May IAK special issue - 46

WILD COUNTRY DISPATCH
A horse for Clare
Story by Tom Reed | Illustration by L. Eslick
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horses.
" That one. "
I would walk over and place you on an
equine back. Hold you there. If the horse
walked off, I still had a hold of you and we
could move to another horse. No halter, just
horses in a pasture, smelling a little girl in my
arms and you smelling them back.
Usually the horse did not walk off. It
knew.
We walked in the herd, you astride each.
The eighth horse, the one that seemed extra
special, was June.
She was born on this ranch in the heart of
June, a colorful, little filly with good breeding,
fine long-stockings and a big, wide blaze.
I named her Calamity June. She is grown
now. She will not be big, but she's as pretty a
horse as I have ever raised. " That little horse is
going to make a little girl really happy someday, "
a friend said to me once. I thought to
myself, I know just the girl, a little calamity
in her own right.
We met on a river.
Cold water. Clear. A river of trout and
the promise of day.
Your mom went into the hardware store
for a fishing license and left me to watch
you, a blonde-haired, blue-eyed beauty who
was not even 2-years-old. No problem. But
when you projectile-vomited because mom
46 | May 2022
hen you were squalling I carried you out to
the horse pasture and we stood among them
and listened. As soon as we were among
them you quieted. Switched off the noise,
turned on the attention. As they grazed we smelled them.
There's nothing like the smell of horses.
You pointed a tiny finger at each of the
was gone for 15 minutes, doubt crept in. I
do not get along well with human vomit.
Then we were with the river and the wailing
that would have shamed a suckling pig
turned into happy babble. Chatter. A switch
had been flipped. The river took us from the
boat ramp, over cobble and sand, down riffle.
We landed on a midstream island, casted
nymphs into a run and you tottered on the
bank and collected rocks. I caught one nice
rainbow, then put the fly rod in the boat and
helped you find heart-shaped rocks. The fishing
was forgotten.
We have been aboard that boat many times
and it is always the same, the salve for chaos.
Horses, too. Walk among them and sit astride
them and it is as if you have climbed to a new
plane, a new plateau where the loudness of
the world is forgotten. Horse and girl live
here and it is magical.
We spent your third birthday on the river.
We cooked a birthday cake in a Dutch oven
over coals of fir and alder, listening in the
fading day to the river toss and turn on its
limestone bed. That day, your favorite present
was a skwala stonefly that crawled up your
little hand onto your arm and a red, heartshaped
rock I found on a gravel bar. Turning
3 outside. That's the way to celebrate a year
gone by and a year coming on.
You weren't even 3 when you got to ride a
horse with your mom for the first time. We
got you a pink cowboy hat and pink chaps,
which you still wear.
You're 4 now. You can remember where
you were on your third birthday and you can
remember that first ride. When I am out in
the field I think of you. On a river this summer
I found the top half of a mussel shell,
polished and glittering like an oyster shell
from the ocean. You laughed when you saw
it and asked me, " Buddy, an animal lives in
there? "
" Yes honey, that was his home. "
This is my first go-round in helping to
shape a human life at such an early stage.
Maybe I'm not doing it right and maybe I'm
May IAK special issue

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