Page 39 - Ninety Miles From Nowhere

Alone Again - Chapter 9
Round-up at the Evans Ranch - Pete and Pansy.
The time was rapidly approaching when everybody except me must go back to Oklahoma. I would be alone again until Mother, Van and Jack returned in late fall to spend the winter with me in Dad’s cabin. Although I loved the peace and solitude, there were other things I had to do which the boys had done before.
One chore I had after everyone left — but a delightful one for me — was watering the horse. The late afternoon drink was solved most days by returning from our ride by way of the tank.
The morning excursions were always occasions of great contentment for me, and Diamond seemed to share my mood. She had no resemblance to the spirited steed she would become in the afternoon, for I rode with a rope around her neck in lieu of a bridle — to the amusement of some passing cowboy. In the afternoon on our daily ride, she would prance and frolic around like a young thoroughbred filly, and give me the need for all my knowledge of horsemanship.
With mutual consent we set a lazy pace in the mornings and I let my thoughts wander and concentrated on my five senses — smelling the pine trees on either side of the trail, seeing the blue haze over the distant mountains, and feeling the warm comforting sun on my back. I could hear the angry buzzing of the bumble bees which darted from beneath Diamond’s trim feet as she dragged them through the fields of wild horehound blossoms. And in my imagination I could even taste the wonderful breakfast I’d be eating when we returned home. Nothing ever tasted quite so delicious as that simple wholesome food eaten in that healthful, appetite-whetting altitude. I wonder, though, if it was all altitude, or was it partly attitude? I know that I’d rather eat bacon and eggs in that simple little rustic log cabin than Eggs Benedict in the most sophisticated restaurant in the world.
On these little journeys I had more time to observe the things about me. I watched the Kaibab or Abert squirrels, much larger than grey squirrels and with tassels on their ears and of a slate grey color with a rust-brown stripe down their backs.
Porcupines peered at us from behind the pine needles on the tall trees as we went by. Many birds I’d never seen before I came to New Mexico sang and flitted through the trees as we passed. I saw my first pygmy nuthatches, going down the trees headfirst, and I grew familiar with the pinon jays and western bluebirds.