The boys in the hayfield eating away the chill of the night and day breaking in the Western sky and the sun pouring off the edge of the canyon wall like a cascade of fire.
January 18, 2019 by
A Simple Ending
December 31, 2018 by
About this beautiful year of my life:
I’ve never worked harder.
I’ve never taken more time off.
I’ve never been happier.
I hope you all had a beautiful Christmas and I hope your New Year celebration tonight is wonderful — full of release and intention setting.
Love,
Jillian
We Ride Out
July 9, 2018 by
We ride out beneath a filthy, wildfire sky. He walks beneath me like a drunken sailor, buddy sour and unwilling to leave Resero without brattish behavior, without an attitude. I calmly correct him, urge him forward, flick his shoulder with the tail of a rein and he walks straighter, falling into his fast, flat walk so the horizon bobs between his pricked ears. We ride closer and closer to the setting sun, to a sky strewn with smoke-tarnished clouds, rising and falling our way up the drainage like water in reverse. I feel guilty for taking this time to ride when there’s something, so many somethings, to play slave to at home. We ride on. I hunch in the saddle, my spine remembering its position at my studio bench where I’ve been flicking and feathering flame for days. I’m unable to shift my hips with his gait, crippled by my craft, tortured by tensions. I’m too tightly coiled.
At the top, it’s gold spilling in every direction, the breath of the Spirit falling soundlessly and gloriously all around. Gold on sky on grass on cloud on my own skin and bright light, shaking and streaming in all directions. I am molten, precious metal — poured out and flowing and curling with smoke as impurities burn out of me. I take a breath. I take another. I feel my body expand and contract, busy with the simple act of consuming wind and sky…like a wildflower. My shoulders drop. My spine softens. Finally. I kiss the air and we run. I crouch down and his mane whips my face. We go that way, exhilarated, gasping, intoxicated by freedom, by each other.
We drift back down to earth and into a smooth, fast walk. I drop the reins across his neck and set my palms to rest on my thighs. He knows the way. An owl hunts the edge of dusk. Nighthawks do their gleaning, twisting and turning on their trajectories with sharp wings, slicing invisible things into smaller pieces.
Two coyotes move through the sage, deep in the distance where the land curls up again in a soft wave. They stop to look over their shoulders at us. He pricks an ear, his gait grows choppy, he looks back to the path and we smooth out together and cover ground. Behind us the sunset flares, the sky grows red as a woman scorned. We turn down the canyon rim towards home.
One hundred yards down the road he spooks, long legs scrambling in every direction, eyes wide and wild, nostrils snorting air like a boiling kettle and a rattlesnake shoots off the path while shaking his snare drum at us. I reach my free hand to grab the horn of my saddle and painfully jam it as directions are reversed beneath me. My wrist yelps as it shifts into an awkward angle against the horn and my ring finger turns against itself. We’re running uphill. I sit deep, drop my heels in the stirrups and slow him. Stop him. I run a hand beneath his mane. I let him breathe. I whisper to him that it’s ok, I’m here, I’ve got him, I’ll take care of him, he’s safe. I work through his shivering, white-eyed flight instinct and he settles beneath me.
We turn and make our way carefully down the trail again. I make him stand. Spooled up tightly beneath the sage the snake shakes, rattles and rolls. His tail is thunder and there is lighting in his fangs. I see his diamonds shining bright black in the shadows. I hear him rambling like a sun-stroked prophet. We move past, careful, slowly, we move past. Two miles from home, I pull my phone from my saddle bag and call Robbie. I tell him all the things I couldn’t tell him the day before because I was angry and frustrated and overwhelmed:
I love you. It’s too much for me. I don’t want to live this dream on my own, it’s our dream. Your job is killing me. We need to take our leap of faith.
I hear him echo all my words. It’s going to be ok. We say goodnight.
The moon comes up, filtering down through smoke and ash, shining dimly on my back as we ride the last mile home. We spook once more as an irrigation sprinkler hisses at our passing. I hear the metallic clank of an iron shoe pulling free and landing on gravel. I sigh aloud. He hops and limps beneath me, suddenly tender of foot in the quiet of the gloaming. The farrier is already scheduled for Monday, that’s something. In the distance, Resero whinnies, his voice is like a star in the night to guide us safely home.
Pinto — A Belated Introduction
April 9, 2018 by
First, I’d like to tell you about this very morning. Robbie has gone back to work for the week and so I stepped out the front door alone, with a cup of green tea steeping in my hand, to tend all the critters which has become my favorite way to begin my days. Halfway to the paddocks, the scent of the almond grove hit me and I felt dizzy with the pinkness of it. I picked up an especially nice turkey feather from a patch of vibrant, reaching grass. Up in the canopy of blossoms I could hear a storm of bees — the sound of them at work is symphonic, droning, drawn out, as though someone is pulling an infinite horsehair bow across a single string on a viola: endless, monotone, musical. God save the bees.
All around I heard meadowlark, oriole, yellow-winged black bird, a pleasant chorus of waxwings, Canada goose and best of all, the chatter between the red-tailed hawks as they build their nest out in the windrow in our big hayfield. Isn’t nest building such a marvelous mystery? I see the birds carrying their branches, twine and twigs to their carefully selected locations and it occurs to me that perhaps, not long ago (in a geological sense), before industry, before we began to hire contractors and builders to put our homes together for us, we, too, carefully selected our branches and twigs and wove everything together with mud, sinew and horsehair to keep the weather out and our families in.
To add to that miraculous cacophony of wild birds, my own hens, ducks and turkeys were chattering about the day with each other as the kittens (who are now cats) rubbed circles around my ankles. IT IS BEAUTIFUL HERE. Spring always seems to burst wide open and then plummet off an invisible edge into summer. I wish it would hang on just a little longer. I especially wish those almond blossoms would last a little longer. I want my whole life to be that hue.
Out in the pasture the horses were laying in the sun. They stood as I approached and woofed all my pockets searching for carrots. I had two so we stood there munching and touching until I haltered Duplicate and Resero decided to show me his exquisite majesty and gallop around the pasture for a good ten minutes. I laughed aloud and encouraged him. Everything is so fat and sassy here, it’s hard to not encourage the glad antics! When I returned to halter Resero and take him to his paddock he galloped some more, putting on a beautiful show for me and I stood there in awe and watched him and spoke to him,
“Oh, but you are splendid. You are the most splendid thing about this morning.”
When I finally put the halter on him I spent some time touching him and picking up his feet and then I lunged him a bit until he joined up with me and his eyes were soft and he dropped his head, sighed a relaxed sigh and stood there shining like a new penny in the bright sun.
In a few more weeks I’ll start my day the same way followed by picking some greens from the garden and switching off/on the irrigation lines in the hayfield before I go in for breakfast and ultimately, long and quiet hours in the studio. I love this life we’ve made for ourselves. I feel lucky I can say that about my life.
The Introduction:
We claimed for ourselves a second horse in early March, right around the time our WIFI broke and stayed broken for almost four weeks which is why this is a belated introduction. But who cares about the WIFI, let me tell you about this boy. This is The Duplicate (though I usually call him Hawk). He’s a Tennessee Walking Horse and we are lucky to have him. He’s five years old, smart, easy going, and somewhere between green broke and trained which makes him a fun project for Robbie and I! Walking horses are gaited horses (their gait is called a running walk) though they need to develop their gait and the muscles required to gait, it doesn’t come as naturally to them as the gait does in a Peruvian Paso. These horses can be clocked as fast as 20mph when in a fully extended running walk. But the strength required to move like that needs to be developed so riding this fellow looks like dedication and patience right now. I see such potential in him. He’s going to be a great horse and I believe he’s a wonderful match for Robert. Moreover, we’re wanting to use these horses for big game hunting trips and I think Duplicate will do fantastically in the mountains. He’s so tall and strong and leggy! What a beauty!
So there you have it. Horses are like German Shorthaired Pointers or babies, if you’re going to have one, you might as well have two but three is a lot.
To The Dunes
February 14, 2018 by
A few weeks ago I found myself in the dark of our bedroom, wildly awake, my head lifted from the pillow with the clear thought, “Someday, I’ll be 65.” I don’t know why I suddenly woke up or why that was my waking thought or why I chose the number 65, but I found the realization shocking. I live in a way that makes me unaware of my age. I’ve lived for a long time now, 36 years. With the exception of a mostly dead thyroid gland, my body is healthy, agile, sleek. My legs keep hammering when I run those long, sweeping distances of mine. I’m small but I can carry a lot of weight over a great distance, my successful elk hunt this year is proof of this. I don’t look especially weathered though that will come the longer I live in the high desert and I hope to accept those lines with grace and gratitude. I have no knee pain. I have some arthritis in my hands when the weather turns bitterly cold but this is a legacy of silversmithing and I do what I can to protect those little, working bones of mine. I’m in great shape. The notion that my body is going to age and eventually betray me is unimaginable, yet I know it will. It’s the way of life to survive small deaths. And so we go.
Time passes. Time has passed. Time is passing. It seems like only yesterday I was a little sun bleached blond girl in the caragana stand out in the pasture, playing with romantic looking rusted tin cans and glass bottles I found in the treeline, barn cats by my side and the horses in the distance munching grass — but that was thirty years ago. In most ways, I’m still that little girl. It’s funny how many things don’t change in this tornado of constant change.
Yesterday was my birthday and we hauled horses out to Bruneau Dunes to ride for the day. It might be my favorite birthday I’ve ever had. The sky was bluebird. The sun was warm. What little breeze there was created the perfect blend of weather that whips the cheeks red and chaps the lips. I live for that kind of weather in Idaho. The sand and the brush and the wind whittled waves lay in light echoes beneath eight hooves. We found ourselves feeling homesick for New Mexico which is where we usually spend my birthday, down in the sand country where the scaled quail live.
Yesterday we felt we had found a little pocket of New Mexico here in Idaho and we rejoiced in it. The dune towered over us, its shadow slowly reaching for evening. I marveled at the sand polished stones laying like dollars on the ocean edge. All the gold on gold pinned down by vast blue, the buff of the rabbit brush, Robert on his yellow horse and the white sands shifting and roiling in every direction. What beauty to behold. Such beauty was ours. We rode the dunes alone and in perfect harmony.
We circled back to the truck and trailer and cooked up franks with kraut for late lunch. The dogs begged, the horses slurped water, the coyotes sang, we laughed when the smoke stung our eyes. Our drive home was merry, I felt so full of joy and contentment. Once, I felt such deep envy for people on horses on trails. It made me want to cry. I wanted that life so terribly. I saw those nice folks with their trailers, hauling their stock to beautiful places so they could explore and camp and hunt with their steeds. Oh, my heart yearned to have that same thing in my life. To have this horse of mine is the greatest gift. To haul Resero beyond our usual haunts, to have him in hunting camp this past fall, to be able to take him wherever I go is not just a luxury, it is a magical luxury. This I know.
When I didn’t think my birthday could be more beautiful, Robert gave me my final gift — a bow. I have talked for two years about wanting to make the shift from rifle hunting to bow hunting and last night he launched me in the direction of fulfilling another dream of mine. It’s a gorgeous bow. He was too good to me. Now I must learn and master a new skill.
It’s a good thing I’m only 36. I have so much to do.
Note: The palomino in these photos is not our horse, he belongs to our neighbors who have become some of our best friends — we are so lucky to have them living across our hay field from us. They are too kind to let Robert ride their horses. Every day I whisper a little prayer of thanks for them.