Silver Snag Studio

In a year where I’m grabbing for the steering wheel and brake pedal as the driverless car careens down a ravine, the patterns of nature go on as usual.  For the second year, a Bewicks wren has built a nest in a compartment under the gooseneck of the horse trailer.  I can see little bits of grass inside the entry, and hear the hatchlings fruitlessly singing at me to bring them a spider, a moth, anything.

The horse trailer may as well be a home for birds.  This year I know why Tigger has been breaking the top rail of his fence, piling up bedding against a wall, lagging behind me on the way to the barn once in awhile.  The vet ultrasounds his fetlocks and lo, he has an old suspensory ligament injury, or perhaps chronic degradation of the ligament, she can’t tell which.  He’s been perching on fencing and piling up material to perch his butt and get weight off his back feet.

I get the answer to catastrophic versus chronic a month later, when I come home from a three-day conference and find a swelling below his hock that signals trouble.  A new ultrasound shows torn ligament and a fragment of bone pulled away. It is the end of his riding life, and signals time to make a decision.  Not a decision to do surgery or stem cell injections, which are options, but excessive: he’s 17, abnormally tall and broad for his breed.  The most humane decision is to let him go gentle into that good night.  It is for people to rage against the dying light, foolishly perhaps, but not for me to kill my horse on the ground after he embarks on one last hurrah and rips the ligaments to shreds.

But this isn’t coming easily, because there is work to do and a companion to find for my other horse. I work on insurance to board a horse, start to repair that top rail and consider the trouble an average horse might find in my barn.  My horses are ridiculously polite about fencing and wood and the occasional rough edge, but I know that a new horse may test those fences and find those edges.  Finding a companion proves to be a saga, too, reminding me of a friend’s one-time journey through the deceit of Match.com. She’s calm, I’m told, and then the mare slams the door of her stall with a foot as I pass by.  There goes my kneecap, I think.  He has no bad habits, I hear, but then I find his stall chewed to splinters.

The vet suggests a companion animal. An article about Pharoah, first winner of the Triple Crown in 37 years, talks about his companion gelding.  For racehorses too dominant for another horse, there are goats and donkeys and even a pig, Charlie. But what if I get the goat or the donkey, neither of which I want, and Lark doesn’t like it?

And I leave for the Arctic on some wayward crazy journey (read: rage against the dying light or something to that effect), so changing up is a challenge before I leave. With the vet’s blessing, we labor on, with Tigger in a makeshift miniature paddock so Lark can live normally.  Larkey gets exercised under saddle, Tigger gets daily walks and hand grazing and I panic when he does anything sudden.  It’s summer, so I’ve taken to hand-grazing while I sit in a lawn chair with a camera and watch the world go by.

This is a rare treat for me, after years of planting and building and remodeling, and I see things that likely happen daily witnessed only by Tigger and Lark.  I hear the distinct sound of an Anna’s hummingbird and finally spy a female on a dead elderberry twig.  She begins tilting her head and then suddenly, a male lands on the branch and assumes a sort of begging posture.  This gets the “heck no” response from her, and she flies up and dive bombs him.  He leaves. There are many hummers this year, on every plant put in the ground for them, and draining the feeders.

Both bald eagles appear today to sit on the raptor-friendly power pole by the river to fish.  I haven’t been able to see the nest since leaves erupted on the huge cottonwood, but at one point my neighbor spied a white head in the nest.  Maybe there are young and they are both out hunting.  They fly in low over the horses as they graze, then lift up to the top of the pole.  I don’t have a camera then, and to get one, I have to tuck Tigger in Lark’s pen so he doesn’t run.  As I return, the visibly smaller eagle is heading back toward the nest, right over my head.

The remaining eagle sits watchful under bluebird skies, then suddenly starts calling.  He tilts his head, then out of nowhere comes a hawk of some kind (I think).  The hawk sails toward him, talons extended, and he throws his wings up like a powerful magic cape, screaming as he does.  The hawk lifts away, and the eagle arches in tense anger before relaxing again into his watchful pose.

 There are always different filters to see with, and gifts to find along every path. I feel indecisive and uncertain about the choice to keep Tigger alive until I come home, but I am at peace with his situation. Two days after he was diagnosed, the Nepal earthquake hit, killing and rendering homeless many people who have never experienced a fraction of the health care my horse has received.  There are children starving in refugee camps, people trembling at every rumble, disease spreading through crowded camps.  There are people buried under the rubble of homes never meant to withstand shaking.

Yes, I raised this horse from a weanling.  Yes, he is sensible and calm, precious and dog-like.  But he has enjoyed more sustenance, attention, and care than many people, and it is good enough.  He will teach me to sit peacefully and see little things until he goes gentle into the good night.  And the trailer will sit singing until it’s time for his last journey.

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