All Hat, No Horse

What started with a mammogram ended in tears but it was as it was and needed to be.

Last October I postponed a long-scheduled mammogram. I was going to be in England and couldn’t be bothered, so I took the next available appointment in early March. Had I not rescheduled it, I wouldn’t be horseless for the first time in 50+ years and neither would I be on the precipice of new adventures. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt to make the shift.

Today, the sun was bright, and the birds were nattering along the creek, so I decided to take Kota the dog for a walk. On my way out the door, I wanted to take a hat with a wide brim, so I reached for my old cowboy hat that hangs in the mudroom. That’s when it hit me. I’m all hat, no horse now. There’s no going back.

When I got to the clinic for the mammogram that day I checked in and exchanged my blouse and bra for a large, shapeless tunic, open to the front. A nice enough woman ushered me into the radiography room, and I assumed various uncomfortable poses. In and out quickly (always a good sign), as I left the exam room a radiographer came out of the next room and called my name.

“Teri! Remember me? I’m Melanie. We bought your gelding, Cap?” She smiled like a winsome puppy. I smiled too. We hugged.

When the Professor and I decided we were no longer willing to do outside chores (mostly in the winter), I cautiously put out the word to a few people that Cap was for sale. I wanted him to have a good home. The first guy who brought his daughters to see Cap was a no-go. He agitated Cap who sat back and broke my hand. The yahoo backed out, but I wouldn’t have sold Cap to him anyway.

But then our neighbor on the other side of the canal told someone who told someone else, and Melanie called me. Her daughter, Macy, had seen him in the pasture and loved him. Watching her with him, it was clear they were a good fit, so we sold Cap to them. They lived just over the fence on the other side of the irrigation canal that ran through our property.

The day they took him home, the entire family came to fetch him. Macy put his halter on him, and they walked him down the canal bank and home. I didn’t watch. I was sad, but not so much for him. Macy would give him a great home. I was sad to be separating him from my mare, Chula. They grazed in tandem. Wherever one went the other followed.

Chula (left) and Cap coming in from the lower pasture on our old place.

As Cap left, Chula was frantic. She watched him until he was out of sight. Her body shuddered as she hollered after him. For 3 days afterwards she called. At first, he whinnied back - she paced and stood in the far corner of the corral where she could sometimes see him grazing in his new pasture - but he stopped hollering back before she did.

A few days later when we moved off the place to a place with a yard the size of a postage stamp, I boarded Chula in a barn 5 minutes away from our new home. I planned to ride a lot in the indoor arena there but work and travel distracted me and in the last few years I had started to consider finding her a new home. The right one. Finally, with retirement and the realities of living on a fixed income looming, I knew it was time. So, I considered it more than serendipity that I ran into Melanie in the radiology lab that day. It was, I think, a God-thing.

“Yes, of course I remember you,” I said, as I admired her photos of Cap. “I’m so glad you bought him. I knew he’d be happy and well-taken care of.”

“We love him. But our other gelding, Flash, is 26 now,” she said. “He’s slowed down.”

Wouldn’t it be incredible if Cap and Chula could be reunited, I thought? When they bought Cap, Melanie said they could only handle 2 horses then, but... I saw the opening and took it.

“Would you be interested in Chula, Melanie?” I asked casually. Then when she didn’t shoot me down, I rushed, “I’ll give her to you. I’ll give you her saddle too.”

For me to relinquish my saddle, the one I had custom made in 1986 for 3-D, a horse I raised from a foal and one of my favorites, was tantamount to an admission that there will be no more rides, no more horses. But I wanted Chula to have it. I’d had it fitted to her. All her tack, brushes, the vet kit, leg wraps, and blankets too.

I have a long history with horses. My preferred fragrance is the smell of a horse’s neck. My favorite book as a child was Black Beauty. The first sentence - “I remember everything.” - slays me. My happiest grade school memory was in first grade when I galloped around the playground, a black stallion, with 24 little girls galloping, snorting, and whinnying behind me. My parents bred Thoroughbred and Quarter Horse crosses. We once had a stallion, Kabaka, named after a Ugandan king, and a nice band of 14 mares.

When the Professor and I married Dad gave me a colt, Sweetie, and I, over almost 40 years, maintained my own herd (much to the consternation of the Professor who tolerated them). They were Missy, 3-D, Sugar, Dasher, Jack, Moonflight, Ma, Norman, Palouse, Honey, Chloe (who became Biscuit after I got her), Sam (who became King after I let him go, but that’s another story), and finally, Cap and Chula.

Once I moved Chula to the barn, she’d been content, if never again as happy as she’d been with Cap. At our place, she was at the top of the pecking order. At the new barn she was on the bottom, bossed around by Zoe, a heavy-hoofed, cresty-necked white draft mare who didn’t like her or me much. So, it was easy to imagine Chula falling right back in step with Cap.

“Let me check with Macy,” Melanie said. “She’s been talking about wanting a new challenge.” Two days later she called. Could they come and try her out?

It was snowing the day Macy rode Chula in the indoor arena at the barn. The day was gray, and our hands were freezing but Macy saddled her up anyway. It took them awhile to find each other but eventually they relaxed. Chula stopped rushing. And I knew it would work. Macy did too.

I tried not to think about what selling Chula portended as the day approached, burying my head in work and writing. When I allowed myself to think about it, I only thought about how happy she and Cap would be. That I’m 67 and have only spent a half dozen of those years without a horse was nothing I’d allow myself to dwell on.

I knew that the grief bottled up inside was as much about losing my identity as it was about selling the last horse. I’ve been a horse girl my whole life. I don’t see a well-built horse without wanting it. I don’t drive across an expansive landscape without thinking of riding across it instead. My Facebook feed shows me horse after horse video: horses bucking, horses jumping, horses nuzzling little girls’ necks, little girls nuzzling horses’ necks. Who would I be without them?

As the Professor and I gathered all the tack and cleaned out the horse trailer to get Chula ready to leave, all these thoughts overwhelmed me. Who am I to be now? I could talk the talk, pretend like I was still a horse girl, but I wouldn’t be. Horses would no longer be part of me. Watching Chula go was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.

Macy led her to the trailer and after a little fuss (she kept trying to turn back to me standing behind her) she went in. I cried as I talked to her from outside the trailer she’d never ridden in before. She tracked me with a single big, brown, soft eye. I told her she was going to see Cap, that she’d be happier, and then turned away.

That night I put my horse trailer, the 3-horse gooseneck I’d always dreamed of having on Facebook Marketplace and someone snapped it up the next day, with cash. Such things don’t happen without being supposed to be. As much as it hurt, I knew it was time. I accepted it, walked forward to it, through it, and passed over to the other side.

My friend, Montana rancher and author John Moore, once wrote he prays he’ll be mercifully unaware on the day he swings down from the back of a horse for the last time. Do I remember my last ride? I don’t. I had no idea that I’d never again sink deep into the seat of the saddle that felt like home. Aware or not, John, a tough Montana cowboy, will maintain a stiff upper lip. I didn’t.

I’ve got a dozen photos from Melanie now of Chula and Cap getting reacquainted. Flash, it turned out is besotted with Chula, and Macy rides her often. She loves Chula like I do. They’ll be fine and so, eventually, will I. In the meantime, I don’t let myself think about it much. I waited a month to write this.

Instead, I have turned to face the future. The one that opened up the day Chula stepped into Macy’s trailer. The one that offered me a chance to craft a new identity. We took the money from the horse trailer and put it toward a travel trailer. I suspect my new identity will have a lot to do with that.

They say that focusing on things that bring you a feeling of awe does beneficial things in your brain so I’m cultivating awe like it was a vineyard. I’m awestruck when I travel down the road anywhere in the West. When I see vast open landscapes, purple mountains’ majesty, emerald forests, meadows of waving grass with grazing cattle, horses, and wildlife, clear mountain lakes, and rushing trout streams I feel them as much as I see them. I’m thinking of these now.

I imagine myself on a lake listening to loons. I smell hamburgers and steaks and bacon sizzling in the morning. I enjoy a first sip of coffee. I listen to a guitar and people singing over the snaps and pops of logs in a bonfire and hear children playing hide and go seek and shriek when they jump into the lake. I throw my head back at night and behold the milky way, a sparkling blanket of stars.

And yet, as I reached for my old cowboy hat today and heard the words all hat, no horse, like Black Beauty I remembered everything. The hat reminded me. I should toss it but I won’t. It’s an old buckeroo-style flat brim Palm leaf hat, cracked and stained with sweat and dust. It’s kept the sun off my face for years and has seen many, many miles with many horses. It symbolizes things I will no longer be and no longer have. I think that in time it will remind me of the vineyard.

To make room for that I had to let go of the old things, the things that defined me. Though I remember them and will as long as I breathe, I’m done with them and know that now. My new identity is taking shape and as long as I refuse to be inhabited by the past, I will have it. I will.

Carpe Diem!