by Lehua Parker | Oct 9, 2013 | Mainland Living
Click here to read Part 1: Famous Last Words
Click here to read Part 2: It’s a Date
Horse eating rocks, water crossings, and trees that reach out and snatch you are all perils of mountain trail riding. It always spooks me when the horses’ heads and ears twitch and then they suddenly peer off into the brush. Like them, I’m certain it’s a bear or a cougar with a hankering for horse meat, but more than happy to snack on the stupid human who falls off when the smarter horse bolts. I don’t like long sideways drops off hillsides, either.
Give me sharks and ocean waves any day.
On horseback, my husband Kevin and I forded about six small streams reduced to a ghost of the ripping ice melt they’d been in the spring, passed beaver dams, and nimbly high-stepped over fallen aspens. About four miles and forty-five minutes into the ride my butt ached, the button on my jeans was poking a bruise into my belly, and I had to pee. I knew I shouldn’t have chugged that Diet Coke on the drive up. I rubbed my knee.
“Who rode my saddle?” I asked.
“No one,” Kevin said.
“Are you sure? The stirrups feel short.”
He looked back, considering. “Yeah, maybe they are. I’ll fix ‘em when we get to the campsite.”
“Thanks.”
“Look at the light on the mountains,” he said. “The new green from the rain mixed with the fall colors in the warm afternoon light.”
Kevin’s an engineer by trade and temperament, but like most Celts and Welsh I think he has a warrior poet’s heart. My eyes, previously laser locked on the trail as viewed between Marley’s ears—all the better to eat you with, my dear—looked up.
Oh.
At his chuckle, my eyes snapped to my lover’s face. He was beaming.
“It’s stunning,” I stammered.
“I knew you’d like it,” he said. “It’s good to see you smile.”
A date, I thought. Not a trip to Costco or a quick movie in town, but time with my husband in the mountains and away from computers, television, kids, and books. He knew the mountains would look like this and wanted to share it with me. A horse ride so spontaneous I didn’t have time to create prior plans, but important enough with the coming snow that we had to go. Was his handheld GPS gadget even missing?
A few minutes later past the rocky ridge that always reminded me of a dinosaur’s spine, we turned up the hill and reached the campsite.
“Here,” he said. “Let’s tie the horses over there and walk around.” He dismounted, took two steps, reached down, and picked up the GPS from under a sagebrush.
“You’re kidding me!”
“Nope.” He wiped it off. “Battery’s still good.”
My jaw was still hanging open. “I can’t believe you actually found it.”
“Me, too.” He chuckled and held my horse’s reins so I could dismount.
“So what do want to do now?” I asked.
“Well, I got my girl all alone in the woods…” He reached over and unstrapped a .22 rifle. “Wanna shoot?”
It was my turn to laugh. “You are such a dude!”
“I’ve been married to you for over 26 years. I see the mud and ice patches and didn’t bring a blanket. I got you on up here on a horse. If I can get you to shoot a gun, it’s a banner year.”
I sighed and sighted in a yellow aspen leaf. The things you do for love.
by Lehua Parker | Oct 2, 2013 | Mainland Living
“I lost the GPS. Come find it with me.”
The whole situation dripped with irony. My husband Kevin, a former scout master of twenty years and born horseman, had been asked to help wrangle 12 and 13 year old scouts on an overnight camping trip in the mountains above Strawberry Reservoir. It was a trip he’d made many times before and our horses knew the trails well. But this time with more scouts and adults wanting to tag-along than bomb-proof mountain trail horses available, he’d resorted to bringing Brownie, our daughter’s high-test performance horse far more suited for barrel racing and rodeo grand entries than sloughing through alpine streams wearing saddle bags.
Loading up the horses, our daughter frowned. “Dad, don’t take Brownie. She’s not a mountain horse,” she said. “Besides, nobody but you can ride her.”
“I’m bringing her because I need to put kids on our other five. I’m already planning for Trigger and Marley to have double riders in buddy saddles. Peter’s bringing a couple of his horses, too, but we may have to ride out in shifts. Some campers will have to hike part of the way.”
“Brownie’ll be a handful and you’ve got a ton of green riders,” I said.
“Phhhhstt. She’ll be fine. This is not my first rodeo.”
Famous last words.
Brownie was fine until the next morning when the camp was packed up and everybody was saddled and ready to head back down the trail—except for the guy making sure everyone was saddled and ready. Kevin was the last to mount. That’s when Brownie threw a horsey hissy fit and reared.
It could’ve been all of the extras hanging off her sides—saddlebags, hornbags, ropes, rifle, canteens—that wigged her out. Or she could’ve been worried that the other horses were going to leave her. Or the excitement of the boys keyed her up. Or she could’ve simply had enough of gunshots and coyote nights and wanted her familiar corral and hay. Whatever the cause, Brownie decided she’d had enough.
She’s a diva, remember?
Brownie reared, throwing her head and her legs skyward, which to a guy who grew up training horses is merely annoying until the horse slips in the mud and starts the slow train wreck of going over backwards.
At the last moment she turned and landed on her side, pinning Kevin’s leg underneath her.
As bad as this is, it’s much better than going over backward and having the horse break your neck. Or spine. Or—
I don’t like to think about that.
So Kevin’s first thought was, “Sideways. Thank goodness!”
Not really. But I write a PG kind of blog.
The second thought was, “I hope that snapping sound was a twig and not my #^&*@$%^ femur! One broken femur this summer in the family was enough, thank you very much.”
Or thoughts to that effect.
There was a lot of pain, but cowboy tough, Kevin inventoried the damage while Brownie scampered over to one of her horse buddies with an oh, crap, I think I really screwed up sheepish look on her face.
One of Kevin’s cardinal scoutmaster rules is no matter what, everything’s chilly. Most trouble comes not from the initial incidents themselves, but from people’s reactions. Probably only Peter, another horseman and scoutmaster, had any clue how bad the situation could potentially be.
On horseback, Peter leaned down. “You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah.” When Kevin stood and took a step, he realized however bad it was, his leg probably wasn’t broken. “I don’t think it broke my femur or hip.”
“How’re your guts?”
“Fine. I’m fine.” With kids saying, whoa, that was cool, Kevin walked over to Brownie, adjusted the packs, grabbed the reins, and rode on out.
Can you imagine?
Looking back, he says he realizes now he was in shock; the whole ride back he fought passing out and falling off and is eternally grateful to Peter for keeping him engaged in conversation.
Just don’t ask Kevin what they talked about.
The next day was Sunday. At church the scouts kept telling people about how Kevin was bucked off and how it was awesome.
“I wasn’t bucked off,” he sniffed. “The horse went over backwards with me in the saddle. There’s a difference.”
But it wasn’t until he unpacked that afternoon that he discovered his precious handheld GPS was missing.
Next week Part 2: It’s a Date
by Lehua Parker | Oct 1, 2013 | Mainland Living, Mana'o (Thoughts)
In Utah, I run around barefoot or in slippahs waaaay too frequently. It’s not unusual to see me scampering to the mailbox, quick stepping through the snow because until that moment when the sub-zero cold hit my tender tootsies I forgot that normal people wear thick socks and boots in December. There’s something to the saying that you can take the tita out of Hawaii, but not the Hawaii out of the tita.
A side effect of my refusal to wear shoes are rough, dry, and cracked heels. Too much desert, not enough humidity, and definitely not enough hours in the ocean and walking along the beach. I’ve tried all kinds of treatments and lotions from snooty spas to good ol’ Vaseline and plastic wrap, but nothing seems to work very well.
So when I saw this new, easy fix on the internet it’s no wonder I gave it a try. It came up on my Pinterest and Facebook feed at least ten times over the summer and was always accompanied by a zillion testimonials of how amazing it was. Maybe you saw this, too:
This is crazy. Mix 1/4 cup Listerine (any kind but I like the blue), 1/4 cup vinegar, and 1/2 cup of warm water. Soak feet for 10 minutes and when you take them out the dead skin will practically wipe off.
I know, right?
So I got all the stuff together, mixed quadruple the amounts (I wanted my heels covered) it in a big shallow bowl, plunked the bowl in the tub, perched on the edge, plopped my feet in, and goofed on my iPad for 10 minutes. The results?
Smurf foot.
My skin is blue and no amount of scrubbing with anything short of a sandblaster is going to change it. And of course, the color’s deepest where the skin looks its worst, the exact part I wanted to remove, not highlight like a muffin top over leggings.
My son, the honors chemistry student, laughs and says I should’ve known this would happen and goes through some long-winded explanation about how the acid in vinegar breaks down oils in the foot so the blue dye in the Listerine can penetrate better and then rambled on about quantum mechanics and turning straw into gold—I don’t know, I stopped listening.
Punked.
And no slippahs for at least a week!
Click here to read Part 1: Famous Last Words
“There’s a mountain lion near the haystack. It’s a big one.”