The weight of the world grew too heavy yesterday. No one cause—between news, the demands of daily life, and, well, winter—even an unseasonable snowless January with plenty of sun strained the nerves. Too much. Too much.
Cabin fever.
Not even the daily pilgrimage to commune with the good Foxtrotter boy was enough to silence the dread in my gut. The field where he lives in winter and where we ride is mud over frozen ground. If I get out there soon enough in the day we might have time for a road excursion before the early sunset thanks to the mountains—it depends. But the only remedy for what I was feeling was getting further out. Away.
Time in the woods.
So we climbed into the truck, visited the good boy horse on the way to other adventures (while entertaining him and the herd by bringing in a kiddie pool that blew into the fence, then was dragged out to be played with by bored horses). The Good Boy was eager to the join the herd investigating the pool as the husband brought it out of the field while I grained and groomed him. But he stood, quietly, when I was done and took him back into the field, waiting with head high until I unhaltered him. Once free, he trotted off a few steps before bursting into a tail-flagging gallop to check out the excitement. Much of an improvement over our first winter together. Two years of consistent handling has paid off.
That settled, we headed out north to the prairie. To the woods. Out to look at mountains. Canyons. Just plain out. A pattern that’s held true for us over the years, whether it was the madcap brief half-year we spent here when we were young, followed by visits to these woods and other places when we could snatch time away from work and other obligations.
Out.
Memories whispered around us as we drove, not talking about anything other than what we saw. Remembering those younger days. Time spent cruising on breaks from work, accompanied by beer when we were younger, now just plain water in our senior years. Recalling political and business discussions conducted with others during those drives, when four of us were skinny enough to fit in a pickup’s bench seat. Days when the world seemed simpler and less filled with shadows. A time before cell phones and computers. Almost a different world.
More than memories, wisps of stories flowed around me. That prairie and the woods and canyons surrounding it have been the inspiration for so many of the places in my stories. A ranch house once busy, now only seasonally occupied, looking out at a bunchgrass meadow? One of the inspirations for the Andrews Ranch in the Netwalk Sequence stories. That first pine grove where the road drops into the other side of that meadow? A setting from the Goddess’s Honor books. Over to the west, another small canyon sparked the creation of the Double R Ranch in the Martiniere Multiverse Family Saga, not far from the spooky village of Wickmasa from Goddess’s Honor.
And more.
The land. The land.
Three young spike bull elk raced across a draw near what used to be the stage stop of Midway to cross the road fifty feet in front of us, behaving more like whitetail deer than reversing direction to run away, like we normally see elk do. Better get it figured out before next hunting season, boys. A couple of coyotes trotted warily away from the truck, cautious, unlike the spike bulls. Then a small, cautious band of mule deer.
The land. The land. Tensions melt away.
Midway itself is but a shadow. Once a small stage stop between the canyons and town, for years its only remnant was an old barn that leaned further and further until a prairie wind took it down one December, a few years after we moved here. Now, what remains is a small shelter over a picnic table. Last spring when we drove by with family, we spotted four four-point mule deer bucks resting in the shelter’s shade, chewing their cud.
No bucks today. Just the spike bulls.
Further on, a male snow bunting flew up from a fencepost, fluttering along in front of the pickup until he reached the edge of his territory and dove off into the dried bunchgrass.
When we finally reached snow, the tracks from other drivers reassured us that the way was still open. We negotiated past trees that had fallen across the road and had just enough cut away to allow a single vehicle through. We pressed on, hoping to get to the old fire lookout over the canyon. Which—doesn’t usually happen in January. When we reached the lookout’s turnoff, we carefully made our way until we encountered a drift deeper than we wanted to tackle. Thirty, even twenty years ago we might have continued, even though it was late afternoon. Not now. We’re old and we’ve had to walk back from unwise decisions too many times to trust our luck.
But we still got canyon views—what we could see of the fog-filled canyons, anyway. Ridgetops barely poke out of the sea of fog, rolling in waves like the ocean suddenly was moved to this inland area.
The land. The land. Soothing. Healing. Itself, uncompromising despite human influence. It’s hard to keep the dread going out here. Maybe that’s why so much of my fantasy writing involves land magic—it’s easy enough to feel that the land is still a living thing out here.
Back again, with fewer critters but now more mountain vistas. The snow bunting picks us up where he left us off, flitting along until we reach the other side of his territory.
Dusk fell as we reached town, and the dread had flown. It will pick up again soon enough, but for a day, at least, the dread weighed less heavy. The thrill of those bull elk crossing in front of us. The Good Boy. The snow bunting. The ghostly waves of fog crashing on the dry inland shores.
The land. The land. Here today and tomorrow. Still itself, now and forever.
The land.
