Blue Moon

 Photo Credit: c.fuentes2007 via Compfight cc

Photo Credit: c.fuentes2007 via Compfight cc

I arrived at home last night just in time to see the blue moon (the third of four full moons in a season) at its peak, 7:45 pm in New Mexico.  I was ready to step out on the front porch to enjoy it when we received an email from a neighbor.

He had seen this

 Photo Credit: ucumari via Compfight cc

Photo Credit: ucumari via Compfight cc

or was it this?

  Photo Credit: Garret Voight via Compfight cc

Photo Credit: Garret Voight via Compfight cc

just moments before in the backyard.  I once saw a bobcat  during the day walking along our fence line and it didn’t scare me much at 25 pounds or so, but I still don’t really want to startle one in the dark.  The mountain lion is a whole different deal.  I don’t fancy encountering one of them day or night.

I decided the best place to view the full moon was from the window in my study.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Weekend in the Desert

RivieraLasVegasNV

Photo Credit:  Riviera by James Marvin Phelps

I first visited Nevada on a family vacation when I was a kid.  After spending a July night in the Mojave Desert  camping out at Lake Mead, we were all ready to check-in at a motel with a swimming pool on the Las Vegas Strip next door to the Riviera.  We were wowed by the lights and Englebert Humperdinck’s name on the marquee next door..

Last weekend my husband, Dave,  and I visited Las Vegas to see family and to take in a show.  The temperature hovered at about 100 degrees, dipping below 80 degrees at night, amazingly pleasant.  Last month National Public Radio (NPR) did a story about people who visit nearby Death Valley in the middle of the summer to feel some of the hottest temperatures in the world.  I wasn’t up for that, but did want to experience the Mojave in some small way.

As we climbed the steep driveway to my in-laws’ house in Boulder City, I noticed bushes with little “cotton balls” on them.  My mother-in-law, Mary, told me they were creosotes bushes that bloom yellow in the spring.  I have been visiting her at this house for more than twenty years and had never noticed them.  I went back outside and broke off a piece of one to take a closer look.

Creosote Closeup

Creosote bushes (Larrea tridentata) are the most common perennial in this part of Nevada.  Real drought survivors, these along the driveway thrive on six-inches or less of rainfall a year.  My little sample is all dried out after a week in a plastic bag, but it still has the distinctive smell of camphor that is especially noticeable when it is wet–in the the desert they call it “the smell of rain”.

 

 

Buck Brannaman and the Horses of New Mexico

Red

(Wild Horse by James Marvin Phelps)

It’s been a tough summer for the horses of New Mexico.  The news has been filled with stories about a starving herd of wild horses near Placitas and the ongoing debate (pro and con) about the proposed horse meat processing plant in Roswell.

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(Photo by David Betzler)

It was a relief to leave behind the heartbreak and rancor of those horse stories and drive out to Trinity Ranch in Lamy to attend a Buck Brannaman horsemanship clinic last weekend.  A red-tailed hawk soared overhead as Dave and I set up our folding chairs.  Behind us in a nearby corral, a horse whinnied loudly as we settled in.

Outfitted with a microphone headset, Brannaman was in the middle of the arena surrounded by the class participants each standing by his horse, holding a lead in one hand and a training flag in the other.  It was day two of a four-day clinic and Buck was telling a story about his father counting squares of toilet paper.

The 2011 documentary about Brannaman was my introduction to his natural-style horsemanship which encourages the rider to see things from the horse’s point of view. My own experience with horses has been limited to a few vacation trail rides where I was either  dragged under low-hanging tree branches or bounced back to the barn by a bored horse looking for a bucket of oats.  Although I am an unlikely candidate for a spot in the arena, something about Buck’s plainspoken approach (Don’t make me look over there and see you loafin’) compelled me to check out his horse clinic.

A little ways into the ground work exercise, Buck could see that one of the riders, Laura, was have trouble; her pretty black horse was skittish and unresponsive.  He took the horse to the center of the arena where she continued to rear her head and whinny.  Buck showed her what he wanted using his training flag in his calm, unflappable way, over and over.  Within fifteen minutes the horse was more gentle and receptive, hooked on to Buck, recognizing and accepting his leadership.  Handing the reins back to Laura he said, “. . .  probably when you go back to work you’ll ruin half of my work, but that’s just because you haven’t learned all this yet.”

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And, what about the toilet paper story?  When Buck and his brother were kids they enraged their father by using more than their allotment, probably got a whipping for it, and were in trouble for a week.  Buck remembered that a few years later when his stepfather, Ray Hunt, got angry with him for leaving a gate open and letting a cow get out.  But after the chewing out, Ray let it go; it was over.  Buck’s lesson from that, “. . .(Ray would) make his point and get out.  It wasn’t vengeful.  It wasn’t malicious.  He simply did what it took to be effective to get a change and he was done.  In and out.”  And that’s pretty good advice even if you never get on a horse.

It’s Wednesday night.  The Valley Meat Company has still not been able to begin operations at their horse meat processing plant in Roswell due to a restraining order. Good people are taking hay to the Placitas horses and Buck is probably already in Colorado.  He starts his next clinic in Kiowa on Friday.