Horses My Earliest Meaningful Experience With Nature

¶ … Horses

My earliest meaningful experience with nature occurred when I was an eight-year-old child. My family took a vacation to New Mexico to visit one of those family friends that I called Uncle Joe, though he was not actually related to me in any way that I could discern. Uncle Joe had been a Vietnam War veteran, and, even as a child, I could tell that part of Uncle Joe stayed in Vietnam, though it would be years before I even realized that Joe had gone to war and longer still before he began to explain to me some of the experiences he had there. When he came home, he became involved in some type of business, which was apparently a profitable one, and he moved from his hometown to a ranch in the middle of nowhere, New Mexico. To this day, I could not tell you the exact location of the ranch, only that the drive there seemed to take forever and I remember a feeling of complete desolation in the long desert stretches of the drive.

For much of the vacation, I was a forgotten addition to the trip. Uncle Joe was older than my parents, but younger than my grandparents, but his world was one that was strictly for grown-ups. It was not that Joe disliked children; it was more like he was completely unsure how to interact with me, so he did not. While the grown-ups visited, whiling away hours playing card games in Joe's little bunk house, I began to explore his ranch. I had been expecting big pastures full of grass and fat, happy cows when I was told that I would be going to a ranch. Instead, Joe's home was somewhere on a mountain side, and if he had any fat, happy cows there, they were doing a very good job hiding from my inquisitive eight-year-old eyes. I found creeks, trails, and even a little underground cave heading into a mountain, and I explored them fearlessly as only an eight-year-old with no real knowledge of poisonous snakes, predators, and the very real dangers that could come with getting lost on a mountain, where the daytime temperatures could approach the hundreds, but frost still touched the ground each morning.

My experience as a forgotten child ended early one morning when I woke to find Uncle Joe shaking my foot. "Time to get up," he said, and then headed out of the little bunk room where I slept. When I woke up, my mother was awake, packing lunches for me. "Joe's taking you horseback riding," she said with an enthusiasm I did not feel. My opinion of Joe, who had taken on a mythical quality in my little child mind, had soured when I realized that the fascination was completely one-sided. However, I knew that once my mother had an idea in her head, it was going to happen, so that arguing with her would be futile.

We went out to a trough outside of Joe's home. I had seen horses at his house, though I had been cautioned to stay out of their pasture, and there were two huge animals saddled and ready to go. I remembered thinking how much larger they looked now that I was close to them. Joe swung himself up easily on a big roan horse, then looked down at me, gave a disgusted shake of his head, dismounted, and tossed me up on my horse, a slightly smaller gray horse. I had never been on a horse before, but that did not seem to be a problem. Joe instructed me to put my feet in the stirrups, told me how to hold the reins, and then he urged his horse forward and mine followed his.

We road in silence, his horse in front of mine, quickly making our way to a mountain trail. The sun began to rise over the mountain, the morning air still cold and crisp, and I remember watching the puffs of air by the horses' noses and thinking that they reminded me of dragons. I thought I had explored Joe's entire ranch, but pretty soon the horses' long strides had far outmatched my eight-year-old ones, and as we climbed higher and higher into the mountain, I saw more and more beauty. Joe would come to a stop from time to time, and when I asked him why, he initially refused to answer, just telling me, "Be quiet. Be still. You'll see." I listened to him, because I was scared to ignore him, and I did see. I saw an eagle flying high above the mountains, but closer than I would ever see an eagle again in my life. I saw a flash of rabbit, as it dashed away from the clomp of horse hooves. I smelled a skunk before I saw it, and Joe whispered to me that skunks are nocturnal; it had probably already gone back to its den.

Then, suddenly, Joe stopped so abruptly my gray horse almost ran into his. He reached over and grabbed the reins, and I followed his gaze to where he was looking. We were less than fifty feet from a mother bear and her cubs. I later learned that the wind must not have been in our favor that the horses would never have gotten so close if they had smelled bear. With his left hand, Joe gripped my reins, and then he began urging the horses backwards, not wanting to turn his back on the bear. The mother bear noticed us and stood up, the challenge in her terrifying, as she sent her cubs scurrying into the woods. Joe whispered instructions at me, then let go of my reins, a hand going to the gun at his side, while we both urged our horses backwards. It seemed like forever before Joe told me that I could turn the horse around, and we did not speak the rest of the way back to his little ranch house.