Clay Pigeons

I like the collection of words that Blaze Foley put together when he wrote Clay Pigeons better than anything else he did. I am in that song right now. Back in the saddle again and getting on with it all

This has been a brutal year in many respects. One of the worst is that in late summer my 51 year old body picked up a nagging injury that got worse every time I got in the saddle. The catch was that I needed to be in the saddle. Tradewind and I had work to do. We kept riding hard until that work was finished. Tradewind, a formerly wild Corolla stallion who was captured because he was utterly crippled with founder carried me for so many hours on the trails that he was the Horse of the Americas Registry's National Pleasure Trail Horse of the Year for 2011. He was not only an ambassador for his nearly extinct strain of Colonial Spanish mustang, but for all stallions, all little horses, all horses that had been foundered, and for everybody else in this entire universe that someone had given up on.

In late August we finished that job. It has been about four months since riding was fun. I am now comfortable in a saddle. I am now riding hard again and enjoying riding hard. It is a terrible thing when one's best thing becomes a bad thing. But it is so good when good becomes good again.

And this year I will complete 100 miles of riding in 24 hours. I have failed in efforts to do so for the past two years, but now I realize what my problem was--I was not old enough for the challenge. Now I am 52 and have the requite experience to get the job done.

(This is Lydia giving a little BLM mare her first ride. She will be accompanying me when I do 100 miles in a day. Don't worry, I'll look out for the poor little girl.)