He’ll be going round the mountain . . .

M will be home, ten months from yesterday.  That was the first important thing about yesterday.  The second is that we ended up taking the colt for his FIRST LONG RIDE up the mountain.  It was a miracle of circumstance: Geneva—his breeder, spirit-mom and both his and my trainer—brought two students (also young friends of mine) by to worm the horses (I’m thinking about having that done to myself – it seems to perk them right up).  One minute we were worming (the meds are oral, thank you very much), the next, we were deciding right out of the blue to take the horses into the canyon.

Short rides are great, training-wise.  But there’s nothing like climbing steep trails and crossing wooden bridges (some of them four feet above the ground with no railings) and running water and loping across mile wide grass fields to teach a horse what it really is to be a horse.  It was not something I felt qualified to do.  But Geneva is the maven, the docent, the sensei and she decided to ride the Great Hickory herself.  (YAY!!!!!)

We threw the poor horses some breakfast, assembled a hasty pile of snacks (apples and ritz crackers and tiny pretzels), thermoses of ice water (it was one of the hottest Aug 22 on record out here), saddles, blankets, headstalls, grooming stuff and half-chaps.  G came to hitch up the trailer. And off we went.

The very beginning of the ride is a steep, rocky service road.  The colt immediately had to deal with some little worries: being left behind (which is somewhat good, as it keeps him with us), the breeze – the way it’s always moving things (or is it mountain lions moving the things?  Or bears or snakes? And what do those things smell like, anyway?).  New structures, spaces, smells, sounds.  He’s lived his life at Geneva’s place and mine, both level ground – he doesn’t know from immense vistas and wildlife (raccoons, yes) and stinging nettle and gallivanting, sparkling, tumbling mountain streams.   Up hill, down hill, rocky ways, knee high grass, great aged pine trees, bridges that seem to hang in the air.

But I was so proud of him.  Aside from being reluctant to try at the beginning a few of the new things, he cowboyed up, and by the end of the day was leading out over the bridges and through the water.  The water, he had to paw for some length of time, just making sure he knew it in all its moods.  If you haven’t seen a horse paw at something with focused attention, you haven’t lived.

Anyway, what you have to know about this is that taking a new colt ANYWHERE is a risk to your health and well-being.  Horses, as I have pointed out, are prey animals, and here we were, taking prey to the mountains where the cats and bears live.  Anything could have happened, from stepping into a gopher hole in a run across the grass to a frightened colt rearing or stepping off a steep trail to bucking – this was a very iffy thing we were doing.  But we’ve put in the work, hundreds of hours of training and loving and disciplining – starting with Geneva’s deeply aware style of imprinting and her constant learning and teaching and including help from Rachel (who, while dying, took him to his first canter under saddle) to the Great B who made sure that canter stayed solid – all elements that set the foundation for this foray into the real world.

You know how there are people in your life, you really hear when they tell you that you done good?  The ones whose praise actually registers?  Geneva is one of those.  She told me yesterday that I had done a great job training this baby.  After yesterday, I’m dangerously close to believing her.

I lost my camera half way up the mountain; slipped through a hole in one of the saddle bags.  So we had to ride the mountain twice to find it.  It was a four and a half hour journey, up one side and down the other – twice.  I don’t have pictures of the most exciting things.  Just of us being up there, and I’m sad about that, that the pictures in my head are only in my head.  Not that seeing a shot of a little horse crossing a bridge would be that exciting if you weren’t there, watching him change from a domestic pet to a nearly grown-up full blown magnificent animal in the world.  But here’s what I’ve got:

Geneva laughed me to scorn because I was wearing my helmet and gloves, driving up the canyon.  Well, okay – you tell me: first time in about two years that you’ve driven a three quarter ton Suburban hauling a five thousand pound trailer with four ton-sized and beloved horses in it – through Saturday traffic and up into windy canyon by-ways.  You wouldn’t wear a helmet?  Besides, I really like those gloves.