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Out behind the Figure 8. Great country to push a young a horse to find himself.
This spring I’ve been riding every day — weather permitting — which has been great for my mental health and even better for my youngest horse, Remington. He’s a long four year-old and coming out of our mild winter he’s showing signs of maturity and “getting it” that are beyond his age and super encouraging for the future. I’ve been bringing him along slowly, applying everything I have learned along the way from the great teachers who have populated my life — including my grandfather who was a horseman of extremely high caliber. I’m doing all that in the effort to build a great bridle horse of the old Californio school which, when it is done well, creates a horse you can ride almost by intuition. That sounds funny but if you’ve ever swung a leg over a truly finished Californio-style bridle horse you realize quickly what separates a Ferrari from a Yugo.
Most days we start in the round pen with a warmup. Repetition, thousands upon thousands of reps, help build both great horses and also good shooters. There is always room for refinement and refinement of that sort requires a commitment to rigorous self-examination. One thing that holds back both horsemen and shooters is their ego and the belief they’ve already got it. That shows up in the way a horse responds to an ask and the way a shooter does just about everything involving firearms. I’ve learned to close off my ears to horsey people and I have zero time at all for gun culture bullshit.
Killdeer
When we are done with our warmup, or whatever thing we are working on that day, I open the gate and we ride outside, into a decent chunk of forest service land behind our place that has some good off-trail country that will challenge a young horse and build confidence in his feet and his place on earth. It’s brushy in places and treed and has some great ravines and plenty of places for boogers and bogeymen to hide, particularly in the wind. Which is exactly what I look for.
We used to be able to ride along the edge of Squaw Creek canyon, where the water runs in a broad and winding path and golden eagles nest in the rimrock, but the greenies recently purchased a chunk of that property and now don’t want any horses in there — which is typical of those outfits. They buy them under the ruse of preservation when what they really mean is to impose a certain level of exclusivity. Everyone saves the world in their own way, I guess.
No matter — there is plenty of country and it’s true that I ignore the signs and ride in there anyway. I invite them — whoever they may be in their fanny packs and pastel shorts and Greta Thurnburg certainties — to follow my track right back to my war lodge where they may be certain of a fine welcome.
Remington loves getting out there which is where I want his mind.
When I rode the deserts of Nevada one of my partners was a man named Larry Kucera. Larry was a lifelong buckaroo who had been shot four times in the back by marijuana farmers while fixing fence on a ranch over on the California coast. They drove up behind him and shot him while he was mending wire and he said he didn’t really know it until he looked down and saw the blood on the front of his shirt. Getting shot like that was hard on his mind and after he always rode with a pistol. We would ride big circles on the desert and we shared a strong desire to push those circles farther out. We’d sometimes talk about it when we got back in at the end of the day and agreed there was a certain kind of ethereal danger in the offing that defied any certainty or articulation. There was a hard lure in the offside of a distant desert hill and it was almost irresistible — particularly when the only way to get there was on a horse.
Larry told me once that he was concerned he might become the next Claude Dallas, who had been a friend of his.
Incidentally, I found a great film the other night which I’m recommending. It was shot on the Fishtail Basin Ranch near Fishtail, Montana, which is a place my wife and I have spent some considerable time and nearly moved to before settling here in Sisters. We looked at some great properties along the Stillwater and the West Rosebud but the timing was just slightly off. This movie has everything I love: the country and the cowboys and Harry Dean Stanton singing and reading passages from Rick Bass and Walt Whitman. Honestly, you are a straight bat-eating communist if the combination of those American geniuses, and a ranch at the foot of the Rockies doesn’t give you wood enough to go pole vaulting around the house for a while. Take a look:
Anyway, Remi and I are covering a lot of country and seeing good things this spring. Ground nesting birds have a tactic to keep predators off their nest which is to flush suddenly and go flapping about as if they are wounded. I first noticed this with killdeer who perform what’s called a “broken wing display” when I was a kid going about my ramblings in the sage and the buckbrush. Yesterday we rode up on some kind of ground-bird that flushed hard like that. We just sat for a while watching that bird do anything it could, squawking and turning hard circles in the dust, to preserve a future for its chicks and for its species. Remi and me both understood what was going on and it was one of those moments where nature is entirely legible.
Tom Dorrance, who was a master horseman and along with Ray Hunt and a sprinkling of others an early genius in revolutionizing the way horses are trained, spoke frequently about a horse’s need for self-preservation. It occurs to me that many of the human behaviors we have been seeing during the pandemic are, at their foundation — and most likely subconsciously — likewise rooted in notions of self-preservation.
I don’t have any more for today. There is a ton of work to do down in the barn and out in the garden. The sun is out and we might even hit 70° today. Remi is still eating breakfast but I’ll saddle him after lunch and we’ll get back to the work we do together.
In the meantime below is another video offering from the Figure 8 Ranch. On a great bridle horse the idea is to stay out of their mouth as much as possible, and to keep them soft that way, from their head to their heels. That means riding by feel and transmitting your ask to the horse with your legs and your seat. That’s what you’ll see us working on in the video. I’ve still got him up in a bosal but I have been patterning his mouth for a bridle-bit and I think soon we will move into the two-rein, which is the next step in his training. That’s probably too much inside baseball, which is another thing we don’t have this year.
I am sometimes filled with an incredible, almost overwhelming love for life, and mostly when I’m around my horses.
I hope you enjoy the video.
author’s note: thumbnail watercolor by Len Babb…https://lenbabbwesternart.com
Regina Sheik says
“It was one of those moments when nature was totally legible ”
Isn’t it great to transcend supposed boundaries? Lovely work, outstanding horse, incredible views… Thank you for sharing!
It sure is…thanks Regina, much appreciated. ?
Regina Sheik says
Fanny packs and pastel shorts!
This picture is now, eternally embossed in my mind… thanks, Craig.
?
Ha! I do my best 🙂
Reese Crawford says
Keep up the inside baseball! It’s just what I needed tonight and I would bet my paycheck that there’s a cowboy or two on here besides me that gets a lot out of it. I immediately thought of the Dave Stamey song The Circle when I saw the title of the post.
Speaking of… If you need a good laugh, check out his Corona Blues.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPFkLTC2muo
Thanks Reese and I sure will. Stamey is terrific, isn’t he? He just keeps having a good time all the time.
Stephen Erickson says
Yep.
FRANK JENSEN says
Keep up with the cowboy shit Craig. Thanks for this one.
I sure will, thank you for being here.
Chrissy says
Love the story, love the video, love the leading man. Guess that means I love Craig ☺️ Thanks for the ride!
Thx Chrissy, stay healthy 🙂
Robert Fuller says
Nice looking horse. You’re bringing him along the way they should all be. Nice to see a guy who knows what he’s doing.
Thank you sir. We have a lot of work yet to do, but together we are getting there.
tom says
hey craig, looks like the political correct officer hasn’t arrived at your neck of the woods? squaw creek canyon? we used to have a squaw peak here in the phoenix valley of the sun, but the powers that be ordered a name change. at least the name change honors a military veteran, and a hopi at that. and the sun is out here today too…….might hit a 106! do you miss phoenix?!
The PC Officer has been skulking about…we are meant to call it Wychus Creek these days, but I remain, as ever, a determined freedom fighter…I do not miss the blistering deserts, I do occasionally miss the absolutely perfect weather in Santa Barbara County, however. 🙂
Jim says
You’re livin’ the life. There’s a certain appearance of vastness up here in Maine but nothing compares to your backyard. Being solitary and knowing you truly are has no comparison. I used to camp in the Ansel Adams Wilderness near Bishop and look up to see aircraft descending into LAX to spoil the mood.
“…They buy them under the ruse of preservation when what they really mean is to impose a certain level of exclusivity.”
I used to volunteer with a foundation that maintained old adobes on Santa Cruz Island from the old Ranchero days. After the Nature Conservancy obtained the island from its owner through a fair bit of subterfuge they would invite us out. It became clear they would invite us shortly before a mega donor and 100 guests were helicoptered in for a daughter‘s wedding or some other disgusting event. The irony was that these were the same people that would invite socialism into government only to demand exclusivity for themselves.
You’re lucky to have a little patch of heaven while you can still obtain one..
Great post. I’m gonna have my 16-year-old horse crazy daughter read it. there’s some good thoughts in there for her horse training.
Wasn’t it Santa Cruz that was overrun by hogs? I remember at one point they had the big helicopter hog shoot going on out there, some old SAS guy leaning out over the skids blasting hogs on the run, or some such. lol. Yeah, these conservancy groups are fascinating. My first interaction with Nature Conservancy was in Nevada, where they started wedging themselves into the conversation and buying little plots here and there and then demanding cattle get out of the country to protect riparian zones which were being destroyed, in reality, by huge populations of wild horses. But the wild horses — even if they are severely and full of genetic problems — have friends with hollywood money and independent cow ranchers don’t, so you know who is going to win that battle before it even starts. The local group operates on a similar principle and to the one you describe on Santa Cruz — it feels somehow rotten, but it is difficult to parse out exactly what it is…horse crazy daughters are a thing that have plagued fathers since, I don’t know, forever. I find it endlessly humorous. Thx, Jim
James Pfleging says
The story goes that the owner of SC Island, Carey Stanton, agreed to bequeath the island to the N.C. Until then he owned it. He used sheep and pig hunting to pay the taxes. The Nature Conservancy asked to claim they managed the island livestock for him so they could obtain a huge endowment. They were not livestock managers to that point. Carey agreed because the N.C. said nothing would change. While he was in the Caribbean for the winter they slaughtered 10,000 sheep by helicopter leaving the carcasses to rot. Stanton returned, found they destroyed his meager livelihood, was forced to pay island taxes from savings and proceeded to fall off the wagon and die a drunk within 2 years. The carcasses rotted which caused the island pigs to feast and produce a massive bumper crop in piglets and a fly investigation the likes of which had never been seen. Before he died Stanton changed his will. Gave the money (5 Mil) to a new foundation (the one I was with) and he gave the cashless island to N.C. They were furious, gave the new SCI Foundation 24 hours to vacate with Stanton’s personal effects. Only when they figured out the SCI Foundation would repair the adobes with the lost money did they invite us back on. Basically, to be their lackys. Not a nice group of people.
Valarie J Anderson says
Horses are so good for the soul. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for being here at our campfire.
Ugly Hombre says
That a helluva nice horse, homestead, and horse barn set up, if I had that set up I would live in that barn lot nicer than my rude hut. lol.
Nothing like a horse for feel good fun and adventure, when I was a kid I got to ride in the best way. My best pard’s Dad fancied himself a Cowboy worked real estate always had a horse barn 12–15 horses and property, He was a big, generous, good looking tough guy. He told me ” you can ride any time you want, just make sure you curry them, feed them, water them, take care of them- and its your personal mission to shovel all the horse chit in all the barns”
Jackpot! Great times! young then, it was even fun to get horse bit, bucked off and kicked. lol Before that- when even younger 5–10, I had a Shetland pony in another state, would ride him out to my old man pard’s farm about 3 miles out of town. Grant would take the bolt out of his 03 Springfield and let me carry it around the farm like I was porting a cannon around. Try that today- lol they would call the protective services or the swat team.
Last time I rode was 40+ years ago at Clark, base stables about a 7 foot fat black snake slid out of the bush, to the side of the trail- horse did not see it lucky for me. lol
“Something about the outside of a horse is good for the insides of a man” Who said that?
Thanks for sharing good stuff.!
Thanks Hombre. Funny, I’ve ridden up on a thousand rattlers, even rode right over the top of an enormous den one time, and never had a horse spook or act crazy. But I’ve flushed deer from their beds and had an entirely different outcome. Good times.
Ugly Hombre says
“I’ve ridden up on a thousand rattlers, even rode right over the top of an enormous den one time, and never had a horse spook”
Never knew that, that snake in the PI was the only one I every rode up on. I thought I was a lucky dog I did not get bucked- lol.
Horses were still used in the PI for transportation back in those days and I think they still are in some areas, the “Kalesa Cart” a kind of a one horse buggy, I did not use them much, some of the ponies were not well treated and that torked me.
https://philhistoricalsymbol.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/kalesa.jpg
Clark Airbase had a mounted police unit- thought that might have been one of the best jobs ever.