Dear Friends
This week, we’re featuring a photo essay from my oldest daughter, Melanie. She is the keeper of the horse on Alderspring, and it’s her work to care for the 40 or so that are our faithful partners. For most of them, work starts up again when springtime slips in and green grass cloaks the ramparts that surround the ranch. Most of them get winter off–on big meadows to graze residual grass that still packs a little green. For them and us, it’s been a lovely week in the high Pahsimeroi. Here’s her journal entry from this week:
This morning, I went up to the corrals to break water for the two weanling fillies I picked up from a neighbor last week. The frost was still opaque on the windshield as I made my way up the driveway, and I peered through the small area above the windshield where the defroster had taken effect.
Winter mornings are a bit of a study in juxtaposition. There is the bracing mid-January cold that immediately meets the vulnerable skin of your face and the tips of your fingers, jarring and exhilarating even in a relatively mild winter. But in conjunction with the cold is the glistening of hoar frost and snow on the ground, glinting back at the morning sun slipping up over the ridge above the easternmost reaches of the valley. Some minor discomfort in single digits is a small price to pay to experience the sparkling world that surrounds us above and below.
I drove past the saddle horses. They orient themselves broadside to the rising sun, increasing their surface area exposed to the meager warmth in a cold desert. The two little fillies aren’t hotwire trained yet, and even so I wouldn’t turn them out with the rest of the horses to navigate a complicated pecking order. For now, they acclimate to their new world safe in the confines of the wooden corral fence.
The fillies are ready for breakfast. Their breath turns to icy clouds of frost in the cold, and the guard hairs on their fuzzy baby coats catch the light. I bring a few forkfuls of hay over, and they scatter like quail to the corner of the pen when I throw it over. They’re wild little creatures; untouched by humans, having spent their life so far turned out with the broodmares our neighbor owns. Then they creep forward, suspicion of me overcome by the prospect of nice green hay. I pause to watch them for a bit, imagining the partners they’ll be one day, and observing the way about them. The bigger of the two is also the bolder, while the smaller one tucks herself in behind her friend.
It’s a normal day for them, and for me too. But that doesn’t mean that this January morning goes unappreciated. It’s a new day, and we walk in beauty.
Happy trails
-Melanie
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