The hill at the front of my usual Briones hike once caused me to gasp for breath. It felt near level yesterday. The road was full of horses, and I felt my left thumb ache. Ten years ago I foolishly wrapped reins around my left hand on an easy stretch of fire road in the Berkeley Hills. My ride, an Appaloosa mare, took advantage of my inattention to break into a gallop and jump a small creek. Becky’s mount was walking abreast of us and would not be denied his share of the fun. It is a pretty memory, the four of us gaining speed and leaping across the ditch like that, and so I minded the dislocated thumb a bit less and the chronic low ache makes me grin, a little.
Halfway up the hill I heard hoofbeats: Three riders, their horses running uphill and lathering. They were two chestnuts with an Appaloosa between them, and the spotted horse — an even coat of black pepper on a field of pale gray — stopped short in a spray of stones to examine me, near throwing his rider. A full Nalgene fell from the rider’s backpack. I picked it up, went to hand it to him, but the spotted boy blocked my arm with his face. He would not be denied his forehead-skritching.
“Nice horse,” I said, and the woman on the second chestnut grinned. “He’s a mustang, actually,” she said, and I skritched a bit more firmly mourning his old life in the sagebrush, before the breaking and the saddle blanket and the endless fences. And then they were off at a gallop. When I caught up with them at the top of the hill they were astonished to see me so soon, but yesterday my feet were wings.
And I got home to a letter from a monastery.
Posted by: Chris Clarke
Categories:
Hiking
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