At the Grapevine Ranch
Grapevine Ranch
Steve and I flew out to Tucson and rode horses for two days at the Grapevine ranch. The first intimation of the reality of it all is when you take a right turn off an almost unused, nicely paved, two-lane road onto “unimproved dirt roads”. The second is when previously unseen pick up trucks emerge from the short grass, pass you doing sixty and lay down a quarter inch of velvety dust over everything while heading for an unseen destination somewhere over the horizon. The dust blew off the windshiled. I blew the dust off the back window, easily.
We were at about the 5,000-foot level with the flora and fauna distinctive of that level in Arizona. After a while you begin to see multiple shades of tan and brown and come to appreciate the rolling wave-like ridges of short grass. And then surprisingly there are the trees, bushes, cacti, ocotillo and yucca of various hues of green and even purple. This isn’t the desert.
The open land stretches to the horizon and beyond. I felt like I could breathe again.
You can see forever. Mexico is on the horizon (and slipping over the ridges, creeping down the swales and sliding through the brush). Later, riding the empty ridges you are suddenly surprised to see a U.S. border patrol van sweep up an unseen dirt road, laying miles of dust behind it.
We were, by the way, just a few miles from Cochise’s mountain hide away. It may have to be renamed.
We got in late to the first supper and as we came in they all turned and looked at us and didn’t speak. We got our food and sat down in the silence. The next day one of the women said they all thought we were standoffish and frowny. So after I got to know them and we were accepted as sort of merry jokers, as one said, “so different from our first night when we were standoffish and glum” I told the chief reporter of our glumness that when we came in no one spoke to us and she had just sat there “all arrogant and snooty”. Then I looked at her, dead pan till she got it and laughed. It took some work to live down those first moments. We were more than up to it.
I kind of liked the way they arranged a mounting platform at the corral where you more or less step directly into the stirrup, rather than as in our one “lesson” before we got to the ranch where we were put on a dray horse mix with the stirrup at chest level. That was a challenge. I hadn’t known the old legs were capable of that. Of course once we got five miles from the “mounting platform” and got down we did have to step up to the stirrup to get back on the horse. Still, nothing like that more than head high first horse, old Falcon. Chief was infinitely shorter and much preferable. But having evaluated my riding ability, (i.e. wont fall off but…) I think the wrangler thought Chief was my level. He is probably listed on the roles of the ranch as a workman-like horse likely to get you there and back again and not much more. I wouldn’t have settled for less.
We elected to go for the seven-hour ride the first day and the three-hour one the second, because of some sort of convoluted reasoning brought on by jet lag or lack of common sense. On the other hand, astonishingly, there was no immobilizing stiffness. I figured that at the end of the first ride they might have to hoist me from the horse and tilt me back and forth to get me to the cabin. Nope. There was just a sense of euphoria at the beauty we had ridden through, the feel of the breeze on the skin, the sound of the clopping hoofs and smell of the “crushed (bruised) vegetation”. I felt like I had been rocked in a rocking chair through six hours of serenity.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/oldprof/
Back home to “Adobe Cabin” (which was laid up with fired brick unless adobe becomes ceramic in fifty years) I put on a swimsuit and found the pool. It’s a little blue gem, hidden behind a palisade of greenery. Perfect. Swam and floated for an hour or so and hit the Hot Tub. Incredibly, no one else seemed to know all this was there. Let’s not tell.
There were no children splashing and yelling because no children younger than 12 are accepted. There were no adults at the pool either. That is harder to explain but no less pleasurable. It was kind of like the “free way” would feel if no one but you drove it. Or… perhaps not. The beautifully maintained, totally unused, two-lane road we drove most of the way in on was marked every so often with official state signs “in memory of”… various single and multiple fatalities. I guess things can be too good and one can lose ones sense of caution. I would have thought that on that pretty straight and wide- open road it would be impossible to get hurt, but later on a different though similar road we did see the results of one accident, probably just after it happened, where the car had left the highway and more or less torn itself to pieces hurtling over humps and gullies at what must have been a tremendous rate of speed. It was more round than anything and totally without windows or doors. I suppose that as much as speed, monotony kills. Well, no danger of that lately. I may live forever.