May 10, 2022 by

We are having such a spring here on the steppe, I’ve never seen anything like it in this part of the country and the old timers are saying the same. The desert is luminous with green growth for the first time in forever. I’m seeing incredible lupin displays where I’ve never seen a single lupin before. It worries me for this summer and fall since all this tall grass will become fuel load that will lay as tinder until someone or something sparks it up and we’ll find ourselves contending with ripper sagebrush fires. I always have fire on my mind. It’s an old habit.

We’re working long days — 8am-5pm in the studio for me, Robbie outside running errands, fixing things, building things, moving water, tending critters, seeding hay, planting our garden. Then a run and/or horse work, then dinner, then to sleep at 10pm. Like clockwork. It’s amazing how much more I can milk out of a day with a little commitment to discipline and routine.

I’m waking up every morning right before the rooster crows. I love to beat the roosters. My bed is warm and cozy but I’m excited to begin the day, to live the day. I wake Robbie up and I tell him, “I’m so excited to live this day. I must get up!”

It’s hard to say what the best part of my day is. I’m having so much fun in my studio right now and running the steppe with the dogs has been magnificent but being on the back of a horse under this big Western sky and riding through this sagebrush sea where I can fall in love with a landscape and feel my sense of home and my sense of belonging and tether my mind and heart to gratitude for my good fortune and my ability to work hard with passion — to live here in this wide open, liberating space, to be gleaning my inspiration from a well crafted and well lived life, to be living in reciprocity with land and animals so that there is balance in my life (I take but I also give)…to be in my own mind thinking about all of that while I ride a horse through the wind in this special place…it can’t be beat. It’s the best. It’s transformational.

This is the first spring in years that I am not on contract with any companies for modeling jobs or catalogue shoots or influencer/ambassador work and it’s been great. I’ve been torn for some time now over working for these companies, lending them my name and my story to represent goods that are being manufactured overseas. It’s something I’ve struggled to reconcile with my personal values. A “Made in China” label seems like such a badge of shame to me these days for so many reasons I’m not going to get into here. I’ve been tapering off my work in this realm for years, saying no to all the projects and jobs that came my way, until finally everyone stopped asking. This spring I am totally free to do my own thing and it comes as a relief to me to immerse myself in this season, to be traveling on my own terms, to be fishing and hunting just to fish and hunt (and maybe write about it), to be pouring myself into my studio work and other creative efforts, to be using my cameras for the joy of it…to have realized that I do not need to monetize everything I do. What a great transition out of one thing and into another. I’m thankful for all the experiences I had, good and bad, while working in the outdoor industry and now I’m thankful to be out of it and focusing on simply developing my own crafts, growing and hunting my food, and having more energy to spend on my friendships, my horses, and my burgeoning interests.

Anyway, I’m just thinking aloud this morning. I mostly wanted to say howdy to you and tell you I’m thinking of you. Have an amazing day where you are. Eat great food, hug all the people you love, spend some time breathing fresh air and moving your body, smile at lotsa strangers.

https://www.thenoisyplume.com/blog/2022/05/10/16518/

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River Breaks

February 20, 2022 by

The world seems perched on the edge of spring along the Snake River. I love to ride my horses this time of year for a few reasons:

  • My horses are fat and rude and require my attention. It is extremely satisfying to watch them trim up and respond to our partnership.
  • The blend of warm sunshine and cold winds is so refreshing.
  • The sun is slowly peeling back the snow and ice and there are many fascinating treasures to find from winter kill to freshly dropped antlers. Every time I ride I uncover a mystery!

I know the country around our farm so well now, I can tell you something special about almost every nook and cranny in the river breaks, but I still ride out the hayfield gates expecting the unexpected and I’m rarely disappointed. What excellent fodder for my logic, my observation and deduction skills, my ability to hypothesize and make conclusions! It’s a wonderland for the mind out here.

Have you found or observed anything interesting on an outdoor adventure lately? I found a deceased badger yesterday and spooked a coyote off it. I’ve been badger obsessed for years and this discovery was precious to me. Look at those claws and teeth. Such fierceness.

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December 20, 2021 by

I like to spend thirty minutes of most mornings walking out to the hayfield while the sun is rising with orchard apples in my coat pockets and the dogs swirling around my tall galoshes. I present my offerings to my horses, smell their hay-sweet breath, untangle the burrs from their forelocks, and sink my cold hands into their plush winter fur. They’re very-extremely-quite-rather-busy trying to stave off the morning shivers by grazing as fast as they can so once I’m out of apples they go back to eating grass with great dedication and I stroll around the rest of the hayfield with the dogs and then head to the house for a hot cup of tea. This is a half-hour of my life I’ll never see again, but I spent it wisely so I don’t mind.

https://www.thenoisyplume.com/blog/2021/12/20/16336/

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December 14, 2021 by

I’ve spent the past year detoxing from arsenic poisoning (and a related heavy metals issue) which is something my body has been burdened with for at least the past six years that I’ve been drinking well water. I had to kind of drop out of the world at large to deal with it, shrink my energy expenditure patterns down in order to save myself. It’s taken great effort and dedication to clean myself up on a cellular level and I’m beginning to feel well.  I don’t really remember the last time in my life I felt truly well.  I’m an energetic person and after unknowingly bearing this poisonous burden for years I thought how I felt was normal, but no.  Not normal.  Not normal energy levels for me.  I actually cannot believe I’ve been able to work as hard as I’ve been working! I currently have sustainable, high energy that lasts all day long.  Steady, pure, vigorous energy. I still have more work to do but I feel good. I could talk more about this but I don’t really want to. I’m also not an expert or a doctor, please talk to your doctor about this stuff and get your well water tested if you are on a well. What I want to tell you about is what I’ve been thinking about lately.

You and I have to live inside these bodies, minds and spirits of ours — let us take great care so that our bodies, minds and spirits don’t become prisons that trap us in darkness, suffering and pain.

There are plenty of things in life that happen to me, things that are outside of my control, but there are some things in my life that I can control, utterly and completely.  I try to take control where I can, when I can, by making good choices and wise decisions so that when the out-of-control-stuff happens to me I can bear up under the weight of it with a little more physical strength and clarity of mind and a spirit that is joyful and long-suffering.

I’m just thinking aloud this morning and feeling grateful for this little body of mine as it moves deeper into recovery and healing. How amazing is that? We can heal! We can be restored. Amen! 

I was out riding a horse last night on the canyon rim, feeling profoundly wind-battered and content, and I found myself thinking about how miraculous it is that humans figured out a way to do this — to sit astride a horse and gallop beneath the sky. What was that like for the first human who ever tried it 5500 years ago? Elation, I’m sure. Nothing makes me feel closer to the earth and nearer to the sky than riding my horses. Horses are portals to deeper living. I’m not inventing the wheel here, I’m not even reinventing it…but I think I am inventing myself with the help of my horses. I’m so grateful humans figured out how to work with horses (and dogs) and I’m grateful to have the opportunity to carry the tradition forward.

https://www.thenoisyplume.com/blog/2021/12/14/16313/

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Thought Trails

June 9, 2021 by

I sit deep in my saddle and relax my hips and legs and give the horse a completely loose rein and we look out together over the soft ridges and verdant valleys to the mountains in the distance and I tell the horse, “I don’t know how to be myself anymore.”

I wish he could offer me some wisdom. He’s a horse. He is exactly himself every moment of every day. He thinks simple things. He is afraid so he runs. He is relaxed so he curls up and rests in the sunshine. He gallops. He shakes the flies from his ears. He bucks. He nibbles and bites and rips his food from the ground and chews it thoroughly. He is busy being a horse. He has no time for anything else. He is who he is. He is free to be himself.

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The edges of the trail are festooned with billowing clumps of butter yellow lupin. The air is honeyed and viscous and humming with bees. I dismount and drop down on all fours, like an animal, to better see this universe of flowers on the forest floor. Stamens and pistils, pollens and fruits.

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Late in the afternoon the horse begins to snatch at tall grass as we move up the trail. He is unsuccessful at snacking, we move at a good clip. It is unlike him to attempt to eat while working. He’s hungry. We pull off into a small meadow, I slip the bit from his mouth and he drops his head and eats. Slowly at first, and then with vigor. I smile as I realize this is the horse version of popping into a gas station — fill the tank, check the oil, clean the windows. I sit down and listen to the horse chew. His teeth on grass are percussive and rhythmic. Ancient music.

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Down in the creek bottom the wind subsides. The path of water is dry, the snowmelt a distant memory. The drainage is filled with a vague longing until a spring pours forth from the ground and we ride alongside the merry trickle and it pools in small reservoirs until the spring becomes a narrow flowing stream flanked by wildflowers, willow, elderberry, nettles, huckleberry, salmonberry — thirsty things, they. The sound of moving water is refreshing after being blasted by the cosmos at the heights of the ridges. I look at the terrain as we ride and imagine where I would make my bed if I were a deer, where I would stand and eat if I were a moose, which branch I would employ as a hunting perch if I were an owl.

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My gaze zooms in and out. I look at the remains of winter on distant peaks, I look at flowers, I look up the bending trail, I look at the aspen leaves upside down and clattering in the wind like a school of fish in the sea. I tune my eyes to movement. I blink at the sun. I wonder if the horse sees what I see and finds it beautiful. Does he like it here? I look at the horse’s ears as they twist and turn and flicker in their sockets, hot with veins and sweating slightly at their base where bridle leather presses into crimson fur. Those ears are always working, sensing and parsing. The horse has stronger senses than I. I depend on the strength of his senses when we ride together. We become a herd of two — two animals, two hearts, two sets of eyes, one mind.

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