So much to share, but today, it’s not the time to go backwards. I’ll share those stories another time.

Instead,  I’m looking forward to where we’re going next.

In a nut shell, we made it across the desert, in a few steps and stages, some trailer rides, awesome angels, and enough riding beneath blazing sun, through rocks and sand and sagebrush, meeting buckaroos and hunters, camping out with mormon crickets and wild range cows, and getting more than a little tired of stressing over trying to find fresh water and green grass for the horses…. to know we have had enough of the desert.

Summer in the desert. Took the season a while to warm up,  but once it got going,  it got hot.  Real hot.  And dry.  Real dry. Not the time nor the place to be traveling horseback out there. As the horsemen here know, it’s one thing to trailer you horses, chase some cows, and go home. Or ride hard one day, then give that colt the next five off, with a big bale of hay, a paddock to roll in, and that release of being home.  But my horses are a long ways from home. 

Far from home. It’s a humbling place to be.  No sense pretending you’re in your comfort zone or in some place and space that’s yours. One quickly learns to let go of that sense of superiority we naturally cling to because we know a place better, been there longer, know your way around. I don’t.

Well, we made it past half way, passing through a lot of places we didn’t know, finding ourselves a little closer to where we’re going than where we’ve been. But still so far from both, and something about knowing that makes it all feel farther still.

Cell service has felt like a luxury. And like most luxuries, let alone comforts, few and far between.

Tell you what, when you’re rambling around the desert in fear of what you’ll find (or rather, won’t find, like grass and water, shade and shelter), something about not having cell service makes you feel even more afraid, more isolated, more alone. Funny to admit, considering I went twenty odd years without a phone. How easily we get hooked.

The last leg of this journey has taken me farther out there than I thought I’d see in this big beautiful U S of A. Places I dreamed I’d see after stories of the Wild West and out of Western Horseman. From Alturas to Lakeview, Plush to Fields, the iconic Jordan Valley of the Big Loop Rodeo, and finally to this farmhouse ranchi⁸ng oasis of Oreana, where hard work, strength, commitment and determination are what it takes to survive.

It was also a time of openness,  opening, because how could you help but feel your heart open wide when you’re held in that seemingly endless expanse of wind and heat and sun burned hills and a star studded sky when that sun gracefully and graciously lowers which inevitably happens at the end of each day.

This has been the land of big ranches and buckaroos, sage brush, stock ponds and wide open spaces, high desert, low water  and a lot more cows that people. It’s spacious here. You can see seemingly forever. As one cowboy tells me,  here you can see your horse run away for two days. I hold onto mine even tighter.

In bewteen those dots on the map, well, that was the rough part.  Those were nights in rocks and sage, rank stock ponds, and grass gazed to a stubble by the last of the range cows still needing to get chased out of those dry hills for this season. There was crunching on crickets and searching for trees under which I could give the horses shade, and pitching my little tent in the big dust of cows chased out of some old broken down barn.

It’s taken me to a new level of… grit? I get so tired of trying to be burly, rough and rugged. Somedays, I just want to soften. I want to be somewhere safe where I can just let go, not worry, belong, and know my horses are well. I guess one calls a place like that: home.

Yet I get fleeting glimpses of that too. The oasis for horse and human.  Irrigated farm grounds and friendly faces and welcoming farmhouses. Careful what you ask for.  Good folks that feel like friends and neighbors are not as rare as one might think.

Well I’m done with the desert for now.  We got another one to cross in a few more weeks,  and we’ll likely take a ride across that one too. The decision to make this journey has been my idea, yes. But every decision  I must make along the way is for them. My willing partners and faithful friends. We are doing this. Our own way. Together.

It’s not just a ride. Riding is the easy part.

Last week,  somewhere out there, sitting in the shade of the solitary tree, writing my dear friends and neighbors back home:

I’m here pouring over maps trying to figure what’s next. It isn’t getting easier.  Just new challenges. And new views, new adventures, new people and stories.  The desert is about the hardest. It is relentless, unforgiving.

This was the stretch that all along I planned on relying on Bob’s support. Sure enough,  I got it.  Not only am I grateful for his outstanding help, but in having him out here, with me from time to time,  I am able to share this adventure with him, sometimes first hand,  hand in hand,  and that matters so much to us both.

And then after another brief visit, as the horses and I watch him roll away, somehow these big wide and wild Western hills get a little bigger, farther and lonlier and my heart a little emptier.

Anyway,  best I stay away from the desert as if it doesn’t kill me and my horses, it might very well kill Bob and anyone else worried sick about me.

So today we’re heading to higher ground. Into the Idaho’s mountains, rugged and wild.  For the next couple weeks we’ll be riding through trails and dirt roads, high country and small towns. Still stepping into the unknown. But a somehow less scary stretch that I am hoping might even be fun for both horses and me. A new leg of this journey.  A new view of this beautiful country I am once again proud to call home.

I try not to think how excited I’ll be to be back at my house, with my dogs at my side,  horses on pasture,  and my husband in bed beside me. If i think about that, I’d quit.  Still a long ways to go.

I’m not there yet, though this is not meant to be about where I came from (California) or where I’m going (Colorado). It’s about all the stuff in between.

Is been a helluva journey so far. And that thing about accomplishment… getting to the destination. It’s not for ego or bragging rights, but for some sense of commitment, determination, inspiration. That is what keeps me going.  Carefully for my horses, and courageously for me.

Until the next time, sharing love and blessings to and for all.

P.S. and thank you so much,  Bill & Bev! With love from the orphan that wouldn’t leave 🙂