From Here You Can See Forever

Mini Maude Ridge

From where I sit I see the old red ranch house, then Mini Maude Canyon spilling to the Park, then the far mountain range opposite the desert from my mountain, from me.

The house: The windows are gone, but it still stands.  A thousand feet below me and a mile away in the meadows. A red reminder that others lived here before. I am not the first. A hundred years ago travel was slower, yet people lived and worked here as I now do.  I can.

The canyon of pines, quakies, creek and grass. Rock outcroppings I have never visited. The elk are there. The breeze carries the scents, sounds and cool of autumn. The elk bugle, to each-other, but I listen; eavesdropper to a conversation as old as a species. Chills.

A few years ago I found a stone spear-head near here. I was tracking an elk wounded by my arrow. How many hundreds of years had it laid there? The man that lost that spear-head hunted here as I do now. Was it in a wounded elk? Did he come to this point and look at the far away mountains and wonder the way I am now?  I have seen his pictures carved on the rocks. No photo I could take would capture what my spirit sees from this ridge.

How far away are those mountains? I could drive to them I am sure. I know the direction. I probably have already. But traveling faster than my soul will not take me there completely.

My black stands; he is old now. There is a union between man and horse, it is real. Ours is strong. My black is still strong. I look to distant mountains and I know it is right.

We will make that ride.

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