To Everything Turn, Turn, Turn… Maybe One More Revolution, Just To Be Safe

If I am being brutally honest with you, it’s been harder than usual to find things to be thankful about this year. My Gramma died. I’ve had a probe and biopsies taken 6 (soon to be 7) times since May to figure out which food is killing me. My cats aren’t allowed in my bedroom anymore because apparently they are killing me. My football team is terrible. Some of my favorite wild horses disappeared. Adobe Town, Salt Wells, and Divide Basin got ransacked by the BLM again. Mass euthanasia or slaughter of captive wild horses still hasn’t been stopped…

Okay obviously some of those are a little more serious than others. But let’s be real, 2017 has been rough.

Stewart Creek Mares

In Which Lauryn Has Magic Powers

Hi!  I’m not-even-a-little psychic photographer Rachel Reeves and this is my partner, Wendy Cloudcakes.  Enjoy!

Hi, everyone! I’ve been thinking about writing this post for a long time, but I finally sat down long enough to actually type something. I met the author of this earnest – albeit sometimes sardonic – blog six years ago, mere months after being exposed to the wild horse world. A couple months later, just before the 2011 roundup, Rachel took me to White Mountain (that was a weird car ride). It was incredible, to say the least. Most of my wild horse time in those first few years I spent in the Pryors, but the past three years have been more of a White Mountain sage party.

Of all the trips we’ve taken to White Mountain, this one felt a little different. We were more zen, more chill (which is more than I can say for Frankie, more on that later). Maybe it’s because we’re dressed as adults (for the most part) and sometimes must comport ourselves as such. Maybe it’s because we have a rhythm to these trips we’ve learned not to mess with (we know where we’ll camp and can set up our site in mere minutes without speaking). Who knows.

Cat’s in the Cradle

Family is  complicated.  It’s one of the basic tenants of this life.  The earth is most likely not flat, taxes are always too high, and your family is really weird.

Family has a very different meaning and structure to it in wild horse society than it does for humans, but they aren’t immune to this phenomenon either.  Take Flax’s band.

Left to Right: Aurora & Flax, and their offspring Ariel, Shang, and Flynn

White Mountain Roundup & Spaying Scoping – The More You Know

Well, the day I have been dreading for over 3 ½ years has finally arrived.  I suppose I should be thankful they waited so long instead of having it show up in August, but really, I would have been perfectly fine waiting forever only to have it never show up.

What am I talking about?  The BLM has released a scoping statement for the White Mountain Wild Horse Herd.  This is the first step of the process.  Basically, they are announcing their intentions.  The public has the opportunity to comment, at which point the BLM goes back and write a more detailed Environmental Assessment.  There is another comment period on the EA.  After that the BLM, having done their bureaucratic due diligence, proceeds to do whatever they want.

Vimes’ Band.  Left to right: Striker, Guinivere, Saran, Chasma, Bink, Nova

Have it to the Full

This isn’t the blog post.  That one is coming.  It is half finished and I can’t really put it off much longer, but it isn’t the kind of thing you throw at people on New Years Eve.  There is also the minor detail that it’s just plain hard to write.  I don’t know how I am supposed to make sense of a single decision made by humans that has such a huge impact on life and how it functions in our “modern” world.

And really, that’s been the story of this entire year.  Life.  Figuring out how to live life through all the chaos. Watching new life taking its first steps.  Seeing lives completly change.  Watching with bated breath and trying to figure out whether or not those changes will be for the better.  Watching life fade.

Fisk & His Tantrums

Fisk doesn’t make much sense to me.

Some of that is normal.  Not being a horse myself, they often act in ways that I do not expect, leaving a years worth of puzzles before me.  Sometimes it just takes a little time for a Eureka moment to break through.  Other times, there is no answer beyond the knowledge that every horse has their own distinct personality and that there are bound to be a few oddballs out there causing mayhem.

Fisk, though… well, I just don’t know about him.

Fisk

Standing Bear Has Five Moms (And That’s Okay)

Happy Thanksgiving!  Or to anyone who lives outside of the United States and/or does not celebrate the holiday, happy random Thursday in November!

This is a story about Standing Bear & Ariadne – two very different youngsters.  Their territories are miles away from each other, yet they are still part of the same herd.

Cody’s Band

Imperfect

Well, I found Gladiator.

And maybe we should just get this out of the way right off the bat:  Gladiator is a terrible band stallion.

Gladiator – lots of beauty & brawn, but brains? Not so much.

No really.  I love Gladiator, but he is simply dreadful at his job.  I cannot blame Fibonacci, Belle, and Spitfire for finding a different stallion to join.

But maybe I should start at the beginning.

The Quest for Gladiator

Man that title sounds really over dramatic.  Unfortunately, I went on a pun-filled Cream binge earlier today (the band, not the dairy product though I had some of that too) and consequently used up my allotted number of song references. Sorry, not sorry.

I like to think that Gladiator stays on the top of my list when it comes to visiting horses in White Mountain.  The reality is that most of the time, Gladiator hardly even counts.  I don’t find him so much as wake up, put my contacts in and bam! There Gladiator is.

 

One Sunday in October my truck broke down.  So I walked up to White Mountain from Green River.  Even in the most ridiculous of times, Gladiator has a way of showing up

On Either Side the River Lie

Elaine of Astolat was something of a tragic figure.  Stick with me here, because I swear this is going somewhere. Probably. Probably.

 

Elaine was this beautiful, young woman who made one critical mistake.  She fell hopelessly in love with Lancelot.  You can probably see where this is going.  Lancelot had devoted himself to the service of Queen Guinevere, and rejected Elaine’s advances and her love.  Elaine did not take this news too well, and died of a broken heart.  Now before you go feeling all sorry for this girl, as the story draws to a close we learn that Elaine was just vindictive enough to ask her father to put her dead body in a boat and float it down the river to Camelot just so Lancelot can see the results of his actions.

 

Unrequited love is a common theme in literature for a reason. Elaine’s story has passed on through the generations because we can all relate to her.  I know I’ve been there. More than once, in fact.  Now I would like to think that I have made better life choices than Elaine.  Rather than dying, I fully intend to be an independent single woman who eventually turns into a mildly eccentric hermit.  Some of us just aren’t meant for love.

 

Elaine of White Mountain had some unrequited love of her own to deal with.  Much like her namesake, it didn’t end so well.