Adventures In A Subaru

Half Moon Rising.
Because Halley’s Comet was already taken in the breed registration.
So Halley stuck as her barn name.

I have been in love with/obsessed with horses (okay, all animals really) for as long as I can remember. My parents started me in horse lessons at a young age, 4ish? My first lesson pony’s name was Boogie. He was the cutest little fluff ball and I looked forward to my weekly time at the barn. My parents got me my own tote box and brushes and I felt so grown up bringing the to the barn weekly to groom this little pony before our rides.

As I got older, I started asking my parents for a horse of my own, but they couldn’t afford it, so I asked instead if I could get a job to start saving money to buy my own. Not really thinking anyone would hire a 12-year-old girl, my mom obliged when I asked her if she would drive me around to post fliers at all the feed stores offering to clean stalls, and house/animal sit. Not more than a few weeks later I got a phone call from a lady, wanting to set up, essentially an interview/meeting with me. Years later, she admitted to being skeptical about the whole thing, wholeheartedly believing there was no way a 12-year-old was going to be reliable or good help. *Fun fact, I keep in contact with her to this day.

I was hired after my interview on a trial run basis and asked to return that Saturday to get a rundown of all of the things, and most likely to be evaluated on how I would hold up. I started out just cleaning stalls and helping her turn horses from the stables to the pastures and back. It didn’t take long before she let me come early every Saturday to feed and do chores, giving her one day to sleep in/not get out to the barn so early. My little horse-loving heart was in heaven. I cleaned stalls, fed horses, prepared grain rations, kept the barn aisle raked and watered, I cleaned tack, I watered arenas and pastures, pulled weeds, and because I was small and unafraid, she started having me be the first person to sit on the horses she was training to be ridden. I also accompanied her to clinics and horse shows out of town, as her groom/note-taker/assistant. This is where my love for Simon and Garfunkel started. Their music was always on a play list at both the barn, and during our road trips.

I quickly fell in love with and bonded with one of the young mares in training, the facility owner had bred and raised. It took a little convincing, but with some help from my parents, an arrangement was made for me to put some money down to purchase this horse and work off the rest as well as her board. My almost 13-year-old self was elated! I started taking weekly lessons, and now had my own horse to take along to shows and clinics.

When my parents split up my freshman year of High School, my mom, sister and I moved into a mobile home on the property where I worked and kept my horse. Despite the unsettling adjustments of living in a split household, on top of high school aged drama and “stress”, I was elated to be living across the driveway from my horse. This gave me the ability to work more hours as I no longer needed a ride, which provided me with an escape from life and the friend group I so desperately wanted but didn’t feel like I was quite apart of. I was never into the things girls my age were. Makeup, sleepovers, keeping up with fashion, and gossip were far from my list of priorities and looking back I see how I used my horse and this job to not only have an excuse for why I wasn’t in attendance with the “normal” things kids my age were doing, but also as an escape. I wanted to fit into that world, to feel like I belonged to the “cool” kid crowd, but I also had very little desire or interest to do so. This job and horse were the perfect excuse and hiding place.

When my mom remarried, and we relocated once again, I stumbled upon a facility in our new town that opened a whole new world of horses and opportunities to me. I was able to work in exchange for Halley’s board and was paid for any work done after that. This beautiful family was from Holland and was raising and training Friesians, several of which they had imported with them. I fell in love with this breed and loved learning their unique characteristics, riding them, and learning how to drive them. I also loved learning about this family’s native homeland, traditions, and playing with their children.

I will always regret not putting more time and effort into advancing myself in the horse world. I was given two truly great opportunities in life and could have done more to capitalize and grow my talents. I was at weird place and cross-roads in my life, but that perhaps is a different story for another time.

I moved to Nevada in 2009, post an emotional break up, and left my dear Halley in the trusting hands of my Dutch family. I relocated shortly after that to Idaho, to be closer to my sister and soon after found a space to keep Halley and went back to California to move her out to Idaho with me. She struggled to maintain weight and therefore stay warm that first winter despite all my best efforts to feed her the best quality hay and grain. A general vet exam showed no signs for concern, and we chalked it up to possibly her born genetic birth defect (she was born with only one partially developed ovary and was diagnosed with X monosomy or Equine Turner’s Syndrome a few years prior when we tried to breed her). The vet and I made a plan on how to try and build up her muscle mass and weight over the summer to try and put her in a better place weight wise for the following winter. Late Spring, early Summer of 2010, I got a call from where I was keeping Halley saying she was aspirating on feed, and I needed to get out there ASAP. We hauled her to the vet where she was tubed/treated for choke, and it was there I learned she had a very bad heart murmur. I was informed it was to the point, in the vet’s opinion, that too much exercise, and even a romp in the pasture or a scare could put her into cardiac arrest and kill her. Not being able to stomach the thought of showing up to the barn to my dead best friend, and not wanting to put my boss and her family, where I was keeping Halley through that either, I made the decision to spoil her and love on her for the next few weeks, and then put her to rest.

This horse literally saved my life on so many occasions. She helped me through my parents divorce, through the loss of friends bother literally and figuratively, through moves and new jobs. While lots of this situations I didn’t handle as well as I could have, the outcomes of my actions would have been much worse had I not had this sweet soul I was responsible for.

It is hard to believe that was 13 years ago. It seems like so much time has passed, but also, like just last week. So much has happened in that span of time. I have lived in numerous states, and even more residences, I’ve changed jobs, changed careers, went back to school, found love, lost love, made friends, lost friends, laid family and friends to rest, and so much more. Life doesn’t stop for grief. I am so grateful for all of the wonderful memories I have with this horse, the people that it brought me in contact with, the work ethic it helped instill in me.  Fly high Schmee.

A year ago this past week, I packed most of my life into my garage, and packed “essentials” to take with me to California to help my then boyfriend’s family for an undetermined amount of time. His brother owns and runs a construction business with their dad, and was bombarded by work, and short workers. My ex, understandably so, wanted to go home to help and try and relieve some of the stress from them both. These trips to California to help his family never went, or ended well, and I tried to remind him that while his intentions were good, he always ended up getting hurt and burned in the long run, and this time, sadly was not going to be any different. Per usual, in these kinds of discussions, my opinion was a moot point and brushed off as wrong as he was committed to going regardless of my thoughts and feelings on the situation.  So, because on some occasions, I suffer from FOMO, I asked if I could go as well, as I didn’t want to be left behind in Montana with no date of return on my ex’s timeline.  Once we agreed I could go with him, we decided to commit to staying in California for 6 months and decided to rent the house out to a friend of ours, who needed a new place to live, and to not have the house sitting empty and unwatched for that long.

Our first winter in Montana had been rough on us and the dogs. Weeks of -20 and colder, before windchill takes a toll on ya! Major props to people who have lived there their whole lives, they’re much tougher than I am! And as much as I don’t miss living in California, I do miss the beach and the handful of friends I keep in contact with there. I too am equally guilty of over-looking some of the hardships of going to California on these “adventures”; such as how miserable it is to live in a 5^th wheel camper trailer in 100+ degree weather, and how hard it is to watch my ex and his family argue and not get along.

Our relationship had been rocky off and on for most of our time together and going “home” always amplified our problems. Per usual, and just as I had predicted things with his family went south quickly. I was never privy to firsthand information from the family source, but according to my ex, things promised financially, and work wise were not delivered as told and the butting of heads amongst the family on a work and personal level ensued almost immediately. His mood got increasingly worse, and I pulled away and became more distant. (I have never claimed to be an innocent bystander in the demise of this relationship.)

This blog post really has very little point, other than these thoughts have been tumbling around in my head the past week causing me to reflect on how different our lives can look in the span of a single year. My dog went from being able to hike 4-6 miles to barely being able to walk a mile around a city block without tripping and then needing to be carried upstairs. I went from having a house, a yard, trying to start up a business, plans for a gorgeous garden so I could start preserving and canning my own food, a partner, a child, another dog, a family, a friend group; to leaving all of that behind to move in with a friend, who in turn did not come through with plans and things assured to me to help in my transition back into single life and providing solely for myself. I went back to Montana, alone, and in the span of a few days in near single digit temperatures sorted once again through my life packed away in boxes in a dimly lit, freezing garage. I said good-bye to people I may very well never see again. 

I got a job offer from an old associate of mine from 12 years prior that I turned down because I was 3 weeks into a new housing situation, 1 week back from collecting my things in Montana and just didn’t feel like I had the energy or the headspace to take on yet another move and a management position. I reconnected with some old friends, I applied for more jobs than I’ve probably applied for in my entire life, I had two interviews, and no job offers in 4 months. When my old associate reached out again mid-January to tell me the candidate they had chosen to move forward with after I declined the position had accepted a position elsewhere and that he was still in need of an assistant and even though not that much time had passed, was I at all interested? Having no prospective jobs, unhappy and uncomfortable in my new living situation, and never one to turn down a place to live I’ve never been before, I accepted the offer and the interview with the district manager. Less than one month later I again, packed my life into a small U-Haul and relocated to Utah. I’ll have been here 10 weeks on the 21^st of April. And, while the peace of being in my own space is so very nice, and calming, it too comes with its own set of stressors. The biggest one being, I can’t afford all the household expenses, and paying off debts on my own, and am needing and looking for a 2^nd job. I also have no one to hug me when I come home in tears after a rough day at work. But I wake up and go to bed every night with the reminder that I can do hard things. I am doing hard things. This is but a chapter in this wildly chaotic thing we call life. All I can do is work hard, and hope that this is but a short and tumultuous season in my life and things will even out.

One year and three months ago I said a final goodbye to a property that is very near and dear to my heart. I have started, stopped, added to, and deleted things from this post since that visit. A few weeks ago, I left Montana to come to California to help some family for a bit. Being back in the area and having to drive by this piece of property on almost a daily basis, made me realize, I really need to finish this post; because I’ve been meaning to for over a year, and, because it’s time to truly let go.

My grandparents purchased 116 acres of rolling hills with a small herd of cattle in Paso Robles, CA in 1998. About a year prior to that, my grandpa purchased his very first horse in his mid-seventies. My family and I were living in Eagle, Idaho at the time and were looking in to relocating to the Paso Robles area. I was beyond ecstatic to get to live in a much closer proximity to this wonderful property, as well as back living closer to my grandparents, and of course, the horse.

The property came with a beautiful ranch style home, goat barn and pen, chicken coop, duck pond, garden area, several horse shelters in large paddocks, an arena, pole barn and cattle shoot, tree house, and playhouse. To my young, adventurous, animal, and outdoor loving 11-year-old mind, this, was heaven.

I have so many fond memories at the R & E Ranch. I tamed semi feral cats, I helped brand and vaccinate cows, we moderately learned archery, went trap shooting, I had a horse to ride consistently, picnics and Little House on the Prairie reenactments in the playhouse, endless hours wandering through the cattle pastures pretending to be an Indian scouting out the next hunt, or an outlaw cowboy on the run.

Not all our days were littered with play, however. We spent long hours over many days, scraping old paint off the fence boards for the ranch hands to repaint. My family and I helped paint numbers on the end posts in the soon to be vineyard. We “planted” plastic knives in the ground to mark where the grape plants would be planted. I walked miles and miles a day, in the sweltering sun.
Once the vineyard plants were established, I helped secure netting on the plants to keep the birds and deer from getting to the grapes before harvest, I helped take netting off the plants right before the machines came through to harvest the grapes, I walked the rows after the machine harvests to collect any grape bunches left behind, either on the ground or still attached to the vine.

I spent almost an entire summer there with my grandparents when I was twelve. We had a horrible cricket problem that summer, and I remember every night, before I went to bed my grandma would get down on her hands and knees to make sure there were not any lurking under my bed before she turned out the light. I helped with ranch and kitchen chores, we watched Hong Kong Phooey after lunch to take a break from the hot summer sun, my grandmother let me help make meals, went to the local county fair.

Some of my fondest memories of and with my grandparents were time spent at the Ranch. I will forever hold close the time and memories made with them on and off this property. However, it will always hold the largest space in my heart when I think of special places, and fond memories with my grandparents.

Winter is finally here in Cache Valley. As the temperatures are declining, and the snow accumulations are rising, I find myself reminiscing my last Autumn hike of 2020. It was the last day of temperatures nearly 70 until sometime practically summer here; a good 6 months at least. One nice thing about cold winters, is, by the time 45-degree temperatures come around again next spring, that will feel warm! The warmth of the sun will be felt once again; after a long winter of temps dropping into the negatives, and the highs barely above the 20’s.  For that exact reason I wish I could have captured the scent in this picture to share with you. Fresh, clean fall crisp air; cool and sharp on my face.  A strong aroma of slightly damp, slowly dying grass. Decaying leaves cracking and crunching under foot. A pungent and tangy must the decomposing leaves are emanating. The sweet fragrance of pine trees mixed in with the faint scent of dust. I love the paradoxical aspect of the vibrant green moss amongst the dead and dying grasses and leaves, mixed in amongst the ice and frost. Did you know that moss can survive the winter, and still photosynthesis, even under the snow? Their low light requirements and ability to go into a sort of plant hibernation make this slow growing plant unphased by the ice, cold, and weeks with little sun light common of a Cache Valley winter. Nature truly is a unique and amazing entity.