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[RC] January horsenews - Mike SherrellJanuary horsenews
Just when I was despairing of finding any new rides, we came onto one of the
best I can remember in months if not years.
Looking for a run that a) was long and flat, so I could let Traveller
stretch out, and b) we had only been on once, and not recently, we pulled
over to the side of Imhoff just north of Highway 4 in northern Walnut Creek,
went down Walnut Creek a hundred yards or so, around the aggregate plant and
took off up Pacheco Creek. Everything was routine urban creek, reasonably
interesting scenery, good footing for shod gaiting, scaring the bejeezus out
of a bum in a sleeping bag in the middle of the track where it went under a
bridge (marked like all the Contra Costa bridges with a stencil forbidding
sleeping and recommending a phone number for free housing), a lady in an SUV
who saw us from overhead on 680 and looped back around to show us to the
baby in the car seat. The further upstream, the more residential it got,
until at College Park High School the creek banks were blocked off and the
bed became a square concrete box, 25 feet wide and 10 feet high, the steam
on this day just a few inches deep.
The day was young, and I tied Traveller where he could graze for a bit,
climbed fences, mulled, speculated, until a Backcountry Horseman ride that
took place almost entirely in Dry Creek came to mind. It might work. We
skidded down the bank, and I dropped in over my boottops in order to get
Traveller to follow me down into the creekbed just before it came out of the
causeway.
Once into the concrete canyon and having gone far enough to see it was going
to be do-able, I was enthralled. Between blankets of vines cascading over
the sides, bare stretches of concrete wall were waterstained in russets and
browns, and trees of all varieties leaned and reached and stretched
overhead. We slowly chased a heron downstream on the way back. We saw nearly
nobody except an old couple who hearing us splash past looked over their
fence and asked if we were checking on the salmon run. Winter flows must
have cleansed it: there was almost no debris underfoot, except for a pinto
Breyer that I collected for a dashboard ornament.
Finally the creek came up out of the culvert at the far back of the
playing fields at Sequoia Middle School. The bed was narrow, rocky and
impassible, so I dismounted to scout the situation. The last of the concrete
was coated with a thin layer of slick slime, and my boot zipped out from
under me and I went slap down flat on my back in a quarter inch of running
water. Now the back of my pants all the way up to my belt were as wet as my
boots.
I tied Traveller to the bank where he could nibble the grass and stuck
my head over the top. The nearest soccer players looked to be more than a
hundred yards away and showed no sign of coming our way. All around there
were overgrown fences with no evidence of habitation behind them. The north
side of the creek was a rough stair-step embankment of cement that was warm
in the sun. I undressed from the waist down, rinsed the slime out of my
pants and wrung them out, and spread everything wet, including myself, in
the sun to dry. It was delicious.
When we got back to the trailer we went right past it headed south
along Walnut Creek. Traveller was not reluctant to go further on, to put it
mildly: he got to gaiting so fast I let him canter and he took off like an
Exocet. My hat blew off but I left it so as not to interrupt. I slowed him
down and he transitioned into the gait, not all that seamlessly, but then it
was the first time, as far as I can remember.
Walnut Creek doesn?t go more than a couple of miles south before the
bank turns to pavement, so pretty soon we had to come back. There was still
daylight, and since the light of late afternoon and twilight are the most
beautiful of the day we trailered a bit south Highway 4 to a nameless side
creek running into Walnut Creek. While we were parking in front of a
self-storage facility, some swarthy middle Eastern type guy climbed out over
the gate, worked at the entry box, opened the gate and helped another
similar-looking guy roll a car out. They pushed it around towards the
street, opened the hood and waved jumper cables at me. After I gave them a
jump, I asked them how long the car had been in storage. It just had a dead
battery, they said with gutteral accents; they had been there to collect
some tools. Not to make a dirty bomb, I hope. Anyway, I figure the Semites
owe one favor to the Christians, if you ever need a jump start yourself.
So I saw them off and unloaded Traveller. Up the little side creek we
shot, past a soccer game, into and across a park to see if we could go
further; across a bridge and back down the other side of the creek, where a
dog ran around the opposite side of a pond to try to intercept us, his
mistress calling him ineffectually; we chased him back to her, then gaited
across the meadow and through a redwood grove; I held a sagging barbed wire
fence down with a boot and he stepped over, then back to the start, cut a
couple of strands of pointless barbed wire, and done for the day, home again
home again jiggity-jig.
The ride up that concrete canyon was completely unlike any other I can
remember and the whole outing was way beyond my expectations ? I was
delighted.
Riverside Park, at the south end of Eastside Road just before
Ya-Ka-A-Ma, has opened to the public. The first Saturday it opened Jean?s
white mare Diedre inaugrated it with the first pile of horse poop I could
see in the horse rig area. There is plenty of horse trailer parking and
plenty of fishers, hikers, and bikers. I have never been an audience to as
much public slapstick as I was this day ? first, right in front of Jean and
me a 5-year old on a bicycle fell into the only mud puddle on 100 yards of
flat, level, broad trail. I could not stop laughing, although the dad couldn
?t seem to muster a smile. This was one situation where I didn?t grit my
teeth and wait for the word ?horsie?. Then as we were getting back to the
trailer a little dog on a guy?s lap who was driving past with his window
open suddenly spotted us and started barking so excitedly it fell right out
of the window, hit the pavement with a thud and ran around to the far side
of the pickup truck, where it waited stunned until the guy got out and
retreived it. Most satisfactory outcome of a dog-barks-at-horse incident I?
ve ever had.
Mike Sherrell
Grizzly Analytical (USA)
707 887 2919/fax 707 887 9834
www.grizzlyanalytical.com
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