I didn’t realize I walked in such a deep meditative state as I was down the trail to the big arroyo. I really had trouble coming back down to Earth. “Oh you startled me!” I said. Horses are so large I should have heard them or seen them sooner than I did. The riders seemed a little intoxicated by the power the horses gave them. I was reminded of a phrase in my new novella: the Spaniards in the New World had “the advantages of gunpowder, horses and dogs.” I was glad I carried my ultralight five shot .38 revolver that day. Encounters with wild beings aren’t nearly as jarring probably because I am watching for the wild creatures but not expecting humans, like the two horsemen. Later I met up with them in the hikers’ parking lot; I’d managed to walk the same distance in the same amount of time as the horses. I often think of Geronimo and his ragged band of women and children in their final years of resisting the U.S. troops. Five thousand of them had pursued forty or fifty Apaches, mostly women and children.
What do You think about The Turquoise Ledge (2010)?
