Riding Barranca (15 page)

Coming back down the mountain on our horses, we decide to follow the trail all the way to the bottom. It is a splendid little path that winds down beside the running creek. At one point, we come through a wonderland of cactus. It looks like it could be a botanical garden, wildflowers scattered all along the way.

Back at Horse Mesa Ranch, some new arrivals, Buzz and Cathy, have just pulled in from Pennsylvania. They offer us gin and tonics, so we sit down outside their large house/horse trailer and put up our feet, drinking and talking until the sun goes down.

Connected

We woke to snow yesterday morning, snow, at the end of April. But today, everything has melted, and it is brisk and moist. A Mexican Jay flits about in the mesquite, and the air is as cool as fresh cucumber. I have such a heart connection with Barranca and just hope that he will go on and on, healthy and happy. He is always so willing, as if he wants to please me. How lucky I am to have found this horse, my perfect equine companion.

All Wet

As we drive toward Dragoon, Helen reads from the tear sheet Mason has printed off the Internet:
Cochise Stronghold is a protective rampart of granite domes and sheer cliffs that was once the base of operations for famed Chiricahua Apache Chief, Cochise. Sentinels, constantly on watch from the towering pinnacles of rock, could spot their enemies in the valley below and sweep down without warning….Upon his death, Cochise was secretly buried somewhere near his impregnable fortress. The exact location has never been revealed.

Turning toward the mountains the road becomes dirt, rippled with washboard ridges. The equestrian parking lot is just a half-mile up ahead next to an old, abandoned, stone house. When we pull in, we see that we are the only riders in the stronghold this morning—
nice.

Heading down the trail, we meet three middle-aged women on foot with their tiny dogs. They suggest that we take the Middlemarch Trail instead of the Cochise Trail, which
is difficult for horses to traverse with its narrow cuts and switchbacks. I say, “Thanks,” but I should have said, “No
thanks,”
as the Middlemarch Trail turns out to be extremely rocky and uninteresting with low cedar growth and no significant vistas. We keep on climbing for about an hour, going through three gates before we get to a rise and see more of the same ahead.

“What do you think?” I ask Helen. “Maybe, we should turn back and try the other trail.” I remember it as being spectacular, and this is rather boring. She agrees, so down we go. In the distance, we spot a large watering hole, and decide to stop and have our lunch here before riding up the Cochise Trail with its grand domes of stacked rock.

Helen lets Bendajo wander around untied with his hackamore knotted over his pommel. But then he takes it upon himself to wade out into the dark water up to his belly. He is about to submerge, saddle and all, when Helen gets him to return. I hold onto Barranca's reins, and he stands over me, looking for treats, grabbing mouthfuls of grass where he can. I realize how much I trust this horse and feel a rush of affection for him.

After lunch, we find the turnoff for the Cochise Trail and are immediately entranced. The path winds around through alligator juniper, century plants, and prickly pear cactus, affording constant views of the unusual mountains that look like balanced piles of smooth stone stacked up by a giant three-year-old. We have to pass over one difficult, slick section, and the horses pick their way down a steep staircase of rough rocks, but they both manage, sure-footed. I only wish that we had time to ride all the way to the top.

We imagine all the hiding places that Cochise and his tribe secured. The leader's wild spirit seems to float over this landscape as if inhabiting the repeated call of a mourning dove. I answer—calling back—pretending to be an Apache
speaking in native code. When I bring up our grandmother, Helen says, “I was just thinking of her!” Maybe, her spirit is hovering about us, pleased that her two oldest granddaughters are exploring these wild mountains together.

Homestyle Horseshow

Helen and I were always getting into trouble as adolescents, going out into the horse field to sneak a smoke behind the jumping log, or riding bareback in the moonlight, only to discover that our horses had escaped their pasture after our wild midnight ride.

Our grandmother was a very moral, upright person. She disdained TV and called it, “Truck.” She never drank or smoked or even chewed gum. She was horrified when I came home from a summer in France and had started drinking coffee. She reprimanded my mother, saying, “But that is caffeine!” My mother's response to that was—“So what.”

Gramma and my mother were impossibly different. My mother was southern, glamorous, passionate, yet poor. Unfortunately, these two women were thrown together in such close proximity that it must have been very difficult for them both. But perhaps their differences were what had attracted my father to my mother in the first place, after his highly-supervised, insulated upbringing.

My grandmother nearly insisted that my mother convert to the Episcopal Church when she married into the family. Early on, Mom's heritage was questioned. My Aunt Isabelle wrote a letter questioning my mother's genes—how important genetics were to a family, and how my father's fiancée was one of the “Chosen People.” Certain negative traits might be passed down through the blood, my aunt wrote, as if my mother's background would be a stain on the purity of the family.

Curiously, there seemed to be even more fuss over my mother having been raised a Catholic. My grandmother was very concerned about how this would affect my father's marriage and the raising of his children. She wrote to him at length— galled by the thought of ignorant, superstitious priests telling children a lot of poppycock. “It seems terrible to tell as Gospel truth to credulous trusting little minds, things which you cannot accept as intelligent concepts.”

Wedding Day

Mom was convinced that being an Episcopalian was not much different from being a Catholic, but she kept the Jewish part of her history hidden. In Germanic Milwaukee, one couldn't even join the country club if you were part Jewish.

My grandmother took me under her wing and became a significant maternal figure. Strangely, Mason's mother,
Em, reminded me a great deal of my father's mother. Perhaps, that's why I became so close to her. When you can't get along with the parent you've been given, it's natural to choose a loving substitute.

Why are families so important? It's as if we are dealt a handful of cards and we simply have to play them, or close. We can't select our brothers or sisters or parents, though some think the unborn do choose, a charming notion. I can see how I might have picked Popi, but I have to dig deeper to uncover the reasons for selecting my mother. Maybe, she was part of the package deal, or she was my daughter in some past life, and I had not been very nice to her. Was this my chance to get it right?

Cowgirls

Helen and Anita arrive on the rim of the valley right after I do, Anita wearing one of her fabulous, quirky outfits, blue jeans under her splashy pink and yellow dress, with a beaded, blue cashmere sweater and sparkly glasses. She is always a soothing balm on our rides, sighing deeply with appreciation.

Mariposa lilies dot the prairie grassland. There are also a scattering of tiny pink asters and lavender blue dicks. Most of the oak trees out here have lost their old leaves and are already producing soft grey-green ones. The sun is about to go down so we head back in the direction of the trailers. Helen's dogs, Brindi and Bear, run about the horses' feet, then race down a swell to a cattle tank and splash around. Seen from a distance, I think that Brindi is in some kind of trouble, but the dog simply doesn't know how to swim and tries to paddle in an upright position so that only her head is visible. She manages to make it out of the water and then the dogs run around the tank after harriers.

When the pack returns, Barranca accidentally steps on Bear's foot. Howling, he goes hopping away on three feet. Helen immediately dismounts to comfort her dog, swatting at Brindi to stay away—she doesn't care for this Pit Bull with her crooked tail and heavy breathing. But after some soothing Bear is running beside us again. I'm glad my dogs aren't with us adding to all the commotion.

The sun has now set, and we all make predictions as to where the moon will rise. We believe that it will come up somewhere over the Huachuca Mountains, but we will have to wait and see. It's getting darker and colder by the minute. In March, the sun and moon rise directly across from each other, but now, a month later, as the sun sets further north, the moon will rise further south. None of us can decipher any moon glow.

I am now the only one mounted, and from my high vantage point, I keep thinking that I see a glimmer of light—“Oh
look!”
No, it's nothing.
“There it is!”
Nope.