A thistle at Fremont Peak.

Just like every year, I was again looking forward to the summer break. Regular morning getting up stops, there is no homework, gone is the endless enforcing of timely delivery of school projects. Like every year, at the end of the first week of no school, I found myself totally exhausted. You see — the kids never stop talking. In their happier moments, they don't argue, but still they produce some ongoing noise. Tom has refused to participate in any summer camps, while I at least managed to talk Lisa into a week of horse camp in the stables. It was heavily on my mind, whether that was a good idea or not. From the times of my childhood I remember summers when we always used to go somewhere — at minimum to a country house with Granny — as if staying at home were practically a punishment. Then I realized that our old one bedroom flat on a main Prague thoroughfare, with a singular, dirty playground on the same street, would have been a punishment indeed. And that our children now live in a different setup — in a suburban home with front and back yards, and a swimming pool, fifteen minutes by car from stables where we keep our own goats and a horse, thirty minutes drive from a river or deep woods, less than one hour from the ocean coast. Assuming, of course, that someone takes them to the stables, river, or ocean, in a car.

A view from the top of Fremont Peak.

I am used to play taxi driver, but my situation got more complicated by Ned Pepper. First I found it nice that Neddie would stay with us almost to the end of June, but I did not think it through. If I take care of the horse, then I can't also be with the children, or the other way around. I can always take them to the stables and they can help me with Ned's cleaning — but then I cannot just dash off to the trail, leaving my offspring to wander aimlessly around the stables. So I dealt with it in part by taking them along and in part by not dashing off on the trail, or in part by leaving them at home.

In the last months, I had some good times with Ned — now that the rains had stopped and I dug myself out of my post-surgery weakness, we could ride and practice various tricks. I obtained a side pull rope halter and we started riding with it. At first I continued using a bit for longer rides, untested tricks and with untried equine companions, but one day Ned had said that he would really listen to me and the bit was not necessary; he kept his promise. In the end I think that if he were to decide to run through a snuffle bit, he could do it anyway — it's not as effective anyway. And Ned is not a disobedient, mean horse; Ned is a work horse, with a very clear idea of his vocation, which he fulfills quite perfectly. When he stumbled nastily and fell on both his knees, he managed to keep me in the saddle — I think it was in part due to the side pull — he did not have to fear for his mouth and could stretch his neck forward and balance with his head so that nothing happened to me.

Sea otter at Moss Landing.

Then Ned and I keep on practicing with various horse-eating monsters. To my great joy, some people at the stables had constructed a horse gym on a hitherto unused rear meadow. Besides barrels and barriers, they included clever inventions — such as vertically cut shower curtains hanging from a tree limb — to pass through an obstacle, albeit one that parts before one's nose, takes huge courage for a horse. Ned did not like it at all, tried to scare it off by snorting at it, but a week later he would pass through with a bored expression. Similarly unpleasant for prey animals is to pass through a narrow space — like between two barrels — a wolf pack hunts by jumping at you from both sides. We simply found there a lot to play with and to practice on; you cannot hurry a horse through such things, and everything takes its time.

Morning at the stables, horse and goats grazing...

The first week of the summer break passed at a berserk pace. The children had accumulated some events with their friends, while I finally managed to take them both shopping — having grown out of everything, even their shoes were falling apart. They both have reached the age when it is better to let them try everything first and let them choose what they like. Lisa's horse summer camp at the stables began with the second week. The stables have a new manager now who had organized the camp practically in the last moment, and I was curious how it would work out. Five girls got supervised by two teenage assistants, who did not hesitate to do silly things with them, and so Lisa kept coming home happy, content and quite exhausted. Naturally her turn fell on the so far warmest week, with temperatures over ninety, and we both felt it. You see, I thought that while Lisa would be in the camp, I would be relatively free, but I was mistaken. Most of the time I hung out with her and took care of our goats or Ned; also, I was getting Ned ready for his going back home — washing and cleaning all his gear, de-worming him, and so forth.

One day, however, I had to be at home, for we had a technician come over to fix our swimming pool cover. The canvas was supposed to last five years; we had kept it for nine, delaying the order of a new cover — until the old one failed. It had generally de-polymerized and began to disintegrate. During those two weeks that passed between the rupture and the installation of a new cover, we had tested out how much simpler is maintenance of a covered pool. Suddenly I had to vacuum it every three days, keep adding chlorine and water, clean the filter — and furthermore the pool was cold. Although we use a single sheet, uninsulated cover, just the fact that the water stops evaporating and the darker cover color warms up the surface, makes a huge difference. By my reckoning, at least ten degrees — swimming in seventy versus eighty degrees makes your notice and remember.

Lisa continues in vaulting.

When we got our new pool cover installed, we could finally start inviting friends over — and thus a party of pony fellows got together in our back yard. While Lisa no longer rides a pony, some mothers ride on a new horse named Cowboy (who has replaced Sugar) — and sometimes join me and Ned on our trail rides in the woods. Besides, the girls Patricia and Brianna had been attending Lisa's horse summer camp, and the children continue to be friends.

Alas, these cell phone pictures are bad.

Then came the day when Craig's aunt Kit arrived to collect Ned. She said she had bought Ned years ago together with other horses, and thus I relaxed; Neddie seemed relaxed as well — I think he remembered Kit. He entered the trailer without protesting, but then he got nervous — knowing a trailer, knowing the other person, knowing me; perhaps then he realized that he DID NOT know the situation in which we figured all together. Kit drove him to her ranch in Gilroy, planning to continue up to the Sierra on the weekend. Despite it all I was glad; our long-prepared vacation was approaching and I truly did not prefer to have Ned stand in his paddock for a fortnight without an option to run or just do something. Horses don't just need physical exercise, but also something to think about, lest they begin horsing around.

I was quite sorry about Ned having to go, for over half year he became my partner; on the other hand, it was a relief. I can spend the summer break with my kids, don't have to leave them for many hours every day. I won't feel responsible for another breathing, thinking creature. We can depart on our vacation road trip — and Ned would be at home, with this old buddies, doing work he knows and understands. And I can come visiting him, too.

Lisa on a heart-enhanced horse.

On Friday, while Lisa joined her summer camp, I moved Ned's stable stuff that I had bought previous fall — rubber mats, water tub, and the like — into my shed, which I cleaned up and re-organized — and it shall stay so until fall; perhaps I may get Ned back again. Then I attended Lisa's final horse show. She and her coaching assistant Emma pulled all stops and had decorated Lisa's horse, Snickerdoodle, who wears a sparkly pink halter for some reason, with pink sticker hearts — saying that it was Amor's horse. Well he carried himself with dignity — and surprisingly well listened to Lisa, although they know each other only those few days of the camp. In the end I think that the camp had done Lisa well — as she was the most advanced rider, she got the most obnoxious horse; and got to ride him, for she did not have to take turns with someone else on a difficult mount, and thus made greater advances in riding. Besides riding, the girls also mucked manure, bathed the horses, cleaned the saddles, and learned basic equine facts and anatomy, and all was well.

Is Ned looking forward to getting back home?

With Ned gone and the camp ended, we had shed most responsibilities and could start preparing for our annual epic vacation. We had planned to take it all the way to Colorado — having not driven this far due east before, and we wanted to see the Rockies. Our departure fell on Sunday, mostly to dodge traffic jams. We either have to leave on a Friday after eight in the evening, or on a Saturday before eight in the morning, lest we get stuck somewhere. A Sunday seemed a bit less risky, with the extra benefit of a free Friday night to chat amicably with Martin Ryzl and his colleagues, who came visiting on their business trip — and we had Saturday, too, for shopping, washing up, packing, tuning the goat attendance schedule — and for taking our hamster Frosty over to a friend's house. All these animals now complicate things and one has to make sure they are taken care of.

We had actually managed to drive out on Sunday as planned, only I noticed, about one hour from home, that I failed to pack along my contact lenses. I decided to not try to solve it, hoping that I would have at least few pairs in my hand bag, as leftover from previous trips. I wear dailies, the ones you discard after one wearing; fortunately I am far-sighted and had packed along my reading glasses, so I reckoned that perhaps it would not be such a crisis.

Our first stop on our trip was Leavitt Meadows. We had to get across the Sierra anyway, and I wanted to check up on Ned, how he has coped with getting used to his new/old haunts. I was also curious how he would treat me — whether he'd be happy to see me, or shrug me off now that he would have his old buddies and no time for some crazy woman. To my surprise, there was no Ned; Kid had put her trip with the trailer off to the next weekend. Which kind of made me sad for purely selfish reasons, but given the fact that on the next Monday, a wildfire had erupted in the (Bay Area) mountains not too far from the stables, I was very glad to know the horse had moved elsewhere. The fire in the end never got close enough to cause an evacuation of the animals, but the idea was not pleasant at all of me, driving across Nevada while remotely organizing a move of my horse, or relying on someone taking care of it.

All went well in the end — but by that time we had left Leavitt Meadows and the whole California behind our backs and were biting the first chunk off of the fifteen hundred miles to the promised Rockies.