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[RC] February horsenews - Mike SherrellFebruary horsenews
Traveller and I have been re-exploring the Sacramento Valley, where
Amy, my
first Paso, and then Cancione and I went on my first serious long
cross-country expeditions. Currently we?re at the Yolo Bypass east and south
of the east end of where Delphi Road ends, at the levee that keeps in the
floodwaters when they?re diverted down the bypass.
Striking out across the farmlands of the bypass, we ride east until we
are
blocked by the Toe Drain or north or south until blocked by an uncrossable
canal of slough, then arc around and try to make the biggest loop possible.
The repulsively-named Toe Drain runs parallel to the Sacramento and is
separated from it by the right bank levee that keeps the river in its main
channel under normal conditions; the Drain?s function is to carry away to
the Delta the water that runs off the bypass but is cut off from the
Sacramento by the levee. To cross some low-lying fields I would dismount and
lead Traveller sloshing through shallows. He has learned to jump well across
streams or ditches a yard wide or less after I have crossed ahead of him. I
remember Cancione was even better ? instead of crossing ahead of her I could
stand next to her on the left and tug her ahead with my left hand, and when
she jumped and landed on the other side, the lead rope would snap taut and I
could use the jerk of the rope to launch myself across after her.
The lowest fields are covered with standing water. There are so many
birds
doing I don?t know what: mating, eating, socializing ? their cries are as
noisy as the chatter of an enormous cocktail party. There are so many
different flocks of different species that when they rise up with a roar of
wings and wheel through the sky the flocks sometimes interpenetrate and it
is remarkable that none collide.
T. may be learning to graze happily during our lunch rest, although
thinking I was likely to fall asleep with my book I tied his lead rope
around my ankle. He had eaten a lot of grass previously and seemed content
to just stand, hip cocked, flick his ears and look around. This was in the
bypass north of Liberty Island. I think there may be a lot of riding on the
Island when it dries up come summer ? even in the high water season there?s
a couple of miles of dirt footing that peters out in a vista of impassible
beaver country.
In this area of the Valley there are a number of cattle ranches. This
winter I?ve been seeing ? smelling ? dead cows lying rotting in the fields,
in one case three carcasses piled together and partly burned in an area
where the ranch dumps other trash and broken down equipment. I don?t
remember seeing any, or at least so many, dead cattle out here before. In
Alberta last summer, when mad cow had closed the US border to Canadian beef,
the newspapers were quoting some of the Alberta cattlemen as saying they
wished the one rancher who had reported the disease had instead observed
?the three S?s? ? shoot, shovel and shut up. I wouldn?t touch an American
hamburger now with a ten foot pole.
On Leap Day we were riding down a narrow gravel lane with barbed wire
fences on each side, the fence on the right keeping in a cow with a calf and
a young yearling. The yearling took fright and galloped down its side of the
fence line ahead of us and then suddenly veered into the fence at full tilt.
The fence was not very high, and the yearling rolled right over in a
sideways sumersault, landed on the side of the road, regained its feet and
took off again at top speed ahead of us.
Traveller had been in a rapid four four since he?d first caught site of the
three of them, and was going about as fast as any cow can run, so if we?d
kept on we?d have chased the calf for miles, but we were headed for an
abandoned railroad right-of-way and we turned off shortly. The calf stopped
and turned and watched us go, so I figured it would probably head back and
hang around with Momma. In any case I didn?t have the first idea about how
to get it back over the fence.
Our new horseshoer snubs off the toes ? the angle is right, but the toes
are short. He?s not forging the shoes, so maybe he needs to do this to
accommodate their shape.
Put up the electric fence around the three-acre orchard next to us. Is
there anything more beautiful than your horses grazing after a rainshower
when the sunshine is sparkling in the droplets all across the brilliant
green grass? Seeing the horses there makes me almost ready to die if I could
become part of it, like the nomad chiefs of the steppes buried under mounds
sodded with turf cut from their choice grazing-fields.
On an exercise ride along the bicycle path an old gentleman told me
Grandiosa, whom I?ve been exercising for Jean, had a ?very pretty walk.?
Thinking he was old enough to appreciate the references, I told him they
were made to carry noble ladies hawking, or hacienderos overseeing their
peons. In the "Trés Riches Heures" of the Duc de Berry, the finest
illuminated manuscript of the high middle ages, in May the lords and ladies
are depicted on a gay countryside horseback promenade, and in August the
nobles again desport themselves hunting with hawks ? on
beautifully-caparisoned, long-maned gaited horses, a hind leg descending
while the foreleg on that same side is arched high. In our time we
Paso-riding commoners are lottery-winners rich as princes and princesses,
and these horses of ours are unspeakable luxuries, an insult to the shoeless
armies of the third world and unjust blessings on our unworthy lives, or
else we are aristocrats too, taking our prizes or holding our inheritances
by force. As Neruda puts it in "Saddelry", ?and so from misfortune and
dominion, this throne set forth through the meadowlands.?
Mike Sherrell
Grizzly Analytical (USA)
707 887 2919/fax 707 887 9834
www.grizzlyanalytical.com
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REAL endurance is sleeping in the tack compartment of your trailer w/the
door open, and your horse snorts/snots on your forehead every 30 min!
~ Heidi Sowards
ridecamp.net information: http://www.endurance.net/ridecamp/
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