Accident Scene
Something clicked when we reached the intersection of Hwys 63 & 77 in Hayward. I told Cyndie I felt a moment of post-traumatic stress at the sight of the interchange as it triggered a memory of driving through it toward the emergency room at Hayward Hospital.
I went through that intersection twice more that night, on the way to and from the pharmacy in Walmart where I also needed to find wide-leg sweatpants for Cyndie to put on before leaving the hospital. I found a mauve-colored, elastic waist velvet number that Cyndie is prone to describing as “hideous” but she always follows that with the clarification that she loves them and they became her favorite pant during those weeks of recovery.
I asked Cyndie if she wanted to revisit the scene of her accident last November at the footbridge over the lagoon.
Without hesitation, her response was an emphatic “NO!”
Beyond the fact she didn’t want to get that close to the memory right now, the amount of snow and her hobbled condition make that walk ill-advised. From the comfort of the cabin, I took a photo in the general direction of that bridge.
I didn’t feel like walking out there, either.
In fact, we are watching the start of the American Birkebeiner while snugged on the couch.
We will be heading out to see Ella Williams ski her second Birkie after her wave crosses the start line. Trying to pick her out of the online streamed view of the thousand skiers staging for their wave is our first thrill of the day.
Soon we will don our winter wear and venture out to a convenient crossing at 00 (doublel-oh) to cheer her on in person. Then we will drive to town to watch the finish.
It will be an interesting test of how much walking Cyndie’s ankle will tolerate outdoors in the cold.
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Accurate Forecast
The winter storm proved to be just like the weather service predicted, dumping snow in two waves and totaling somewhere in the range of 15-20 inches at our place. It’s hard to measure with the wind creating a variety of depths across our land. I took a walk with my yardstick and found a drift of over 20 inches in one spot.
I make a habit of cleaning off the lid of our food compost bin every time I walk past it so I can use it as a reference of how much new snow falls since the last time I cleaned it. Yesterday morning, there were spots where the dark cover had no snow on it at all yet the ground beside it was covered by 16 inches of powder.
I found a spot in the yard with only 3 inches but the driveway, which I plowed in the middle of the pause between the two waves, had gained 9 inches of new snow overnight.
Based on the frame of our roof rake, I was wrestling to bring down over 18 inches of new snow on the roof of our house. Much of that ended up hitting me in the face as I worked.
The snow was over knee-deep as I made my way toward the barn to feed horses first thing in the morning.
Mia had a new cut on one of her hind legs. It looked like one of the other horses probably kicked her. Cyndie rallied to gingerly make her way down to tend to the wound while I held Mia in place. I took a picture of Mia that ended up looking like she was standing on two legs.
That’s a weird view, isn’t it? If you don’t think about it, she looks normal but once you let your mind see it as only two legs, it gets hard to unsee.
I also took a picture of a rare moment when all four horses decided it was okay to stand together under one side of the overhang. Most often one or more of the horses will demand a wider bubble of personal space and chase others away.
Today we plan to drive up to Hayward to spend the weekend with friends at the cabin and take in the excitement of the American Birkebeiner ski race. I’m hoping the weather will be as perfect over the next two days as the meteorologists are predicting. Before we head out, I just need to finish a little more plowing and shoveling.
After that, I’m actually looking forward to just sitting in a car for two and a half hours. My muscles deserve a rest.
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Forgotten
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coming in for a landing
in a dream
of a dream
with a receipt
that had notes
scribbled around the margin
layer upon layer
of life
float past
a drone’s eye view
great things spread out below
destined to fade to dark
slowly, though
seconds pass between each drip
leaking a history of memories
long forgotten
particularly the ones
that could have explained
everything
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We Voted
**Firstly, I apologize to anyone who tried to follow my link to the James Lilek column at the StarTribune site yesterday and got blocked by a paywall. I was under the naive impression that a minimum page view was available before the subscription requirement would be triggered.**
Now, on to today’s post…
I do not profess to be politically active beyond making reasonable attempts to vote in November every two years. Yesterday was the first time I ever voted on a day in February. How and why did that happen?
I credit the site vote.org for emailing to alert me of a spring primary election for the Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice “in what’s turned into an expensive and high-stakes battle for control of the state Supreme Court in a key political battleground where power is divided between a Democratic governor and a Republican-controlled legislature.” (https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/21/politics/wisconsin-supreme-court-election/index.html)
There are mentions of the outcome of the Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice election potentially rippling all the way to having an influence on the 2024 Presidential election. That comes across as being a little overly dramatic to me but if my participation yesterday does anything to help offset extremist views and potential outcomes then the short drive to our town hall before the snow started to fly was a small cost of contribution.
I’d be even more thrilled if anything I could do would magically change Putin in Russia into a peaceful leader who immediately ended his wars of aggression. If that happened, I’d immediately seek to turn that magic power toward every corporation and their boards of directors to instantly change every greedy decision that was contributing to cooking the planet into oblivion. Really.
Our votes yesterday were to narrow the selection down to two candidates for the general election in April for a seat on the court. It’s pretty special to be able to participate in our democracy. Now I am returning my attention to our life on the land where our focus is to give four horses a happy home and be good stewards of the fields and trees.
Weather has a way of dominating our activities, especially weather in the extremes, like blizzards that threaten to reach historic proportions.
Guess who will be plowing and shoveling our driveway and walkways for a couple of days in a row?
I vote that we receive the lower end of the snow depth range predicted. Seriously, that would be more than enough for anyone’s favorite winter snow sport. Can we vote more than once?
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Reading Lileks
“It’s not that everything has sugar. It’s that everything has added sugar. That’s the line on the label that gives the game away. The sauce for that frozen chicken entree? Added sugar, 10g. The frozen pancakes? Added sugar, 6g. You buy some oil for the door hinge, and the label says “Added sugar.” There’s probably added sugar applied to public doorknobs so you absorb it topically.”
Yesterday’s StarTribune column by James Lileks resonated so resoundingly for me that I’m going to point you to it today. It reads similar to the kind of silliness you might find in one of my creative posts. See how much of me you recognize in his column about his low sugar/low carb diet…
Click the image above to read his column, “Buttering up our lust for bread.”
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Snow Expected
They tell us to expect fresh snow this week after a prolonged span of February days without frozen precipitation piling up. I have been enjoying the freedom from needing to plow and shovel, but I get a sense that I haven’t enjoyed it as much as I should. Now that this freedom is coming to an end, it feels like I have taken the pause for granted.
I’ve always felt a fondness for the look of one thing fading into another. Especially, gradual gradients. Yesterday, I took pictures of the old snow where it was melting back to reveal the ground below.
It has a bit of a yin and yang feeling to it.
I’m also fascinated by the way leaves melt into the snow.
Looks like there was a fish beside it. Notice the hint of a yin and yang curve in those two, as well.
If the forecast is correct, it will all be covered in white again before the week is over. The cosmic duality of opposing forces of winter precipitation covering the dark earth.
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Injury Assessment
During one period of my career, I volunteered to be a medical first responder to incidents that might occur in the workplace. The company paid for my training to become a certified first responder. One of my motivations for learning advanced first-aid skills was having two young children I was responsible for at home. They would invite friends over for all manner of child’s play which increased the pressure of responsibility I felt, as it also increased the opportunities for someone to get hurt.
If a freak accident were to occur, say something poked in an eye, I learned not to pull it out and some ways to protect the area. Thank goodness I never needed to respond to anything that serious, in terms of injury. Knowing what to do helped ease some of my anxiety over being responsible for someone else’s well-being.
In the workplace, I had the support of many other responders to share the decision-making process when situations arose and I relied on them heavily. In one case where I was the main person tending to an ankle injury at the racquetball courts, I misread the woman’s level of distress and assumed a sprain. After seeing her doctor, she reported there was a broken bone.
I’ve never trusted my interpretation of other people’s symptoms since. It gets even harder when the patient can’t talk because they are a horse. Mia’s behavior tells me she isn’t hurting too badly but she has an ugly-looking abrasion on the back of one of her front feet. My first suspicion was that she scraped it on the icy crust of the snow in the paddocks.
I saw her out beyond the wicked polished ice trying to navigate the deeper snow with Light. In that case, she was limping and favoring it. Once she got back under the overhang, it didn’t look like it bothered her much at all. Our support from This Old Horse stopped by last night to look at it, clean it, and spray on a protective shield, similar to the NewSkin I apply to my hands.
Mia, the most skittish of the four horses, went a little crazy at the sound of the spray can with the metal ball inside. She headed down the hay path toward the waterer and then just kept on going over the slippery ice, through the gate, and out into the hay field. As I was walking down with a lead rope to retrieve her, she headed back toward me, at a full sprint!
Mia stopped right where I was standing. I clipped on the lead, and we walked up under the overhang where Mia stood perfectly while Johanne lifted her hoof to treat the wound.
The wound looks just as fresh and angry this morning as it did yesterday. I am not confident about assessing how serious it could be. Thankfully, Johanne volunteered to return to check on it at noon.
I still don’t like being responsible for someone else’s well-being.
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Horse Smart
This coming April will mark two years since the four retired/rescued Thoroughbred brood mares from This Old Horse arrived at Wintervale. How well have I described the horses in my posts over the years they’ve been with us? Test your knowledge with the following 8 questions (Answer key at the bottom of this post):
- Which horse is able to move Swings off her food?
A) Mix
B) Light
C) Mia
D) All the above
E) None of the above
2. Which horse puts her nostril up to my face to breathe my scent almost every time we meet?
A) Swings
B) Mix
C) Light
D) Mia
E) All the above
F) None of the above
3. Which horse is the most skittish?
A) Swings
B) Mix
C) Light
D) Mia
E) All the above
F) None of the above
4. Which horse always stays dry under the overhang when it rains or snows?
A) Swings
B) Mix
C) Light
D) Mia
E) All the above
F) None of the above
5. When we separate the horses into two pairs, what is the most common arrangement?
A) Swings/Mix; Light/Mia
B) Mix/Mia; Swings/Light
C) Light/Mix; Swings/Mia
D) All the above
E) We never separate the horses
6. Which horse is the slowest at finishing all the feed in her pan?
A) Swings
B) Mix
C) Light
D) Mia
E) All the above
F) None of the above
7. Which two horses are currently supposed to receive an extra serving of feed at noon?
A) Swings and Mix
B) Light and Mia
C) Mix and Mia
D) Swings and Light
E) Non of the above
8. Which horse is the least likely to stand patiently for the farrier to get a complete trim of all four hooves?
A) Swings
B) Mix
C) Light
D) Mia
E) All the above
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Last night I struggled over choosing to close gates to minimize shenanigans again because it is still dangerously slippery on the slopes beyond the overhang but in the end left things open for them to move between paddocks. I’ve been watching them often enough to recognize the posturing that looks a lot like bullying tends to fade after a few spats and all four settle into a zen-like chill. My trust that it stays that way after I’m gone is about 50/50.
I witnessed Light using one of the hay-paths I created to get down to the waterer, although, once she got down there she just turned around without drinking and came right back up. At least it proves they are able to take advantage of it if they choose.
Do you feel like you have a sense of the four horse personalities?
If you scored less than 50%, I should do a better job of describing each member of the herd. Just because I know all the answers to this test doesn’t mean I can leave out these details about the four equine stars of our show.
Test answer key: 1)B 2)B 3)D 4)A 5)A 6)B 7)C 8)C
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Disastrous Footing
One of the things that make rain in February so awful is the aftermath. Any snow that has been packed down by driving, walking, or horse activity turns into a wobbly polished surface of slippery ice. It’s about the worst possible situation for the horses to move around on, especially on slopes like the ones in our paddocks.
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Yesterday morning, while I was doing my best to provide a way for the horses to cope with the slippery conditions, Mia made the mistake of trying to make her way downhill. It was a decision she couldn’t go back on once she made the first move. I was a bit traumatized to be witnessing such a precarious maneuver by a 1200-pound hooved beast. She slipped and stutter-stepped her way down the slope, ultimately avoiding the worst outcome and coming to a stop while still on her feet.
The frantic trip down the icy surface appeared to make it obvious to Mia that she wasn’t going to be able to move around on the ice even though she’d made it to that spot. She seemed to realize her only option was to get back up where she’d come from. After just a few seconds of hesitation, she began moving her hooves to head back up but there was more slipping than stepping happening.
She knew momentum was needed and bobbed her head and flexed enough muscle to attack the incline with some semblance of a run. Somehow, that slipping run was successful and she arrived back to the muddy surface around the overhang.
I was working on covering a pathway with old hay to provide footing to get down to the waterer.
I’d already set out buckets of water under the overhang because it was so treacherous for them to reach the waterer but offering the potential route down felt better than doing nothing at all.
I have no idea how long the icy condition will persist.
In the image above you can see the icy area is darker than the white snow in the distance. I may attempt to rake some sand and/or spread more old hay around on the slope to give the horses options for moving around. The scariest risk comes when one of the horses feels a need to get bossy and the target of their aggression panics in her hasty attempt to escape. If all four horses are confined to the limited space by the overhang, things can get a little testy.
Last night I closed gates to split them into two groups of two to minimize their bickering.
There is no place for shenanigans when the footing gets this disastrous.
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Relative Something 