Yeah, I know, it’s been a long time. So much has changed!
I spent most of the past year working at a Thoroughbred farm in southern California. A lot of it was good. Some of it sucked. I hate rain, and it was a record-breaking year for rainfall in SoCal.
Thoroughbreds are basically jet engines on toothpicks, and taking care of around 20 horses at any given time in really slippery mud got hairy. Horses had to be moved around whenever a few inches of rain were expected. Sometimes they didn’t want to cooperate! These were pre-track and off-track Thoroughbreds, so most of them were half-tame at best.
Several foals were born in spring. One of those babies was huge, and the owner and I had to basically haul the little sucker out of its mom, or we would have lost the foal for sure and possibly the mare too. As a newborn he was considerably larger than foals a few weeks older!
The fifth and last foal of the season didn’t make it. I went to bed the night before he was born after checking the mare. She was just beginning to show signs of being ready to give birth, but based on prior experience I thought I had at least a day. The foal was born sometime that night, and when I discovered it in the morning, it couldn’t stand on its own. The vet said it was born septic. We tried everything. No luck.
I held it together until they guys were burying the foal and the mare started screaming. I just sat on my bed/couch and sobbed. The birthing stall was right on the other side of the wall from me and that mare’s grief was devastating.
The loss of a foal is heartbreaking for everyone on a farm. Things weren’t the same after that, and it was time to move on. My husband had joined me (finally!) and we left California, driving across the southwest and cutting up the middle of the U.S. to land with friends in Kansas for a while. I had planned to work with horses there, but the summer heat was too much! So we headed back west, toward the mountains. We spent weeks just camping in America’s most incredible National Parks and forests, looking for work as we went.
Just as I was beginning to SERIOUSLY worry about funds, my wonderful husband landed a job just outside Yellowstone National Park, in Montana. So now I’m living in a VERY small town, in the mountains, and today is Halloween. Guess what? I’m surrounded by snow! The first snow fell here in September, and I’m told we can expect something like eight feet of it over the winter.
I’ve seen snow before, of course. I have not-fond memories of driving through a blizzard in Kansas to pick a friend up from the airport. It’s different here. For one thing, I’m not living in a city like Topeka, so road maintenance is not exactly reliable. The road we are living on is not even paved, and at the moment . . . well, see this picture with the snow and trees? The road is under that white stuff somewhere.
But the beauty here takes my breath away. Fantastical mountains, wild animals. Earlier this morning I was startled when a huge form suddenly appeared just outside my bedroom window. It was a bison, passing not three feet from the house, trudging casually through the snow, occasionally stopping for some nose-plowing action as he searched for grass.
This pretty doe was just outside the parlor window about a week ago. There’s no zoom to that picture. I just put the phone up to the glass and snapped.
Wolves occasionally pass through town, not always with good results. We have foxes and coyotes, of course. I haven’t seen a bear or moose for myself yet, but I know a young moose was running down main street, a block away, just after hunting season opened. As far as I know, she made it to safety. I’ve heard tales of people going into the storage room where my husband now works and finding it already occupied by a black bear. A grizzly strolled down main street a couple of years ago, causing a pedestrian to jump into the nearest car, never mind whose it was!
I’ve learned to fish for trout. I actually got pretty good! With the streams beginning to ice over, I probably won’t be doing much more fishing in the near future (and to be honest I got a little sick of eating fish). I can’t help but wonder how my father would have reacted if I could call him and tell him that I was fishing in the Clark’s Fork of the Yellowstone River and pulling in rainbow trout! He always wanted to move from Maui to a place like this. I think he’d be thrilled.
So, I guess we’re all caught up! I’m just a Maui Mo’o in Montana, trying not to freeze my rosy pink butt off while I ponder what to publish next. Oh yeah, in case you were wondering, the book formerly entitled The Replacement and The Devil’s Gambit came out in April of 2019, and its title is now The Devil’s Caress. Click to find it just about anywhere!
I’ll try to do better about keeping up here. As you can see, life has been a little crazy. Take care, all! And thank you for everything! Signing off from the Beartooth Wilderness. 
Angela Pryce: Author, Muse, Mo'o 