the constituent dismantle of a home

Last breakfast on glass dish ware, last blog post on a real computer, last sleep in a queen size bed with flannel sheets and the blinds pulled down, last meal in the breakfast nook on my dime store table in this beautiful house that has kept me warm and well spirited for two years.  It is so sad to say goodbye to a home.  Sniff, sniff.  The pots and pans and plates and bowls have been wrapped in dish towels and bath towels tucked into card board boxes, strapped down with packing tape and marked.  The stack of boxes has accumulated in the garage enough to build a small house of my own out of.  My stomach has churned and flipped and crawled up into my throat as I've unearthed a life and sorted it into compartments.  But as I disassemble this life I assemble another.  My pantry now fits into an 6 inch by 24 inch bottom level of a pannier and my summer home fits into the bottom level of the other box.  My reading and writing materials are zipped up in plastic bags and stuffed in between the picket line and a hatchet.  And it is all so elegantly wrapped up in a double diamond hitch with a puppy on top!  I will be honest and say that to pack up my house has taken me much longer than I ever anticipated.  And I can't say that it doesn't have anything to do with prolonging the comforts of a home.  But with the amenities sealed up in cardboard and plastic wrap I will have no reason to procrastinate.  And that will begin the beginning.  I will finally  be a gypsy traveler on horseback!  Let me not delude you or myself however.  It still is not that easy or romantic.  I will be camping in my backyard until the urge takes me, or I will wait for a ride up past Red Feather Lakes on the 25th.  But I will be ready.  If nothing else, ready to ride.

The dog and pony show

dog and pony show, originally uploaded by ramsierue.

My mind feels like a freight train. I cut my fingernails too short. I never realized how painful that can be until I started throwing ropes around and tying knots on pack saddles. The horses are eating their breakfast. I am waiting for some toast to toast and declared some time for myself to write. Never before have I been so dependent on to-do lists. Nor have I revised my to-do lists so many times. The to-do list is like sacred text to me now. So much so that on last Sunday when I was at Jax Outdoor Store shopping for gear I had to fight my temptation of grasping all my lists some of which were etched on junk mail envelopes, others in a spiral notebook and some on index cards to make a nest out of which I could take a nap on in the headlamp isle. Then maybe by some miracle I would absorb by osmosis everything on my lists which would then be neatly stored in my brain. As it was I just grabbed a new lantern, looked at the sewing kits, had a twenty minute phone conversation with a friend in the horse tack isle, lost my garage door opener and left. I forgot to get a packing scale and some hobbles. So I will revise again, my lists, adding "check lost and found for garage door opener" I'll try to get a good nights sleep, to eat a healthy lunch and attempt again to get this dog and pony show on the road.

plotting

One advantage to living indoors is the ability to afford the time and resources to plot.  I must say that I have been rubbing my little hands together in an evil manner devilishly plotting ways to desensitize my horses.  Today was the day they got to eat their dinner off of a plastic tarp.  Well actually they were fed their lunch off the blue tarp too but only one of the horses ate from it- and it wasn't a mustang.  It was Breezy my sweet little Arabian who generally is bullied out of her meals by the "bulldogs" of the corral.  But by the end of the day everyone in the corral had stepped onto the tarp to eat.  A Success!  What shall I do tomorrow???  Last week I created a "bridge" out of a sheet of plywood that everyone must cross at least twice a day to come in and out of the corral.  Sparrow was the first to forge that path.  Maybe tomorrow I will tie some plastic bags to the fence posts.  If only I could have a train pass through the corral repeatedly then a semi-truck, then a hot air balloon, and then an unannounced bicyclist (those are really scary!).  The truth of the matter is that you can't really be ready for everything.  Even if you are a horse or the most experienced human alive (I don't know if that really exists) with all the resources at hand.  You just have to go out into the world and be alive.   You have to shake and tremble and sweat and lose your gumption and fail and then fail again and then try again and then "fail better".  All with the hope that you'll have a wide shoulder to travel on, cry on, and eat your lunch on as the traffic whizzes by.  

first 5 days of a 1400 mile ride

crane hollow road 

county road 23e

home for the first night

day 2

home is somewhere around here....

day 3

bellevue grange, co

hwy 287

county road 76H, beautiful!

land of pronghorn

east

west

color red-o

my scout

world without end

Five days by horse takes me 1.5 hours to drive in a car.

Leaving the front range is like navigating thinly woven threads of a spiders web.

I pray traffic will be forgiving.

I pray my mustangs will trust me.

At some point I will have to abandon my concern with the perfect route.

I think I will cry when I cross my first state line.

Open land is like a mended heart.

to tie siding wyoming plus i am happy!

This is what it might look like. This weekend, because I can, I will drive this route and see how it looks. It's awfully hard to pick on a map what county road to travel on. I wish there was a "dirt road atlas" or if there is by some miracle, I wish I had it. Oh and I wish it could tell me the traffic flow too and the topography and how much grass was growing there and if there were some flat places to set up a tent with a couple of trees nearby to highline the horses too. I think I have an addiction to wanting to know the unknown. I feel humbled by this endeavor. I feel humbled by reality. And at the same time I am so happy and excited and if I could I would be jumping midair and clicking my heels in a disgusting display of joy repeatedly until I am forced to go to sleep either because of my own physical exhaustion or my roommates intolerance to my exclamation of joy. The reason for my obscene degree of happiness is because upon arriving home from work today I received in my mailbox a fancy envelope with a handsome contribution for my "long ride". And on top of that so many of my friends and family have sent me words of encouragement and gifts and some people have lent their equipment to me and I just feel supported! I thank you all for everything big and small, lent or purchased! May you all have happy dreams!

it's real. i told the world. i want to ride my horses to bellingham.

"family portrait"

There she is. Lola Rue. at my feet. biding her time. job searching...

Off on a pony ride.

It's not so easy to get pictures of yourself with your horses and your dog. This is the first time I've ever had any taken. Thank you Regan for sacrificing your clean pants to help me get these images! I owe you a burger.

I sent out my letter today. I trembled in my seat, the same one I have been sitting in for 6 hours straight because I knew if I got up I would become distracted by something to keep me from feeling all the nerve racketing fear of asking for help. I took a walk before I pushed the "send" button, the same walk I took three months ago when I realized if I didn't ask for help then I would need to shelve this dream and tuck it way way into the back behind the other shelved dreams so that it could collect a big pile of dust and just disintegrate. But there has been something very basic about this dream- the fact that I got the horses before I had ever pulled anything else together. It was like I had already signed the contract. So here we are 77 days left till departure, in a snow storm, thinking about grocery shopping, and doing the recycling, juggling the tension between now and May 7th with things on my mind like "what kind of pants do I want to have for this trip?" and "should I go on the west side or the east side Horsetooth Reservoir, what is the traffic like there?" and "jeez, I need to vacuum...". One of my favorite mentors Giovanni Fusetti told me once "anxiety is excitement without breath". So I am pretty sure I am really excited! Yup. Pretty sure.