Loose Feet

The Indian summer turned cold and we got battered by a storm system bringing some snow to the northern part of the state. Plenty of thunder and lightning. Enough rain to stay on the ground for a while and make for some morning mist. Took a walk with a neighbor and our dogs and crawled through the locked gate at the end of the lane. I'm weary of fences and gates. We are locking our gate to the access road because of a spate of burglaries on our side of the river. There's rumors of known theives and meth labs. None of which surprises me, since you.probably can't go anywhere in rural American without finding the same thing. Where there's a need...fill it. It's business in depressed rural economies and here it gets the southwestern tang of the nearby Mexican border and the confluence of so many "agencies" and coyotes.

My beef comes on the hoof. Ranchers don't care for people to come wandering along their property uninvited. Which is understandable since trespassers aren't always benign in their wanderings and cattle have been known to disappear. It's something of an irony to live in a place so rich in the possibilities for exploration and have those opportunities denied behind the ubiquitous lines of "bob wahr". Barb wire is fine for cattle, bad for horses. It's probably a necessity, but I can't help but think that the person who came up with the idea wasn't just a little mean spirited. I'll need to get permission to hike up to some caliche outcroppings or else face a shotgun. Or so the stories go. An outing on horseback means hitching up the trailer and heading north for half hour or 45 minutes or riding a few short local roads. I have a hankering to go south, up toward San Lorenzo in the foothills that back up into the Black Range. I've looked at these hills through four seasons over three years. I've photographed and painted them and I've not yet been able to look west to where we live from them. They've become something of a yearning.