Last Days At the Ranch

EEK! 40+ Mice caught in our House, Plus 8 in our Van! The tally is getting out of control and the 2-leggeds seem to be losing. Crissy finds herself oddly compelled to take a portrait with this one that she said was, "staring at me while I was writing thank you cards."





















The final days at the ranch were a little bit of a blur, with preparing for the community BBQ for 500 with free food and and wrapping up all the cans of worms that I opened here in the last 2 months, we have been busy little bees...Oh, and yeah, moving for about the 67th time this year. We packed up the ole van, drove it to boulder and hopped on a plane. Now I am sitting by the banks of lake Winnipesauke (Dr. Marvin, Dr. Leo marrrrvinnnnnnn) writing this epithet to a wonderful 2 months at the Mendoa-Zapata Ranch.

The last week was rough for all of us, we said good bye to a great dog and work partner with a pizza party in the Inn's kitchen

The Team Poses with the Pizzas in Mid-Preparation




















Happily Enjoying the Pies. Skaking the Blues Away. Ol' Goose in the Middle Waving His Piece in the Air.



















With my arm final feeling better I prepared for the big day, my first real ride on a horse. We decided to ride to the ancient Indian skeleton recently discovered on the ranch.


Saddling up for the Big Ride.


I took one look at old Grasshopper, the horse so stubborn you have to whip him the entire time you ride him, with his scabby old mangy body, the flies circling him and thought -- this is going to be interesting. I had no idea just how true that would be. Basically, I will spare you all the play - by - play and just say that while Neil and Jeff were adjusting my stirrups the horse reared back and continued to rear back higher and higher, shaking off Neil and Jeff and finally me. He threw me off his back as he, in effect, sat down and I hit my head on the ground and lost my vision yet again this summer and tried not to pass out from the fall. Really, this was 2 monthsalmost to the day that I fell into the Animas river. How fragile and irritable life can be.
everyone said it looked like he landed right ontop of my, but I don't think he could have cause I don't hurt nearly enough for a 1000 pound animal to have crushed me. All the crushing was don't by gravity and dear old mother earth as my head collided with both. Actually, I hit the back of my neck too and my left hand was numb for the rest of the day, I thought I may have seriously injured my left arm (formerly the "good arm") at the elbow, but felt confident that the pain in the lower pack was superficial.
Once it was clear that I would stay conscious and I could form complete and coherent sentences, we took a car back to the house to being the now familiar ritual or applying arnica salve to the entire body. This time, friends from the Animas Adventure, we dosed me with a more reasonable amount of arnica (10 drops, not droppers) and although my headache grew increasingly worse throughout the evening, I stayed totally altert and conscious. Many forced games of dominoes later (I made them all play something with me so they could tell if I was spacing out), being awaken every hour through the night and at last a couple tylenols, I felt as good as someone who has just sustained a head injury can feel.

It's nice to feel confident in your herbal first aid skills, even better to have a third person there as a trained wilderness first responder to clear you of spinal injury and to take your pulse every hour, but I think I would rather, at least in the future read about this kind of thing in books.

Having never really hurt myself badly in my life, I am uplifted slightly by knowing I can preserveer and that my body, although not that of a teenagers, is still resilient and able to heal. It does make you really think about the fleeting nature of health and able-bodienss at the least, and of life itself at the most macabre. The good arm is, one week later, the good arm again and the bad arm feels pretty good these days too. Some brain fogginess, the feeling of being rattled and soreness of all the neck muscles were the only lasting effects and I feel fine now. What a life!
Ol' Neil told me he cant take much more of watching these things, but I reminded him he didn't even see the first one. Even so, I don't plan on adding any more posts like this in the near future.


Old Chapulin Strikes Again; Pre-strike I Try to Commiserate with a Mangy Horse






















The Skeleton we Didn't Ride to; Before Someone Stole the Skull: