Well, from what I have heard, the Dunbar Memorial dedication was a not-to-be-missed event, and I missed it.
We were traveling, heading out West to see the Boy. Part of it was like a trip down memory lane. There were miles of ‘do you remember when…’ or ‘one time, when I was riding Timberline…’ We talked about scrapes we had gotten into through our own fault, and gotten out of because of a good horse – or a tough horse. A particular favorite is the tale of the Stranger bursting through a tangle of underbrush and downed timber to locate the bull in the center who was thrashing about, snorting, making all the noises a bull makes when he is angry, only to find the ‘bull’ was instead a cow moose that had just given birth. There are few animals as disagreeable as a moose in the wild, anyway, and this cow was amped up on hormones and pain.
Luckily, Timberline, a tall, rangy paint horse with a disposition akin to the moose’s on his best day, took stock of the situation as he soared over a dead tree into the clearing where the moose and baby were, and never slowed down, taking a single step at full speed, then leapt over more dead trees on the way out. It must have been like something out of an Olympic jumping competition, only without the audience.
We remembered other times, rides, horses, people, some dead and gone a long time.
But this was more than that. This was a farewell tour. We knew, deep inside, that it was unlikely the Stranger will ever pass that way again. It was a long deep goodbye to the high country, a place can seep deep into your soul, grab it around the heart and refuse to let go. You can go to other regions, live there, love them for themselves. But certain people become citizens of the high country and like all true citizens never identify as anything else. Take the man out of the high country but never the high, wide lonesome land out of the man.
While there, we traded vehicles, replacing the one-ton diesel flatbed with a cute, extended cab six cylinder. Good on gas, comfortable, unable to pull the hat off your head. It was a tactical surrender, an admission we will never again haul a gooseneck trailer cross country so packed with horses that their hair is poking out the sides. It was an admission that our part of our life is over.
We saw the Boy, eating supper in a crowded, noisy spot in Cody, Wyoming. It was an all too brief visit, and somehow the connection I as his mother wanted was illusive. Not enough, not close, just cordial.
He is busy, has friends, work, life. Only through pleading and insistence did he concede he would meet me the next morning for coffee.
That was better, deeper, what a mom needed. But as I watched him stroll away with his long, easy gait did I understand why I had missed the connection the night before.
I was trying to connect with the Boy. He is gone, living in memory. This is a man, an adult, full grown.
It might have been a loving goodbye to the high country, but it was also a glimpse of a new citizen, a bittersweet glimpse, but reassurance that we had done our job as parents, and put ourselves out of business.