We are close. Closer than I thought I’d be at ninety days into this journey.

Ninety days. Three months on the road. Three months of new, adventure, unknown and challenges. All day.  Everyday. Three months of packing, saddling, camping, riding, sleeping on the ground,  managing, foraging, tying up and untangling, knocking on doors, settling in at the side of the road, getting used to strange and relying on strangers. Miles have passed faster due to rides across arid parts my independence could not carry us through. This adventure has been a unique blend of a hefty dose of time in the saddle, seasoned with a dozen days of waking, a few trailer rides and a helluva lotta time just being out there. Forget some rigid pre plotted plan just to say I sat in the saddle a hundred miles more or somehow otherwise could prove my self.  I think I did that long ago.  Funny I still feel the need.

Funny too because before I left, all I imagined was riding… But it’s about so much more… freedom, facing fears, being uncomfortable more often than not,  living in the unknown, adapting, adjusting, changing…

Change.  Flexible like the willow branch.

There’s so much to tell you, so much to share,  about the beautiful ride to Mackay and the good people I met and how absolutely amazing these horses are… the peace and privacy and silent simplicity of the northern Bear River Range where we are now… and my new love of life, this country, and yeah, Idaho.

But this morning in silent celebration of this ninety day milestone, I decided to scratch all that and share this instead.

This is not what I wanted to write to you about. Likely it’s not what you want to read. You’d rather read stories of fun times, adventures, beautiful landscapes and angels. I get that. And there is plenty of that to share too. But this is how it is today.  Tomorrow it will be different.

Today I am depleted. It’s an effort to care for the horses, gather sticks for the fire, and eat this one damn package of instant oatmeal. I’m in no rush to go on but I don’t want to stay here.  Put on the cold wet clothes, pack up the soggy tent and camp,  saddle the horse in already wet blankets and just move on…

For the last few days, I got the crud.  I’ve been sick in my tiny tent, in the pouring rain, no cell service, the sound of bleating sheep and bellowing cows that can’t find ther calves but no one drives by and I can’t say I’d care if they did.

At this point,  my stomach is devoid off all traces of food and drink and feels like I’ve been punched in my concave gut. I did not start with much reserve but after ninety days, any and all reserve had been used. I’ve been better about caring for the horses than me. But now it’s hard to do either one. I’m chilled and my body aches and the cold and wet don’t help but I’m too wiped out to battle wet wood and keep the fire going. I want to call my husband for some sympathy but of course there’s no cell service here as most places I choose for a good horse camp. Only today I really wish there was and he feels farther away than usual and I feel a little lonlier. The solar charger I ride with doesnt do it’s thing in the rain so on top of all this, the fear of my phone and tracker getting shut down looms dark and close like these storm clouds adding to my already strong sense of separation. 

This is not the day off I wanted. All day I alternate between picketting the horses and trying to stay out of the rain under the shelter of a very large pine, then tying them up and crawling in my tent which is not much bigger than a bivvy and you can’t sit up but I can shake off the mud and brush off the bugs and scotch snug in my sleeping bag and on days like this it is the only way to get warm, and the only comfort I can find.

I’m feeling sorry for myself. Wishing for wool and warm, sunshine or a raging fire, when just days ago I wanted cotton and cool and was grateful for shade. Am I just hard to please?

The weather changes ones perspective in a hurry.  So does the crud. This is what I get for bragging on my health and being to careless to filter water.

It’s about breaking down to break open.  What is the prize I am looking for inside?

Resilience, a dear friend reminds me. Peeling the layers of onion, one at a time.  Did you think there will be something other than onion in there?  But I laugh, now knowing how privileged it is to assume there is always more. There isn’t.  There are limits. And I found mine. For what allows resilience is replenishment. You have to have a reserve. What happens when we deplete our resources and use up our reserve? This is what I am learning.

After ninety days, I used up my reserves. All of them. Well, just about. They were fierce and mighty. But they are spent. You cannot draw water from a stone.

Here I am, close but still so far. And tired. Just dammed tired. I can’t hold food down or in, I can’t dry stuff out,  I’m sick of ramen and oatmeal and that stuff isn’t staying in anyway. And just try getting a fire going when the woods are this soaked and saturated.

Icing on this cake is that during my last layover in civilization (Mackay) gear got tossed around a lot in the back of random pickup trucks and the one thing that got lost in that chaos was my fire kit. Wouldn’t you know.

So this like so much becomes a test.  Can she do it.  Yes, she can. But I’m sick and cold and wet and I don’t have time to prove my manliness by rubbing sticks.

Lesson learned from Sigourney Weaver in Alien.  Always carry a Bic.

So sure I can get a fire going,  but battling wet branches to keep it going is more effort than it’s worth. So back into my tiny tent I crawl. Laying so close to the earth with not much more than a wet saddle blanket between us, it’s not sweet, soothing or comforting. No, right now it’s not.  I’m sick and wet and tired and remember, definately feeling sorry for myself.

Reality is rot and decay, wet cow shit, horse shit, rank and damp and if I didn’t feel sick before, this might do it.

So I light a stick of incense, one of the few luxuries I allowed myself, cut down and carefully packed in a tiny box with a crystal another friend gave as a gift. Maybe it’s crazy to carry something so heavy when every ounce counts, but it reminds me of the grounding of friends, of where we belong, of what matters most.

And when I get like this I just want to be home. In my space my place, comfortable, safe, where I belong. I know the horses feel that way too. It’s not that it’s not beautiful right here, right now. I try to remain present, appreciate it all.  But I am tired. I long for my old dog who I smell so many mornings when I wake though he is eight hundred miles away. The young dog laying on the grass of the garden and the cats vying for space beside us. Or the familiar footsteps of the horses, outside my bedroom window, especially Canela, telling me I’ve slept in long enough. Or the warmth of my husband beside me in bed under dappled moonlight filtering through old oak trees.

It would be easier if I didn’t have those. But life is better because I do.

Close.  But not there yet. Then I look up from under the brim of my ball cap soaked from days of rain and something feels familiar.  I can’t tell you if it is a late summer flower, the familiar and fragile columbine, or blooming bush or the smell of soil so saturated the rivers that run down the dirt road are cafè au lait brown… something so familiar. Maybe many things.  An evening rainbow during a pause in the storm. Red needled once evergreen trees where pine beetles feed heavy. Something that gives me hope. That reminds me: I am close.

So much is still strange. I still have a ways to go. We are ready to be done.  The horses are tired of tangling in picket lines and sleeping tied to a tree. They’re getting cranky. I am too. We need more than a day off to get back out reserve. We snap at each other. We need our own space. I’m tired of choosing every camp for the quality of forage, not for the peace, the privacy, the view.

I’ll quit my whining and belly aching (and hope my belly gives up aching!) Because in the next breath I could tell you about the family that shared pancakes, the rancher that dropped off hay and let us use his corrals and the woman who warmed up leftovers. This is the good stuff. The stuff you need to hear. But it’s all a package deal. I may share those five percent times that are fun, full of angels and make for good stories. But the other 95% indeed is a long quiet ride. Very long. And very quiet. It is hard and uncomfortable, always testing my strength, of both body and soul, the vision quest and soul searching I knew it would be. Alone. Often lonely. The cadence of steel on pavement, gravel, soft dirt, mud. Talking to the horses. (It’s not the same as talking to oneself.) The cramped tent,  sweaty horses blankets for a sleeping pad, hearing the horses softly shuffle where they are tied to a tree close to me at night.

These may not be the details that I share with you, that I think you’d want to read about, and maybe not the magic. Or maybe it is. Because this is what makes up this journey. The majority of the time alone, somewhat lonely, rather uncomfortable and likely a little scared.

Yes there is intimate time with the horses. Learning each other’s pricked up ears, doe eyed looks, picked up pace or dragging shoes, turns off heads and heavy sighs. And patience, always patience. Me with them and them with me. There is intimate time with the elements, the change of place, of pace, of landscape, of plants and trees and weather and seasons. We set out early May. My husband had shoveled through a snowbank to make us a trail. That first night it snowed. Now we witness flowers turning to seed. Tall grasses heading out. Monsoons washing out trails.

But mostly, it is intimate time with the self.  Soul searching. This was meant to be the spiritual quest, the pilgrimage of my lifetime. It has been.

The breaking down. The humility. The Buddhist monk with her alms bowl, asking for an offering. How generously I have been given. How graciously I learned to receive.

But tell you what. Next time I feel the calling for an intense spiritual adventure, please, remind me about monasteries.

It comes to me moonlight while my belly wakes me with a ferocious growl. I unzip my cocoon. The horses softly shuffle and sigh. Stars. A pause in the rain. I stand there. In it all. Of it all. A part of it all. Nothing special. I need not be. I just want to be there, in it, of it, a part of it. And I am.

Closer.