Ned Pepper.

Carol & Ned & Sugar & Lisa.

Amongst their own kind, horse-people like to say, I used to have time, money, and friends; now I have a horse. I knew the expression, I just did not know how true it was. Money can theoretically be counted — there's boarding, farrier, and then some "small" expenses. They are small because little things like curry combs, brushes and hoofpicks cost a few dollars each. But a few dollars times many "eaches" usually come out to over sixty at the register in the end.

Further I found out that I simply cannot show up at the stables without some tools — and my car became a permanent mobile home for a hammer, measuring tape, cable ties, nails, staple gun, wire cutters (capable to deal with smallish padlocks), various sticky tapes, gardening shears that work well on goat hoofs, and similar benefits of modern civilization.

And then there is cosmetics. A horse gets a nick, no big deal. Within the next day, he will rub the quarter-inch scratch into a full inch soggy bald spot, proceeding to half-palm size — and rolls in manure. And you keep buying disinfection and "something against itch", to make him stop rubbing it and destroying your efforts to keep the wound clean and on its way to healing. Although I made a careful research amongst other inhabitants of the stables and purchases as many of the agents as possible in a generic human drug-store, as opposed to a specialized outlet (where they stick horse-pictures over regular labels and charge triple), I would bet that Ned's box with lotions and sprays had cost me more than my own cosmetics baggie.

Sand dunes in Death Valley.

A fresh breeze was felt on top.

What of free time you have left, you spend it doing detective work in the paddock. So your horse suffers those small scratches, but where FROM? It's December and all decent flies and ticks should be hibernating, should they not? With the dedication worthy of Sherlock Holmes you crawl all over the wall of the shelter, circle the fence posts and look for torn-out hairs. Eventually you find them and ponder the questions, what to do with a jagged edge of a post or window sill — and finish it off by splitting a piece of an old garden hose in the dark — the day has long ended and there's no good light at the shelter — and nail it along the offending spot.

The day is long gone naturally because examining posts is not so easy. You arrive — quite early — to the stables, check out the goats. You find they had consumed all their hay, and you go get them hay. A new bale needs opening, and that requires a knife to cut the cord. A knife is known to be in the shed where the saddle lives, but you also find a halter and lead rope there, which was supposed to be in the pony paddock. Grabbing the rope and taking it to the ponies, you notice their paddock has not been mucked. Now that you're there, you turn the ponies out to the round pen so that they get some action and stop huffing on the back of your neck. While taking the ponies there, one of them appears to have a badly chaffed hoof, and you open the pony tool box, looking for a file. You must tie up this pony someplace safe, which happens to be near the goats, who still loudly require the hay and being let out, which makes the pony nervous. After three hours the goats are fed, pony manure mucked out and removed, hooves filed, knife lost, pony file forgotten in the goat pen, all saddle sheds and cabinets open — but you still have not checked out a single post at the large horse paddock. Now that you think about it, you have not seen the horse either, and have no idea, where the idiot rubs his sores.

A tiny valley with a dried muddy puddle.

We had discovered another arch in Alabama Hills.

On the other hand, things are really simple with your friends. You stop distinguishing who is named Shannon, who is named Sharon, and which one is Shelly — and mark them as "the one with Racer" or "Daisy's owner" — and soon you discover that nobody else knows either whether the woman's name is Sharon, but they all know that her horse's name is Freckles, that he's is fifteen, and had an abscess in his front left last month. After all, the system with horses' names makes sense — the names are posted on their respective paddocks, so even sclerotic geriatrics cannot mix them up.

We function naturally outside the world of the stables as well — in the world where mud-caked rubber boots are not your daily footwear, and your typical lunchtime conversation does not include mentioning, "her legs are OK, but I just can't touch her on her butt". Alas, this time we did not manage to convince anyone to join us in our traditional desert road trip during the extended Thanksgiving, and so we set out on our own.

Then again, we were free to shape our own program to our liking, and stop in the afternoon to shoot in Los Padres. This year's winter has started on a frosty side, and we were kind of afraid how much our hands would be freezing, but we lasted surprisingly long and had fun practicing our uncommon hobby. Only Lisa refused to participate, stayed in the car and read a book.

A shapely rock formation — see title.

Candy Store at Alabama Hills.

We had reached Lone Pine later in the evening, but we did not mind. We checked into our motel room, congratulating ourselves to choosing a two-story building and not the classic Americana style one, where you enter your room directly from outdoors. It was fracking freezing, and our room's door leading into a heated corridor made quite a difference in the overall sense of comfort. Not to mention the tent camping option — for we had camped out near Lone Pine at this time of the year before.

On the next day we drove to Death Valley — a classic theme, sand dunes. This time Lisa decided to go separate and ran ahead. She reached the highest dune some twenty minutes before the rest of our family. I think that the science camp had shown her the possibility of staying sometimes our of reach of her brother and parents, and continue to function. We kept huffing behind at our own pace, and reached the summit a bit later. A strong, cold wind was blowing, peppering our snacks with sand, and even walking barefoot (using shoes is hard unless you don't mind emptying them every three minutes) was less pleasant than last year.

Driving back, we made a detour through Aguereberry Point. The view is awesome, but since it was chilly down in the dunes at negative altitude, at some six thousand feet elevation the cold was quite crazy. Lisa had brought her goat puppet Oreo to this viewpoint — shortly before the trip she had spent all of her pocket money for a plush GOAT. I have to say that Oreo is a great hit with the children, but now they keep on bleating all the time — and fight over who gets to hold the puppet.

On Saturday morning we stopped at Alabama Hills — we did not even climb this year, for despite sunshine the frost was insistingly creeping into every crevice, and I could not imagine taking off my gloves and socks and getting into my paper-thin climbing shoes, while balancing on tiny ledges, grappling with my de-sensitized, freezing fingers. Thus we scrambled up through a boulder maze up to a photographically impossible-to-capture, natural arch, and discovered another interesting rock formation — a natural rock bottom. We managed to take its picture — and were ready to drive home. We used Sunday for general decontamination, preparing Lisa back to school (as she went from science camp directly into holiday break) — and checking on the horse (for a change).

Preparations in the line-up lot.

Wether Blue is Santa Claus, pulling the cart.

I had promised, in some less coherent moment, to take part in the Los Gatos Christmas Parade, which happens on the first weekend of December. In the fall, we tried to teach a buck (actually a wether, to be precise) named Blue to pull a cart, planning to let the small female goats and ponies follow on leashes and leading ropes. I had worried a bit how our pampered goats would deal with a parade, but in the end the worst part of the whole affair was all the WAITING. We all gathered at the stables by seven a.m., by eight we had loaded all animals, the cart, harnesses, food, pens, everything. We were in town at eight thirty, unloaded it all, erected a goat pen to let them stretch, and began waiting for a police escort that would take us through the down town to the actual set-up place. The actual Parade began at eleven, but horses and other animals are considered the highpoint, thus our turn came by eleven thirty. Even that would not be so bad, but I don't get why did the animals have to wait right next to a float with a disc-jockey? Even I was half mad from all the racket after ninety minutes, and what about goats and horses, who have a more sensitive hearing? Probably the only one of us who enjoyed the music was Lisa, who danced tirelessly, convincing bystanders to join in.

The parade was supposed to be reflective of Christmas. I was originally supposed to be an elf, but then I loaned out my costume to other participants, who managed to do a double run (join the parade at the start with their school, and then get back to us at the end), and in this emergency I affixed reindeer horns on my head. I would like to mention that such adornment is ill suited for a visit in a port-a-potty — the horns tend to catch in the door. Well, eventually I freed myself loose and got back in time in the parade.

A dignified presence is very important.

Blue: have you been nice, children?

After the parade, the morning hassle repeated itself in the reverse order — walking back to our cars, loading stressed-out animals, and endure a traffic jam on the way out of of town. Feed, water and pen the animals, extract all things from the cars and carry them to their appropriate barns and sheds. I was leaving the stables at two thirty — bottom line, for a half hour of fame in the parade, we donated almost eight hours of hanging out and general work. We were fortunate to have a relatively sunny day, so we haven't suffered too much cold. Poor goats refused to leave their pen in the afternoon, perhaps they were afraid that I would drag them again to some crazed DJ. They had regenerated by the next day, and continue to live merrily on.

On Sunday, after the parade, we drove up to a farm for our Christmas tree. We did so earlier this year than usually, which put us firmly in the midst of the main tree fetching season. Farms nearest to civilization were completely overrun by customers, and eventually we found a small one tucked behind a turn with a bit less commotion. I must say that it was Lisa in the end, who made sure that the tree arrived to our living room after an acclimatizing day, and got decorated. Apparently some genes inherited after grandma Josie had surfaced; I'm just not into this household thing myself — and it is very nice to get some help and assistance in this area.