It’s July in Wyoming. For thirty years, my husband and I have fled Miami and vacationed here. Our summer lives are both bigger and smaller. The valley vistas are sweeping, the Tetons majestic and tall. But there are days when we miss our big city rituals. Going to the mall. Seeing the latest movie.
The adjustment is a struggle for my daughter. Rachel is forty-two and on the autism spectrum. During most of the year, she works at a school library. Once June comes around, she hangs with us. In Rachel’s eyes, the afternoons here seem endless. Though it’s cool in the mornings, the temperature rises later in the day. We huddle in our cabin. Read books. Watch TV. Time crawls by.
Looking back, there have been many adjustments. The pandemic. The strain of returning to work. But the biggest adjustment is the quiet of our home. Ten months ago, Rachel’s beloved Labrador retriever died. There’s no tapping of paws on the wood floors. There’s no barreling through the halls to eat dinner. You can hear clocks tick and air move.
Rachel says she’s not ready for another pet. Instead, she walks the streets and greets other people’s dogs. She ambushes them in stores and scratches their heads. She corners them on trails. Connecting to animals is easier than connecting to people. That spider crawling up the wall gets carried outside. That deer near the road gets waved to. Look out! You’re gonna get hit!
Rachel has experienced countless incidents of cruelty. People are mean to anyone who’s different. But despite the hurt, she remains an equal opportunity lender of kindness. She values every living creature. And when she comes across a brochure for a horse rescue, she begs me to see it.
“Can we go? Wanna go? We’ve just gotta go!”
Thanks to the miracle of Google maps, I find the ranch. Acres of pasture sit on the valley floor. Fescue and farmland surround it. In the distance, a group of horses aggregate around a pond. Other than some scrub and a few cottonwoods, there’s little vegetation. In the distance, snow-covered mountains punch through the clouds.
We’re welcomed by a handmade sign and a bumpy dirt road. ONE DOG IS DEAF AND THE OTHER’S BLIND, says the sign. WATCH WHERE YOU DRIVE!
We pull up to a small barn, step out of our car, and two scruffy little dogs corner us. Under my feet is a huge pile of bird poop. I pat my hat to make sure it’s there and see a dozen igloo-shaped bird nests in the vee of the barn roof.
“Barn swallows,” says the man. “They eat our mosquitoes.”
He must be at least eighty. White hair. Straw hat. Battered boots. Blue jeans. His posture is perfect, too perfect. And when he walks over to shake our hands, I notice the telltale wince and the stiffened gait. I know that gait. It’s the gait that says his knees could use some WD-40.
“Welcome,” he says. Then he looks us over and ushers us into the barn to sign some papers. “Visitors need to wear good shoes,” he says. “Y’all are wearing sneakers. You better sign these waivers,” he says. “In case, a horse steps on your foot.”
I thought I was prepared. Inside the world’s largest purse, I keep bug spray, sun spray, water. But boots, we forgot.
Next, he shovels some grain into a large bowl and carries it outside. A few horses trot over. One is so swayback it looks like a three-hundred-pound person sat on him and left a dent. The other is missing most of a tail.
“Ellie’s twenty-eight and Sam’s thirty-two,” says the man. “We take them in when there’s no place else for them to go.”
For the next hour, we are introduced to nearly thirty horses. Each one has a name and a history. The Tennessee Walker has a fifth foot jutting out of his ankle. The mustang is branded with a BLM tattoo. Several of the horses had been rescued from kill pens. Kills pens, we learn, are just as bad as they sound.
“Kill pens?” stammers Rachel.
The man pulls no punches. “That means they end up in food factories.”
The only horse that looks lively is a pony, full-grown but considerably shorter than the rest.
“We call him Romeo,” says the man. “See those four mares that hang around him?”
I count one two three four. Each horse is at least a head taller than Romeo.
“If another horse gets near his harem,” says the man, “he gives them a swift kick.”
Instinctively, I take a step back. Then I look at my watch. It’s nearly two o’clock in the afternoon. The sun is blaring, and even with my hat on, my head feels cooked well-done. Every now and then there’s a breeze. But when the wind blows, dust blows with it. I’ve got dust in my eyes, nose, ears, mouth. Plus, assorted insects keep zooming at me kamikaze style.
Meanwhile, Rachel and the old cowboy are a matched set. Like salt and pepper. Like peanut butter and jelly. He is a chronicler of catastrophe and she’s all too willing to listen.
“You see that roan over there? Had a bout of colic last week that nearly killed her.”
Then he and Rachel spend the next fifteen minutes discussing the treatment for colic.
“Castor oil?” says Rachel.
“You need to ride ‘em,” says the man. “Anything’s better than standing still. You see that Appaloosa? Can’t get her to take her medicine.”
“Have you tried molasses?” says Rachel.
Then they make a grocery list of possible solutions. Carrots. Apples. Peppermints. You never know, I’m told, what treat a horse is going to eat.
Not all the horses come to us. It’s the old man’s job to steer them closer. He crawls through a barbed wire fence. He tightrope walks through a shallow stream. And as he introduces each new face, we find out about the man’s life story, too. How he didn’t learn to ride until he was sixty-five. How the palomino is his favorite horse.
Rachel is rapt. Her eyes are full moon wide, and her ears are cocked like a horse. To keep the conversation going, her social skills have shifted into high gear. She is saying things like, “Really, that’s so interesting.” “Wow.” “Gee, I didn’t know that.”
Meanwhile I’m looking at my watch and saying things like, “Thanks so much for the visit.” “We really can’t impose.” “You’ve given us so much of your time.”
But the old man is tireless. Full of energy and enjoying the audience. “Why I have all the time in the world,” he replies.
Did I tell you I’m melting? Time seems to be moving backwards. So I hold out my arms like a sundial and will the earth to spin. Horses, I long ago learned, tend to mirror the emotions of the humans beside them. And as I watch the horses sidle up to the two of them, without so much as a head shake or a snicker, I wonder who is rescuing whom.
“This horse has a bad hoof,” says Rachel. Then she bends down and squints to get a better look.
“That pinto by the pine tree,” says the old man, “got retired from the National Park Service. Once a horse hits twenty-six, things start to fall apart.”
“So sad,” says Rachel.
“You see that quarter horse?” says the man. “Nearly died a month ago. Got bit by a brown recluse spider.”
“Oh no,” says Rachel.
“Almost had to amputate a leg. See how it’s still swollen. For weeks she could barely walk.”
I’m teetering on delirium now. The heat. The bugs. The drumbeat of equine misfortune. If life were a movie, the credits would be rolling. We’d be riding into the sunset wearing clean white hats. Instead, I’m thinking spiders. Sneaky, deadly spiders. But the man’s still talking, and Rachel’s so happy. I reach into my purse and fondle the car keys. Then I take out the bug spray one more time.
Image: photo by Josh Carter on Unsplash, licensed under CC 2.0.
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