year 2017, week 14.

A boy and his horse in the New Mexico high desert.

Monday.

The boy is me. I was average height and weight for my age. My sun bleached hair rarely cut was long. But I wasn’t the average cowboy. For instance I preferred bare feet to cowboy boots.

My family wasn’t the average horse owners either. First there was my dad, born on a farm in northern Minnesota and raised in various countries in an Air Force family. Second there was our property. Two and a half acres on a hill side three miles north of the village of Placitas. We we’re squatting like the hippies in Tawapa but my parents did emulate them in other ways. Then there was our horses. We started with one and eventually ended up with four. An older mare Rusty, an all black pony Indiana Jones, a huge quarter horse named My Boy, and a yearling we called baby.

I am told I was riding horses before I could walk. I don’t remember that but I do remember I spent some time barrel racing as a kid. It was good fun but I preferred to just be out in the land around our property on the horse.

Tuesday.

My horse was the pony Indiana Jones. Well, he wasn’t mine really, just the one that I preferred to ride. He was such a good trail horse that you often didn’t need to use the reins. Slight pressure with your knee into his side and he would abide. The best part about riding him was that whenever he went up hill he farted. It was hilarious. Especially to me in the saddle. Not so much for the people behind us.

My Boy was way too big and even though he was broke he was a handful.

Rusty was difficult. She was moody. Some days she would let me ride her. Others she wouldn’t even let me get the saddle on. I can remember time after time of her bucking me off, walking into trees to knock me off, or just breaking into a run then stopping suddenly. We got along a lot better eye to eye. (Besides the time she broke my finger with a kick.)

Wednesday.

What was so great about where we lived was that we knew most of our neighbors and knew of the others. For the most part you could cross property lines without issue. There were a couple of people that weren’t too inviting.

Having a horse meant we could saddle them up just feet from our door and go out for a long days ride. And we did. Riding through the arroyos that connected our valley to the next, to the next. There were several little areas with water out there too and if you stuck to the arroyos you would eventually find a place where the water would surface. That extended the range we could ride even farther. I don’t remember any overnight rides. Probably because there was just so much to explore in a days ride.

I do remember a few trips up into the forest and up the north slope of the Sandia Mountains. Riding through heavily treed terrain that is also steep and rocky is quite a bit different than the arroyos I was used to.

Thursday.

We didn’t have a horse trailer. We would borrow on from time to time. My dad made a set of tall rails that he would put on the bed of his truck. He would then back his truck up to a hill and load Rusty in. She did pretty well with this. Camping with horses was lots of fun. I don’t remember how we got them out to El Vado Lake, but I do remember swimming with them. Our horses loved the water and so did us kids.

The details that are missing in my memory are interesting.

Friday.

One of the last memories I have with our horses was a hunting trip I took with my dad. I remember him training Rusty to be used to the sound of the gun. The smell of black powder. I think my dad wanted to live a bit of the mountain man lifestyle.

Anyway, when the time came, we loaded up Rusty in the pickup along with some hay and our camping gear and headed for the Cuba side of the Jemez mountains. We probably spent 3 or 4 days out there. I was in charge of the camp. Cooking, cleaning, gathering firewood. All day while my dad would be out on the horse looking for deer. I would do my duties in the morning and after my dad left I would head out and explore. Sometimes fish. But mostly just explore the mountains. We came back without a deer but it didn’t really bother us at all.

Looking back at who my dad was I doubt he even wanted a deer. He wanted the experience of hunting one on horseback. Not killing, cleaning, etc. But maybe I am wrong.