was about to happen—right in front of me, to creatures I love—and then to me, myself.

I realized, the driver was now hauling hard on the steering wheel, standing on his brakes.

To very little effect.

The car, its wheels turned hard—Murphy says, in the direction of the skid—was still moving, now sideways, right down the road at us.

We were yelling, stricken, watching.

And then Kane, as if somebody had simply put a hand to his bridle and pulled him around, picked up his front feet and pivoted on his back ones, with simple and efficient dignity moving the length of his body around in a 180. Which put him just out of reach of the SUV. Its wheels, driving an ever bigger mound of dirt and gravel down the road, finally caught, and the thing lurched off the side, hanging itself on the lip of the little drop-off.

Looking back on it—which we did a hundred times on the rest of that ride, and then through the hours of the evening, and I am now doing again as I write—the world changed for us. Rachel, who has seven children, suddenly realized that she, herself, was mortal. We had seen death coming.

And, for some glorious and merciful reason, it had not been allowed through.

Every one of those horses had stood still—amazingly, not one had bolted or jumped or offered any risk to his rider. All were safe. And Kane had, very simply, saved Rachel.

I will tell you this much: as we sat our horses, still frozen, still shocked—Rachel’s face hardened. She rode Kane across the road and over to where she could see the driver—a grown man with four kids in the front seat—no seat belts—and that “hell hath no fury” thing? That was Rachel. The man did not roll down his window—he didn’t have to. Geneva and I were yelling on one side of the car – “YOU IDIOT.  THIS IS A HORSE TRAIL.  HOW DID YOU EVEN GET HERE????”

But Rachel was raging on the other. “I HAVE CHILDREN,” she roared. And then, seeing the others in the car—with disbelief— “AND YOU HAVE CHILDREN.” And she read him the riot act. A little girl, she is—but mighty. No angry angel of God could have been more fierce.  And then, astonished, “Are you LAUGHING?  You think this is FUNNY?  Your kids don’t even have seatbelts on -”

She had to ride away several yards after that and dismount, and I went with her. The rest followed us off the road while the man in the car, his windows still rolled up, tried in vain to back his car off the high-center. I don’t know if somebody helped push him off. I wasn’t watching.

Sorry I don’t have pictures of this: five foot high girl who weighs 80 pounds, head blown up like a balloon, sparks flying out of every facial orifice, neck and clutching hands stretching, stretching toward that car.  Finally, her hair caught on fire.  I really wish I’d thought to shoot it, but I was too worried she was going to vaporize herself.  I kept saying to her, “Stand down.  Stand down, Rachel.”  And I remember actually smiling, it was so intense and wild.  But she had every dang right to it – and I didn’t have to do it, because she was taking care of it for all of us.  It cost her.  She partially collapsed afterwards.  Her muscles were totally freaking out, and she nearly fell off Kane as she tried to dismount.  What a woman.

He drove down the road after that, about thirty feet and came back on foot—which I think was very brave. And got his ears full again; Guy is not one to suffer fools lightly, and certainly, Geneva is not. The man apologized. But it was weak—and really, what else could it have been? “I’m sorry I was in a place it’s illegal for me to be in, and I’m sorry I was driving like a joy-riding adolescent, and I’m sorry I almost slaughtered your lovely horses and killed or maimed several of you?” And what was worse, he’d evidently let his daughters do his hair up in tiny pigtails, all over his head, so he looked like a complete idiot.

That’s the thing about this kind of mistake—when you see what you’ve done, it’s too late. One second’s inattention, immaturity—and really, who isn’t capable of it? Certainly not the scout leaders in our ward when they’re with the boys. Certainly not me if my mind is on other things than my driving.

So close. So very, very close.

He explained that he had a key to the gate up above, that he’d come through that leaving it open—this when we’d told him that the road went nowhere—that it was gated at the bottom. “I thought it was a private road,” he said. But nobody but park people and county law enforcement have keys to that upper gate. Who was he, I wonder? And why on earth would such a person be trusted with a key?

He finally drove away down the road. Turned around and came back by us, up the road, up the mountain, gone. We had another prayer. Murphy gave this one, and made Geneva laugh because when he started it, he thanked the Lord that we could have this “fun.” But that was only because he hadn’t gotten himself collected yet. The rest of the prayer just showed me how very important it is to keep people like the ones with me that day alive. For my sake. For the sake of the world itself.

We finished the ride.

It really was a glorious day after that—wind in the ancient pines, our shadowed path sharply redolent of life and history, mysteries and celebrations. We crossed wooden bridges and talked the horses into tip-toeing through streams. We passed a lot of people coming down the other side—including the man who had nearly killed us, picnicking with his family—about ten kids and his wife.

We were very nice as we passed. And we smiled at his children. I wonder if everybody else was thinking, “Sorry you’ve got such a jerk for a father” like I was. Unfair. But there you are.

Rachel and Kane headed down to the valley floor. This is where Dustin always decides he’s going to turn around and go back to the trailer. He doesn’t bolt; he just calmly turns around and walks back. Guy has to get off and drag him past some point known only to Dustin – the point of no return, I guess – then he can get back up and ride. I used to think it was because Dustin was tired. But an hour and a half later, when the rest of us were loping gently across an open grass field, Dustin decided it was the derby. Big fake.

We walked and trotted and cantered up mountain roads and across broad fields of amber grass. And we lived through the entire experience. When we got home, Zion did not lie down in the pasture and refuse to get up the way he did after last year’s ride.

When we got home, I called in a report to the county sheriff. We’re hoping we find out something more of the story, but we probably won’t hear another thing.

Man, we were tired.

But we were alive. Against all hope, every one of us, alive.

Long story, huh? Amazing to me.

Who woulda thought—the last days, coming in the form of a silver Tahoe?

Go figure.