Slipping on the Meadow

by Jon Remmerde

We cut and baled the hay from the ranch we took care of in the Blue Mountains of northeastern Oregon. Classes at the kitchen table, the formal part of our home schooling, wound down for the year.

Our daughters’ education went on, as it has done since their births. All of living is education, and Juniper and Amanda managed their education well, with early and never ending reading and with many adventures with life every day that added to their knowledge and to Laura’s and my knowledge as their teachers, as participants in all of life around us.

A contractor hauled the hay down the graveled river road to the owner's home ranch and left the meadow clear except for stubble and the long grass along ditches and close to the river, where we couldn't cut with the swathers.

Terry, a golden Belgian gelding, two years old, boarded with us while his owners went to Arizona. Jim, my partner in wood cutting and friend of my family, trained and exercised Terry.

Jim's worked with horses all his life. He says they had to run his horse into a blind chute and peel him off the horse's back to change his diaper.

Jim and I built a slip of boards that put a smooth wooden surface 12 by 3 feet on the grass. We put two bales of hay across the slip, to sit on.

I ran to the house while Jim circled Terry slowly on the smooth, mowed ground north of the barn. I said, “Come on everybody. We have something really fun going on out by the barn. Hurry. Terry and Jim are waiting for us.”

Laura, Juniper, and Amanda ran with me to the meadow, and we rode on the slip behind the big, golden horse until dark. Riding on the slip on the meadow became part of our days. Late afternoons or evenings, when the day's ranch work and wood cutting were done, we toured the cooling meadow, with Terry harnessed and hooked to the chain on the front of the slip. We took our jackets. Warm evenings in Whitney Valley are nothing more than a rumor, even in the hot days of summer. Sometimes Terry broke into a gallop. Jim was working to teach him not to do that unless he was told to, but slip rides at a gallop were exciting. We had the whole wide meadow to tire Terry out and to get him to slow down, so there was never any danger.

Sometimes Laura stayed at the house and did needed work there or studied in preparation for the next day’s classes. Sometimes one or two other friends came out and joined our explorations.

The grass stubble, grass roots, and soft dirt absorbed most of the sound of Terry's hooves as he trotted across the meadow, and the slip he pulled behind him glided over the shorn meadow as quietly as whispering.

We start putting one of the girls up on Terry while everybody else slipped behind. Amanda rode Terry when he broke into a gallop. Amanda slipped to one side of the big, galloping horse. I stepped forward, ready to jump off to try to knock her out of the way of the slip if she fell, but she grabbed hold of the harness, pulled herself up to a firmer seat, and held on.

Jim brought Terry down to a trot, then to a walk, then stopped him. I walked up and lifted Amanda down. I asked her, “Were you afraid?”

She spoke from the middle of a glow that lit her up like sunshine. “No. That was really fun. That's even more fun than riding on the slip. Let's do it again. I want to ride some more. Now that I know what to hold onto, I’ll never fall off.”

If we were quiet on the slip and if breezes didn’t carry human scents to them, wild animals reacted to us without fear, as they would to a horse alone on the meadow. They didn’t flee as they would from humans on foot or in machines. Juniper, Amanda, Jim, and I slipped up the meadow toward the west boundary, accompanied by the soft thuds of Terry’s hooves and the whisper of the slip. The shadows of the western ridges reached far out onto the meadow.

Twenty-four elk browsed their leisurely way across the meadow, our side of the western boundary fence. We sat still on the hay bales, except for Jim's small motions with the reins to direct Terry to pass close to the elk. Ten females with young, three yearling bulls, and one older bull with widespread antlers looked up and watched us pass. Then they continued browsing toward the timbered ridge that rose from the edge of the meadow.

Jim turned and looked at Juniper, Amanda, and me, and we all shared smiles, delighted to be part of this quiet conspiracy to see wild animals up close. When we turned to look where we were going again, we saw two sandhill cranes standing at the edge of the timber, close to Aspen Spring, south of us. Horse, slip, and four quiet humans continued south at a fast horse walk until we were close to the cranes, among the most shy and unapproachable of all wildlife in the valley.

The cranes wouldn't allow even a horse to get very close to them and began walking away from us. Jim tweaked the reins and turned Terry aside. It was well to be polite. Again, we all smiled at each other.

The coyote was our prize of the day. A young male in fine fur (gray, russet, and white), he trotted toward us, relaxed as we slipped toward him. The coyote turned away from us enough to not come too close to a walking horse, but trotted as if to pass us only four horse-lengths away.

Jim, always seeking a laugh, spoke to the coyote in his deepest voice, “How you doing this fine evening, Coyote, my friend?” The coyote suddenly realized he should have seen the humans behind the large horse, because coyotes never intentionally mix company with humans. He leapt in the air in his amazement, turned, and landed at a full gallop directly away from us, not returning the greeting and not lingering for any conversation.

We all got a quiet laugh out of that. Jim said, “Coyotes learn fast. He’s probably never going to trust a horse again.” Daylight faded. The waxing moon rose above Cottonwood Butte. We put on our jackets and slipped toward home, quite satisfied with our evening and ready to tell anyone who wanted to listen about the wild animals we had seen up close.

We slipped behind Terry most evenings that fall of the year until Jim needed to be somewhere else and Terry's owners came to get him. Then we put those wonderful times together on the meadow with all the natural world close around us into our most treasured memories as something we could draw upon for the rest of our lives.

About the author:

Jon Remmerde has been writing and publishing essays and poetry about family, homeschooling, wildlife, and the joy of existence for more than 30 years. His website, www.remmerde.com, has samples from his books, which can be ordered online or from any bookstore. Somewhere in an Oregon Valley is about his family’s eight and a half years taking care of a remote cattle ranch in northeastern Oregon. Quiet People in a Noisy World is a collection of 72 essays, 54 of them previously published in newspapers and magazines. Visit his web site today: http://www.remmerde.com