We are slowly digging our way out of this muffling, stifling, fluffy white stuff.
We aren’t used to having a lot of snow around here (didn’t I say that a couple of years ago? Is this a thing now?). The driveway has 3 foot drifts in it, so big and long that without my brother’s PTO-driven snow-blower, would prevent me from getting to the barn to feed. Neither truck could get through it. That drift formed around the 4th of February.
It’s still there. In fact, it’s filled in twice since we dug it out over a month ago.
I could say “I’m not complaining” but really, my negativity about this so saturates my thoughts and words that even as you read my blog you’d be able to TASTE my bitterness.
The good news (I guess, for those who care about such things) is my house is clean. And mostly decluttered. Like, all of my canning jars (remind me not to buy anymore canning jars) are all rounded up and sorted and…
Ugh.
I barely made it home on the 4th of February — I’d spent the weekend on the “West Side” just south of Seattle for a Foxhunting event.
Oh man. Foxhunting has been on my bucket list for years now. Things just never aligned for me to be able to go (even though Foxhunting is actually busiest during our off-season, so yay!). But this year, it was perfect.
I took Axel, who loves to jump and is a very brave (and stubborn) horse. Besides, I need to ride him more, and give him more experiences. He’ll be a better horse for it.
We were one of the only ones who showed up in Western gear, advised by the huntmaster to just ride what we know and not try to switch it up to fit in.
So there we were, both of us shaggy and very much looking like we’d just drifted in from a dusty trail drive. Axel registered his dissatisfaction with the city life by refusing to go in his stall. Talk about taking a country mouse to the big city. You’ll never beat him in a tug-o-war, so I puttered away at getting him into his stall until he finished making his convincing case against such confinement and stepped in.
He’s a funny guy, he really goes from black to white pretty quickly. Once he makes a choice, you’ll be hard pressed to convince him of any other option. You definitely won’t bully or scare him into or out of anything. It’s great once you get him on the same page as you, but when he’s not on the same page as you, there is only one thing that’ll change his mind: patience.
That isn’t my strong suit.
He survived his first night of domestication just fine, you’ll be glad to know. And I (barely) survived the arduous mental exercise of being patient.
Nothing about the first day (an introductory day) could be classified as “typical” for us. The footing, the forest, the rain, the puddles, the thundering hooves of other horses crashing through the woods around us as we all charged along. Axel felt pretty tightly wound beneath me, excited by the horse activity.
He loved it. LOVED it. We took some jumps, having no options in a couple of places, but for the most part I opted for the most conservative lines. Axel preferred to be unfettered by safety or vanity, launching himself into or over anything between him and the trail.
The second day we rode much more conservatively as there were more people and more horses. The second day there were hounds, also. Axel begrudgingly complied with my choices. I really enjoyed riding him. Happy, eager horses — even if they disagree with the pace you’ve chosen — just feel different to ride. Somehow springy and tight, but soft and pliant at the same time.
It started snowing at the end of the hunt. I tucked Axel into his stall and went to my hotel room. Let me just say, I made the grave mistake of booking the cheapest hotel I could find.
Never do that in a heavily populated area. This looked like something from a CSI crime-scene involving drugs and murder. I was actually scared when I checked in, and texted Jeff that if I survived the hotel stay, it’d be worth it in the money I saved.
Never tell your husband that.
I awoke on the 4th to three inches of wet, icy, maritime snow. Seattle was closed until further notice, and police and news reporters begged people to stay put. I plotted and planned — could I wait it out, or should I get out ASAP?
I loaded up Axel and headed South on I-5. Traffic was bumper-to-bumper and moving at 5 miles per hour. We white-knuckled it like that for a few miles before the traffic thinned out, as did the snow. The trip — normally a 4 hour trip, took 6 hours. Ironically, the best roads were on the mountain passes as I guess we must’ve been between storms up there — the first wave had passed and been cleaned up, and the second wave was nipping at our heels. I caught up with the first storm by the time I got to Yakima, and it was an icy and slow slog the rest of the way home.
Axel and I both let out a little happy sigh of relief when we made it home.
Turns out that if I’d waited it out, I probably would’ve been there another 3 or 4 days — not a possibility for us.
The next storm was one of the worst we’ve ever had out here. 60 mhp winds and snow for 48 hours. Snow drifts closed the roads all around us — not just “closed because it looks bad” but “closed because it is literally impassible”. Like, they didn’t have to put signs out. THAT kind of closed. People were buried in their cars for hours, there were pile-ups and wrecks.
The horses handled it really well, even with the wind-chill. I checked them frequently throughout the first night. A couple of times they huddled up, but for the most part they just ate hay (which is a big source of their heat — the horse’s digestive system has a section in it just for fermenting food, generating heat.)
Since then, we’ve just been in a holding pattern of clearing the driveway and feed paths and getting feed to the critters.
I wear snow shoes to feed. That’s a new and unwelcome development.
For about a week we had a Great Blue Heron hunting ground squirrels and mice here. He entertained us for hours, even the horses enjoyed watching him. Say what you want about reptiles, but I think birds are the last remaining evidence of dinosaurs and I find them a little terrifying. You can see him on our FB or Instagram pages.
Today it’s supposed to get up into the 40s. Dash is scheduled for filming in a movie (he’s such a star!) and I’m hoping I can get the horse-trailer dug out.
Time to slap on the snow-shoes and get the ducks and chickens fed and watered.
