What I Know About Horses

I heard and read a bunch of stories recently on the Native American call in show and my friend, Dia’s, new children’s book and I noticed that most of them were about animals and nature, so that is my plan here, too.

I was raised around horses, Arabs to be specific and Laina had about 20 of them when I started living with her and being around her 4 or 5 ranches.  I learned the fine art of breaking ice at the water trough in the winter, chasing and recapturing straying and escaped beasts, the fine art of getting your feet away from the heavy hooves that can crush toes in a heartbeat, also shoveling manure, throwing leaves of alfalfa so that you are not completely covered in fine green matter and, every now and then, riding them.  I was there at the end of the 50 year horse dynasty when Laina sold the final batch to a Ute Indian for $500 and watched her cry and told her she had to do it.  It was that event we call a bottom in the addiction world.  I watched my mother, also, go broke trying to keep them fed.  I swore I would never have a horse, but when the subject came up after a few years out here on our own little ranch, Adventure Trails Ranch, named after Laina’s homegrown children’s magazine, published in Steamboat Springs, Colorado in the late 30s, where she had her first ranch.  I blandly agreed to have a donkey on the property as a low key horse substitute.  There was a picture of a pink donkey and a story about it that was a pleasant piece of family history.  So I found BJ and picked his horse bitten self up from a place in Chimayo and he grew and grew  and grew into a massive mammoth male burro and I was now in charge of breaking his ice, finding the money for hay and training him to lead and ride….all of which I did.  He turned into a neighborhood fixture for over 20 years.  I also acquired another donkey, Isabella, and together we worked the property.  So what does worked the property mean?  It means that I knew I had hay burners on my hands and I wanted to make sure the ranch could help support them and they could be very useful for keeping down the weeds and do the things that only a good riding lawn mover or a tractor with a brush hog could do.  The riding lawnmower had used up its purpose early in the game when I used it to power the cement mixer that I bought from the junk yard for $25 and it basically built the adobe home and shop we still live in.  When the engine and reverse conked out, the mower went into cold storage, where it still is to this day.  I had dreams of using the burros to haul firewood and I had a pack saddle and panniers made for the purpose and they did some of that, but not much.  There was some riding around the area, too, me being fully equipped with a saddle and a hackamore and a whip, quirk or stick for reminders to keep moving forward.  What I learned in the process of working the ranch is what I will talk about here.  What we did was this: every day when the weather allowed or the  conditions were right, ie, in the early spring, summer and fall, I hooked a snaffle on BJ’s halter and slung a long chain on my back and led or dragged (as the case may be)  BJ to a different area every day, sometimes changing his location 2 or 3 times a day, depending on my work schedule and the location and need for the controlled grazing to occur.  We had a ½ mile length of creek bed and strip of property that was roughtly 500 feet wide.  It would take weeks to work our way up the creek bed and around all of the meadows and spots.  Isabella would not need to be tied up, as she would usually (and I mean usually) stay pretty close to where BJ was.  So what I was doing was saving me money, giving them good nutrition, sloping the banks of the creek some, providing all kinds of entertainment for us and , mostly, giving me a really close look at what the ranch consisted of and a really good finger on the pulse of the land.  I had to be careful not to overwork any one area and had to see what was edible or ready to harvest and what was not and the bonus was that I was able to keep a really close eye on nature and the natural world. 

So what did we learn?  We learned that almost everything was edible, but at different times.  Dry cottonwood leaves were really good in the fall.  Buffalo gourd plants were very stinky but tasty at times.  Most, but not all, weeds and grass was better tasting when young.  Most trees were edible at times, including Russian olives, elms and mountain mahogany (although I had to teach him to eat them).  Salt cedars were not eaten.  There was a good little colony of 8 or 9 of them at the bottom of the bottom 15 and there was lots of good grass around them and they were a decent tree to tie him to, but I never saw him eat them.  They grew mostly away from the creek bed where the cottonwoods and apache plume grew closer.  They were well spread apart and did not crowd other trees or themselves out.  They grew a little in the size of the plot, but not much over the years.  The ones I had planted or transplanted were and are mostly crowded out by the rocky mountain junipers and the sumacs.  They did not seem to be a problem at all in this fairly healthy environment and with lots of diversity around them.  They were beautiful with their pinkish purple fronds and their stately posture and their lively red shoots that made such good pieces for woodwork and building projects; much more desirable than the willow twigs, which were also lovely to smell when they were harvested for the same purposes and they were more supple and moist.  I had seen BJ eat toxic looking plants before and was actually riding him one time after he ate this noxious looking purple stemmed plant and 20 minutes later we were riding on the edge of a cliff when he decided to get sick and eliminated the weed ballistically and almost fell off of the edge with me on him.  But the salt cedar was left alone, as , I suspect is left alone by the cows and horses and deer and other grazers generally.  I began to think about them and wonder what their truth was.  I knew residents who loved them because they made really good honey…..well, you know, the bees around them did and when people started talking about eradicating them, then it became clear that not everybody was for it.  The donkeys had ruined two pastures of mine due to overgrazing and had left wildly prolific and healthy fields of goat heads in their wake, so I had some idea about the impacts of overgrazing an area.  I had studied various ecologists and knew that bio-diversity was the key to a healthy area.  The more plants and trees, the less monolithic an area, it seemed , the better.  So I have encouraged elms, olives, sumacs and let them intermingle with the ponderosas, the junipers, the pinons, the oaks, the box elders and maples, the various kinds of willows, the poplars, the cottonwoods, chamisas and cholla  and  the apples and pears and jujubes and cherries and wild plums and apricots and other varieties of trees.  Even though the cottonwoods sprouted up like weeds, I still like them as they quickly grow tall and are beautiful.  The choke cherries mix and mingle with the lilacs and the wild currants and the Virginia creepers and the dozens of varieties of flowers and grasses and asparagus and thistles and mustards and kochia scoparia.  .  They are like a symphony with all of the different sounds and instruments and displays.  The insects swarm and pollinate.  The sussurous creek  and the birds provide the constant sounds that augment the  waving of the branches and fluttering  and trembling of leaves and the sun plays with them all providing a constant source of excitement and sense of the moment and eternity at the same time.  This is real wealth both to the eyes and to the body.  The donkeys quietly grazing and BJ with his conveyor belt of greens processing through his mouth is a wonder to watch and breathe.  The water beautifies the stones in the creek bed and the stones make the water move about and form eddies on the bottom side of every single one of them.  When I first got here there were only some dying huge ancient narrow leaf cottonwoods , which provided the bulk of firewood for many years.  Then the dead pinons took over that job and once we got over the sense of calamity for those years, it is now clear that nature has no mistakes and thinned the fire threat out before our hills burned down.  Now as we walked onto the steeper slopes all around this area it is clear that somebody had come around here with axes and cut down huge juniper trees and probably other ponderosas and other large trees and they took them to the charcoal kilns up by the entrance to Spirit Valley and had done this in an intensive way, eking a living out of the forest.  The trees had also been cut for fence posts and the area had been fenced to the tune of about 20,000 acres and thousands of goats.  So our little incursion into the ecology of this valley was minimal and, on the whole, a benefit to the landscape.  The snakes were kept down some by the donkeys, the gophers were a little less likely to build too permanent a tunnel and the lawnmower was rarely started up.  And I have become a staunch advocate for the tamarisks as they are maligned by zenophytophobic people who have not studied them, just grabbed the money and their fears and ran.  If this land had continued to be overgrazed and if there were a dam above us and if the water table had been drastically altered and salinated by overuse and other damage had been done, then the salt cedar would have become the keystone species that they are in many areas.  So we have to thank nature for taking care of some of the things when we are asleep at the wheel and not allowed an area to be destroyed, only changed.  One man and his donkey is a sight to behold as the man slings the lead rope over the donkey’s back and walks on down the path; abandoning that mind numbing old way of doing things whereby he drug the obstinate beast down the trail, cursing and looking at his watch.  Finally, after many years of this I thought I would try something different and so I walked on down the path and around the corner, only to be surprised to see BJ running to meet up with me and standing there, head high and ready for me to slip the hasp onto the halter.  Maybe it would not have worked in earlier years as he was friskier (a horse expression) and more independent, but when it finally did then we had come to a place of practical magic, which is exactly what living on the land and eking out a living on the Galisteo watershed is all about, be us beast, fowl, man or alien species.  More shall be revealed.

-this piece was written a dozen years ago and just ran into it and thought it would be fun to put on my blog.....TS

I will add one more interesting tidbit about horses, which is, that, in the halcyon years when we neighbors were young and brash and excited about living out on the land, we pretty much all bought and raised and rode horses.  This fad faded as time and reality wore on, and, every now and then, we would band together and ride our 'horses' down to the legal tender for a beer or two (and maybe some lunch...).  What I noticed was that BJ, the donkey, always took the lead position on these rides, not due to my instigation, but due to....well....I think he knew he was top dog and smarter and faster than the others and assumed his rightful place (now the other riders were loathe to notice this and probably were somewhat disgruntled about it and preferred not to talk about it, but I whisper truth to horses and stand by this observation....).  BJ was top dog amongst dogs, too, by the way!  Happy Memories!