G&C Summer 2017
Blogpost 007
June 22nd
Although I’ve admitted once before
in writing (and to myself multiple times in the mirror) I’m not really writing
these journal entries for any real readers save for my fiancé and our respected
families I can’t help but feel as if I’m being too repetitive. I know that
these entries are predominantly writing exercises (with which to hone in the
skills and patience necessary to complete that damn book I’ve been working on
since November) but I still feel like I’m being unfair in focusing the majority
of my documentation on horseback riding for variety’s sake. Not that the
activity itself is boring to experience (as I have grown rather fond of it) but
I fear that it could come across as somewhat tiresome for a reader (whomever
you weirdoes might be) to hear of nothing other than horsy-rides in detail. So
I’ll do my best to talk of other actives we engaged in this Thursday apart of
ridding details. With that said, we still had an amazing ride out on the range,
atop our ponies, but we also got to play with dead things and emulated pagan
cultists!
Bet
that got your attention! To clarify, we only played with bones, more
specifically, elk bones, and even more specifically, the skeletons of many elk
and maybe some other fauna like pronghorn. Though before Charlotte, Jim, and I
had discovered out deceased lunchtime toys we started our journey for the day;
an “all-day” ride through the Grand Teton National Forest, called the “pothole”
ride.
The
R lazy S ranch offers “all-day” rides for guests twice a week. During which,
you and your horse are dropped off somewhere far away from the ranch (which
usually involves a car-ride hitched to a horse trailer where you can feel the
horses kicking on the road which is only slightly terrifying), ride all
morning, have a picnic lunch, and ride back with just enough time for a nap
before dinner. We went on one of these last year to the abandoned Bar BC ranch
in the middle of Wyoming wilderness. While the ride last year was beautiful and
great fun, the ride we had today was, in my opinion, far superior.
There
were two wranglers accompanying us; my fiancé, Jim, Lisa, Charlotte’s parents,
a friend of Charlotte’s mother (Jean-Marie), and I. Within the first thirty
seconds I could tell that this multi-hour walking ride was going to be a
winner. All it took was a few steps from the road and we were surrounded by a
beautiful variety of trees strewn across the grounds that gave the park a sense
of eternity. It felt as though this patch of earth had remained uncultivated by
civilization forever and would forever go uncultivated (hopefully). The trees
(both alive and dead) made for fun obstacles to maneuver our horses through and
over. I guess that brief stint in the tag-field paid off as I remained saddled for
the entirety of the journey, though the same could not be said for everyone in
our party (but we’ll get to that later).
Our
destination was really non-existent as we had free-range of the entire park and
could go wherever we pleased. Charlotte’s parent’s expressed interest in
checking out the “pot-holes,” which I’d never heard about and truly couldn’t
comprehend what to expect. Not even my fiancé knew what we were looking for
despite her extensive knowledge of most natural parks (for she is a proud USA
national park-pass holder which has gotten us and many friends into numerous
parks for virtually nothing). We were told that, “we’d know them when we saw
them,” and after trudging up and down hills and valleys with the snowcapped
peaks of the Grand Teton mountains always in view we finally came across the
first of many “potholes,” to be found.
The
potholes were another name for large-ponds, or extra-small lakes scattered
about the rolling planes of the park, always at the bottom of enormous natural
cereal-bowl embedded in the earth. The potholes were formed when glaciers
dominated the area. The large divots in the earth would fill with ice and
remain there for years as the glaciers past over them. Eventually, the ice
would melt, leaving a pool of cool water for wildlife to flock to. This ride
that we went on, use to be called the “wildlife” ride because of all the
buffalo, elk, moose and sometimes even bears that would predictably come to the
ponds for water. Eventually the ranch had to change the name, this was because with
global climate change, water in these parts was becoming less common, and so
was the wildlife. We were lucky. The national forest had record-breaking amounts
of snow this year that led to the revival of these oases. Words cannot do them
justice but they certainly stood out as something beautiful and strange. They
reminded me of my favorite chapter in Clive Barker’s, The Great and Secret
Show, where a group of teenage girls stumble upon a mysterious lake outside
their hometown, go swimming, and meet a horrifying fate at the otherworldly
creatures dwelling just below the surface. It was unlikely that anything other
than bullfrogs lived in these natural pools of murky water but that kind of
thinking isn’t nearly as fun as the macabre power of imagination.
We
settled for lunch in a small bunch of trees (the valley was littered with them
every half-mile or so), to give us, and the horses some shade while stuffing
our faces. These trees provided us and surrounding wildlife a much needed
refuge from the open plains if intense sun. Immediately we found the
bleached-white remains of something that’d been dragged down here for supper,
or maybe an elderly elk that went to it’s final resting place. We’d seen
various bones, antlers, and a skull since we started our ride but in this
hovel-arboretum was downright wealthy in skeletal remains! The rancher’s
informed us that predatory animals often take their prey to secluded places
such as this to feast and so after lunch Jim, Charlotte, Lisa, and I decided to
gather up all the bones we could to create something artistic and creepy for
the next poor suckers to come this way.
Charlotte
and Jim found vertebrae and femurs a-plenty with some spinal column still
attached and some with meat still attached. Lisa found the near-perfect skull
of an elk to go along with the two lower-jawbones we found (still packed with
teeth). After a quick sorting of the bones I decided to take a page out of Tobe
Hooper’s 1974 cult classic film, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and
arranged the remains to resemble something crafty and macabre.
The
skull was propped up against a miscellaneous knuckle with its two lower-jaws
shoved into the holes where the antlers would’ve been. A scapula was buried
behind the skull’s base with a single vertebra resting on top like a crown to
give the head an inverted haloed-Jesus look often found in renaissance
paintings. The vertebrae were arranged in a line leading down from the skull
and the femurs were placed around the makeshift spin in a ritualistic circle,
which made the calcified collage resemble a necromantic eye. The remaining
bones were set in symmetrical patterns to give the display an even more cryptic
appearance.
The
activity did not take long but we were nevertheless satisfied with our handiwork.
As we saddled up and exited the wooded grotto we laughed amongst ourselves at
the thought of some other group of riders or backpackers that’d stumble upon
our weird arrangement and the ghoulish thoughts to creep into their minds as
they wondered who made it and why. The actual likelihood of anybody actually
coming across that freaky pile of elk-bones even in the next ten years is
minimal but it was still fun to play demented oculist and who knows? If a storm
comes over the valley and a lightening book strikes the circle, we may get
lucky and accidentally summon a demon. Told Ya’ this one would be different,
didn’t I?
With
our “art” project complete we set off on the semi-long journey back which
involved more riding through more valleys and hills that took us to yet more
potholes and micro-forests. We were surprised by just how elusive these
watering holes could be as they’d just appear before our eyes seemingly out of
nowhere and with such variety from one another: one pothole would be mud-brown
and still as a corpse while another would be piercing blue and choppy and
another would be dark amber with dragonflies buzzing about.
As
we continued our trek Charlotte’s mother’s friend’s horse (Jo) decided to steer
himself away from the rest of the herd, aiming for a lone tree among an
otherwise flat patch of Wyoming prairie. Both Charlotte and her mother called
out, “WATCH OUT FOR THE TREE! WATCH OUT FOR THE TREE!” Which roused our attention
just in time to watch Jean-Marie collide with a low-hanging branch that scooped
her off her saddle and onto the earthen floor behind her proud, mischievous
mount. Everyone watched the event unfold in slow motion as it all took place
with a very slow walk. Fortunately Jean-Marie was fine and laughing. After she
was mounted again, Sally insists that Jo (the horse) deliberately chose the
tree from about a hundred yards away, and scraped her off. Supposedly, this is something
horses do on occasion. And considering that this was the only tree within a
half-mile radius plus the fact that the horse continued to proudly walk off
free from his rider, I’d say Sally was most likely correct. And after a quick
re-mounting we resumed our ride back to civilization (in the form of a small
unmarked parking lot) after a brief moment of getting turned around and having
to backtrack through unmarked forest and hill drops too steep for our horses to
clamber down. Eventually we made it back in one piece with our horses utterly
spent and grateful for their work to be over.
We
spent the remaining hours of the night maxin’ and relaxin’ with beer, shrimp
chips, and obscure Internet videos, which was consumed with great enthusiasm. Tomorrow
will be another equine-centric day and though I doubt we’ll find any more dead
things amuse ourselves with, I’ve no doubt we’ll enjoy ourselves
immensely.
No comments:
Post a Comment