Right here. Right now. Exactly where we need to be. Right? I dunno but here I am, and tomorrow I’ll be somewhere new.

If you want to know the world better, begin by exploring your own back yard.

It was John Muir and/or my GF Liz who said something like that but I got it. You don’t have to go to some exotic place or have some fanciful experience to get it. Just start where you are. Then go from there. Because at some point you have to step out of your comfort zone if you want to truly understand this world and your place in it.

Someday you might look around and realize you stepped out. It’s not comfortable but there you are. Now what? That’s where I am. Out there. Looking around. For answers. Can’t say I have them yet. Just a lot of questions. Maybe by my age I’m supposed to have it figured out. Or maybe by my age I’m wise enough to know one never does.

I remind myself often, around every bend: Slow down. Slow your senses. Open intimately to the world around you. There is so much. So much we miss, forever rushing around in our crazy busy world with our face and fingers stuck to a screen. What happens when we let it go? Breathe. Listen deeply. Hear fully. See clearly. Gaze softly. Speak slowly. Walk gently.

Not so easy. Those days are over, I hear you say and I see that as I slowtravel horseback across the West with highways and pavement and parking lots, locked gates and closed hearts and minds. It’s a different world now. Trust is precious and fragile and believe me, I get why. But somehow our souls are still searching, hungry for connection, yearning to find answers out there. ‘Cause though we know the answers we are longing for are in us all along, it’s often getting out there that jostles them to the surface. Some times we gotta get out of our comfort zone where we’ve been safely snoozing if we want to wake up.

And no matter how beautiful we find the world around us to be, isn’t it the beauty we find inside that matters the most?

Where we’re at. Lakeview. A town I’m told that sucks you in and holds you here. And that’s not all bad. I can’t help but wonder how it would have been to be born into a place that embraces those who were, allowing them to know and feel what it is like to always have known where you belong.

Our not. Because of course I don’t. I’m simply passing through. Though the help and hospitality and even acceptance of this unusual older woman camped out with her horses on the edge of town, seemingly like a hobo or hippy or yes, you got it… saddle tramp… has been both beautiful and humbling, again.

Well, here we are. A longer layover than I would have wanted. Waiting for Bob. Again. So much for independence. It’s the interdependence thing drummed into my head over and over and over again.

Progress has been slow. I try not to get frustrated but of course I do. We’re heading into high summer. It’s getting hot. Choosing the routes with water and grass become more critical and more challenging.

In all my time tending to Canela, I’ve lost several weeks making sure she is well cared for. I turned my saddle horse into the pack horse, let her just come along for the ride, and me, I’ve found myself walking. Something I usually love to do but was not prepared for on this trip. Levi jeans, felt hat and aussie slicker isn’t really the ideal way to dress when you’re hiking high desert in summertime. I wore through one pair of jeans, one pair of boots, and tried to get by with some synthetic Walmart hikers. We’ll, the horses fared fine for that stretch but my feet didn’t do as well. Now I get where you’re coming from, dear Monk of 3Mules!

Once again, it’s all about… Canela. I guess as it was meant to be.

Bob said she’d be out all season. The vet said it would only be two weeks. Well, that vet was wrong and Bob was right. For over two weeks she’s been tagging along and seeing the big wide world with Crow and me, looking better, more shiny and sleek and fit (though still fat) than she’s ever been before… but her withers have not healed.

Canela. Don’t think. Just deal. I’m not going to think about what it will be like to wake in the middle of the night without her head hoovering just above my tent, and seeing her watching for me to move at first light. I was leaning on her back as I started to swipe stories onto this phone this morning. Now she’s lying down beside me. Breathing deep. Occasionally her legs flail out as if she were dreaming of roaming free. Dreaming like a dog chasing rabbits as she does everyday. If I let her. And I have learned I must. This is her true reprieve that allows her to get up and go each day tagging along to someplace new. If you never heard your horse knicker in their sleep, maybe you have not spent enough time with them.

You know this trip started out with high hopes of having time with her. But things change, life changes, and this trip has changed over and over and over again. This is just the latest adjustment.

A journey of seemingly never ending adjustments. I don’t want to dive into the details now about knocking on doors to find a place to stay and camping along the side of the road. I am not going to write about the stress, the care and love, the trying and disappointment. Ì am not going to think of how bad our team is going to miss Canela. Instead I’ll think about what it will feel like when we all reunite at the end of this journey. And go back home. Together. No. Maybe I better not think about that too much either. Stay present. Here and now. That’s where I need to be.

So… back to Bob coming back to me. Finding me yet again in a new town and a new predicament. Kinda hard on a loving husband to handle.

Swapping horses. Bringing me Bayjura. Taking Canela back home.

Onward.

Where we’re going. Change of team. Change of weather. Maybe even a change of route.

Horse people know. They are horses. Things happen. You do your best and deal. But it sure beats leaving them locked up in a stall or the endless turn out like a feed lot cow with equally healthy results. No thank you.

Maybe it isn’t change. Maybe it is becoming.

As usual this got longer than I meant for it to be. For now, a big thank you to the town of Lakeview and all the folks at the fairground that let me move in for a while. Special thanks to magnificent horse shoer, horseman and dad, Sean, who not only cared beautifully for my horses feet, but whose passion for the Great Basin and high plains and mountains into which were heading next captured me. Dear gratitude to Don of the Modoc FS who cared enough to come check on me after the storms.

And a shout out to those adventuresome souls willing and able to meet us for well needed resupplies along the dry dusty road ahead (especially feed and water for the horses). If you find yourself with a hankering to help out, here’s calling for a few trail angels for my four legged friends.

#alongquietride #slowtravel #horses #ridingaroundthewest #longride