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The
Last Ride
By Desiré Aguirre
Patty called me
and asked me if I wanted to ride with her to Grouse Mountain to set some
of Dave's ashes free. I would have waited for a nicer day. The
weatherman promised an early winter and snow in the mountains, but Patty
said if she didn’t do it right away she might not do it at all. I told
her I’d meet her first thing in the morning.
We got up
early, loaded the horses and drove twelve miles up Grouse Creek to the
turnout where the trail starts. The road was a minefield of bumps,
mini-rivers, and puddles, so we crawled along at a slow and easy pace.
Splash rode well, a little hay keeps her happy, and when I looked back I
could see her nosing Floyd, trying to get to his side of the hay, as if
it tasted better than hers.
.... We reached
the turnout, unloaded the horses, and began gearing ourselves up. After
we'd put on our winter wear on, we brushed the horses, slung and cinched
saddles to their wet backs, put bridles over fuzzy ears, and from a tall
rock got up onto our saddles.
The trail to
Grouse Mountain looked like it had been confettied with bits of gold,
burgundy, red and brown crepe paper. Trees to the right and left of the
trail swayed like elephant trunks, momentarily protecting us from the
bitter wind. When we approached Grouse Creek, the barrier of trunks
disappeared. My red polar fleece gator, washed too many times and rough
to the skin on my face, refused to stay up, leaving my nose and chin
open to the raw brittle air. I clucked at Splash, signaling her to
speed up, and when we trotted up next to Patty I shouted, “I hope Dave
knows I wouldn’t do this for anybody else.”
Grouse Creek
flowed like a river and sounded as loud as a freight train when we
brought Dave up the mountain. Splash forged her way to the other side,
sniffing and striking at the water as she went.
Once past the
creek, the trail spins itself up the mountain. As the mountain turned,
we moved in and out of the wind. My toes threatened to loose touch with
reality, and I curled them to keep them tingling. My knee brace felt
like an ice tentacle around my leg. Out of the wind, the wet hung on us
like a dark cave, and in the wind the rain turned into horizontal snow
as we ascended beyond the snow line into slushy gray and heavy white
sky.
The snow continued to fall like
Dave's ashes as we rode up Grouse Mountain and through the meadow where
I saw my first wild bears.
Bear Meadow, littered with snow, bracketed in gray, felt leaden. I
dropped my reins over the saddle horn and attempted to push my neck
gator underneath my helmet strap so that it would cover my chin. My
hands, coordination frozen out of them, refused to obey, and I scrunched
my chin into my chest to try and keep it warm, put my left hand in my
pocket, and picked up the reins with my right hand.
Beneath the
thin layer of snow lived the rocky trail, and Splash's front shoe,
possibly loose, clanked with every step. It took us three hours to reach
the fork in the road, and the sign that pointed out directions had
icicles hanging off it. We headed the horse’s right towards Lunch Peak,
where we used to dismount and tie our horses to trees, Dave patiently
showing me the same knot over and over. “Here’s how Desire`, under,
over, through, pull, and do it again. See?”
Dave’s Arab mix
horse, Pink Floyd, thought it funny to untie himself and eat the grass
or beg for pieces of licorice that Pat always carried in her saddlebag.
Splash loved Floyd, and whenever she rode behind him she went into heat,
squealing and getting sassy with the other mares. She’d jig to ride
behind or beside him, and I’d hold her back to give Patty and whatever
horse she was tuning-up a chance to ride next to Dave.
At God Rock,
which we named ourselves because it looked like it had been split down
the middle by lightning, we stopped, and unanimously agreed that we
could go no further. The wind hurled snow the color of ash at and
around us. Two inches had already collected, steam billowed from our
horses’ nostrils, and a cruel wetness seeped through our clothes.
Patty
dismounted. She took off her gloves to untie the saddlebag and get out
the container with Dave’s remains. A melted Levi jeans button, the only
pants Dave would wear, had been found in the ashes, and Patty planned to
keep this small remnant. She opened the grey box, and poured some of
the chunks of ash into her left hand.
The wind
howled, and I wanted to add a scream of rage and despair to its death
song, but I couldn't gulp up enough air between my tears. A finger of
wind blew Dave’s hat off Patty’s head, setting her pale yellow hair free
from the French braid that snaked down her back. Its fine strands
danced momentarily with Dave’s ashes as they took flight for his last
hellacious ride.
We talked on
the way back, griped about our numb fingers and damp bodies. We'd
completed our mission, letting Dave go to the cold Idaho winter air, and
cried our tears. Even the horses’ moods changed. None of them balked
at the creek or dawdled on the trail. We rode down below the snow line,
into the wet wind and shadowy trees, and finally, to the turn out where
the trailer waited.
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