Ride through the boreal forest at Leaning Tree Ranch
A few months ago I passed another milestone birthday. Ten years after the Todd Mountain trail ride celebrating my 60th, my daughter and I took another horseback ride together with the owners of the ranch. With the aid of a mounting block, I climbed aboard a gentle gelding called Major.
Sean led the way, followed by Yasemin on Teddy and Amara on Jack. Penny the ranch dog Penny ran with us excitedly, sometimes beside us and sometimes behind or ahead. Noticing Penny’s excited barking, Sean and Amara sensed the presence of animals.
“Do you have bears in this area?” I asked.
“Lots of bears, and deer. Cougars, too.”
We rode single file along the train through the sun-dappled forest. The lodgepole pines were tall with short branches, and the ground cover quite different from what we see on the coast. Amara pointed out the glossy foliage of low-bush cranberries, saying her mother makes the most of each wild blueberry season to harvest and preserve a load of those fragrant delicacies.
Yaz and I had been planning a trip to the Northwest Territories: Edmonton to Hay River, then on to Yellowknife. That last leg along Great Slave Lake would include a bridge crossing of one of the long inlets on that enormous body of water, as well as “likely” sightings of wood bison on the highway. But the Territories border was closed, and here we were instead.
“Have you been to Yellowknife?” I asked Amara.
She’d gone there to photograph a wedding, but she was unenthusiastic. “Basically, it’s a small city on a big rock.” On the other hand, neither she nor Sean could say enough about the beauty of the drive they took through BC and the Yukon to Alaska. I could see how all those mountains would have been a dramatic contrast to the relatively flat land of their home place. But I was still sorry that fate — in the form of COVID — had prevented our trip to barrens.
As we returned to the ranch, we passed a long row of hay bales — a dozen at least. Rolled like giant cinnamon buns, they lay side by side and end to end and stood as tall as a man.
Indicating the rows, I asked Amara, “How long will that last?”
“Oh that should last the winter, depending how cold it is. They eat more if it’s colder. But that should be about enough to get our 8 horses through the winter.”
“On the way here,” I told her, “we’ve been driving through a paradise of hay. So much of it, baled up and waiting in the fields for storage or transport. “
“I’m glad it’s been a good year for hay,” she said.