This header, I just wanted to explain, is just another one of my poor efforts to capture the river light. You can see that the yard is dark – that dark, velvet green of late summer. But the last light of day, the sun sliding westward and down toward the far mountains, sends a tide of golden light – unlike anything you see in the day – back up the river. I’ve written about this before, and will as long as I have the heart to try to capture it. You can see the ripe pears and the purple plums in the yard. The season of harvest, the evening: they are so much the same, the end of a productive time, the winding down, the last burst of glory before the long rest of winter. Anyway, that’s what this header was meant to say.
The Actual Post: Our first Autumn ride up into the turning mountains.
There was a woman who started this thing on her blog about people taking pictures of themselves early in the morning, before all the things we usually do to make ourselves presentable. The real you, it was supposed to be—unedited. And people were challenged to post these pictures on their blogs as a brave self-acceptance, I think.
But any picture of me is fairly wisiwyg, because I have never learned to hold still long enough to be anything except what I am at the moment. This is part of my failure as a woman, not as interested in make-up and personal loveliness as in – whatever comes next. So here I am, last Saturday, when the morning air was chill, and we were headed up the mountain.
Me with Dustin’s nose.
Me with G. Horses were never his thing, and yet he suggested the ride. Pretty nice, huh?
Okay, this is overkill. Sophie in the background.
M, looking like a little tub on Sophie’s back. The lovely dark brown head is Dustin, who belongs in a boy band.
This is what we came up to see – not our rig, but the mountain behind it.
The mountain is only beginning to turn. I wonder what it would be like to see an entire forest turn every shade of red to yellow all at once? We can only see the change in week to week increments.
M, no longer looking like a tub. Checking girths at the top of the first climb.
Blurred but alert ears. Zion is interested in where we are going. Let me tell you how HARD it is to dig a camera out, even a tiny Canon Powershot, try to frame a shot in a tiny LED screen you can’t see for the sun glare, and get a sharp image – all on a moving horse.
So I apologize for the quality of the shots. But this valley – oh, this incredible valley. Notice the bowl of pines in the middle left, there.
Considering ears. Zi is either listening to me, or wondering if a mountain lion is making that grass swish around just behind us.
Mad ears. Everybody else is sneaking a bite, but I am too mean to let Zi join them.
Man with leaves.
Younger man with smart phone camera.
Mom, still stuck on that valley. I love the way mountains sort of fold back on themselves. It’s a sort of bug’s eye view of a rumpled bed –
The path we take.
The lovely Sophie – at an odd angle.
At the end of the ride – a Dustin hug. (Oh, thank you for letting this ride be over. Can we eat now?)
Dustin, shoving his nose into the halter. Anything, as long as it means going home.
Zion kind of cracked me up. We’d ridden for about an hour and a half, and we took our time coming back down to the parking. As we got close, I just let him decide where he wanted to go, and he matter-of-factly parked himself in ex-actly the same place we’d started from. Like a docking maneuver. And then he just stood there till I stopped messing with cameras and came to un-tack him.
And that’s all. I want to go up again Saturday with the big camera and take some better shots of those mountains. But perhaps you are tired of that kind of picture – it is, after all, an Autumn ritual that I’ve written about many times before. I never get tired of it. Or of the smell of a good horse, or the feeling of the autumn breeze fresh against my face or the smell of totally clear and wild air. I hope you don’t mind.
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