Sunset on the Mountain

Merlin Died Tuesday.

The day I brought Merlin home to Jackson: late winter 2012

Apologies, there will not be an audio version of this post.

Attn: If you are an Annual or Founding subscriber of mine who (for whatever reason) could not afford to resubscribe to CAF this month, please let me know so I can comp your subscription until you are on better financial footing.

So many pledges didn’t come through because of declined cards and/or un-subscriptions because of my last post about politics and feminism. I thought this would be the one month a year I would receive enough through substack to cover the bills—but only half of the projected income I was counting on made it here—due to what I assume is hardship you are also experiencing.

Don’t worry, I’m not changing my content or my opinions. God hates a coward, and while I’m a lot of things, I’m not that. I’ve never had the misfortune to prefer being comfortable in life over living it. But actions do have consequences, writing about politics being one of them.

If you don’t want to lose access to content, please send me a message so I can arrange for you to read free until you can afford it again. If I don’t hear from you, I’ll assume you do not want to continue, but please don’t let money be the reason. I don’t give a shit about money past what I am forced to earn to remain housed, warm, and fed. I believe you will support me again if my writing has value and you care about this farm. That’s the magic I live by.

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A birthday ride, maybe 2019?

Some Women Measure Our Lives in Horses

When I brought Merlin home to Cold Antler I didn’t know who I was, but I sure has hell knew who I wanted to become.

It was 2012 and I had already owned my farm for two years. I was making the radical (and strongly discouraged) decision to quit my office career for the idealism of the farm. I was becoming a self-employed agrarian/writer at 30. It was the best worst decision of my life.

My blog and books were so popular then. I thought I was following my destiny, creating the life of my dreams. I thought the book deals and interviews would keep coming and only get better (HA!). And with those headwinds of youth, luck, and delusion; I bought a British draft horse on the same impulse that was fueling my freedom.

The horse was a Fell Pony, a breed I’d only seen in coffee table books because they are a rare native breed from the Scottish border. His name was Merlin, a gentleman born in Cumbria, England and transported to the states at age 4 by a wealthy woman I’ve never met. I am very grateful to her, even if me ending up with the pony she imported was never in her cards. He was her impulse, first. I respect any woman that makes a rash decision for love.

The first 18 years of his life (before ever meeting me), Merlin saw more of the world than I ever had. He’d been a resident of two continents, crossed the Atlantic, had multiple owners, was temporarily the star of the Kentucky Horse Park’s rare breed exhibit, and by late 2000’s ended up as an imported teenage gelding on a farm 20 miles from Cold Antler. The current owner had fallen terminally ill and was selling her horses that weren’t breeding stock. Another woman I am grateful for.

I saw the ad for him on Craigslist while at the office and couldn’t believe it. I never thought a Fell could be mine, it was like wishing for Pegasus. I also knew I would never have the eight grand she was asking for, even if he was worth every penny. Merlin was trained to ride, jump, drive, trot dressage, and more. I wasn’t trained to do any of those things, but I wanted to be capable of it all.

So I wrote a heartfelt letter that he was the horse of my dreams and I would dedicate my life to his good care if we could work out some sort of lower cost or payment plan? She agreed to both lower the cost and accept monthly payments with a down payment, and after a contract and the help of a dear friend with a horse trailer, I brought Merlin home the same year I quit my job and took up falconry.

{I was going through a lot.}

All those decisions must have seemed like madness at the time. All of them necessary to become the woman who dismounted him once last time. I didn’t realize how I was trying to build a life that protected me from trauma, a safe place far away from fear and fertile enough to heal, come out, and start living my *real* life in my thirties.

It takes a lot to change a whole life. He was my ride the whole way.

Driving to the farm stand down the road in the old red cart

He was calm and had good feet and a temperament steady as a gentle rumble of thunder. I was the anxiety. I was the greenhorn. Yet he was patient, even if I didn’t know what I was doing. Over the years, I learned to ride less with my strength and more with my head. I learned to be a better woman overall because of him.

He was the horse that showed me how to be strong and confident, even if I was only borrowing his. The first time I got on his back in a western saddle I had a panic attack and started crying. I felt like he was too much, too scary, too hard to understand…. how I didn’t know if I had the skill or enough control over this massive animal to be safe? But my friend Patty held my hand and lead him around her farm like I was a little girl on a pony ride. I used to be embarrassed about that story. Now I only remember two friends helping me feel brave.

Within two years of tacking him up it felt like getting on a beloved childhood bike. Steady, understood, a borderline-zen practice of being carried away to somewhere better.

Some women measure our lives in horses. The time he was in my life feels like a fantasy novel from another age. Shooting arrows, galloping full speed across endless fields, driving his cart to the local market and taking friends on trail rides. He was my hawking partner, my therapist, my oldest friend. He was a dream come true.

And I had to end his life this week.

The Decision

Like Gibson, I had to make the decision to have Merlin’s die by appointment. It was not made lightly or alone. I had horse-wise friends, my farrier, and two veterinarians agree that an animal his age, with his drastic loss of muscle and fat, would not survive the coming harshness of winter on the mountain and should be euthanized before the worst arrived.

The last thing I wanted to do this November was hold another dying family member, but I would never forgive myself if he slipped on ice or went down alone in some distant frozen field. It was clear that this was a decision I would have to make for him if I didn’t want him to experience unnecessary suffering as the temperatures dropped.

On Tuesday morning a veterinarian arrived to help Merlin pass peacefully. He was eating a big bowl of grain, me stroking his head, when the sedation medicine brought him to the ground.

No one prepares you for that. Watching the strong animal that carried you for over a decade fall to his knees for the last time. It felt like all his weight was leaving him and becoming this dense, aching, hole inside my chest. I sat beside him on the ground in the hoarfrost, stroking his mane and thanking him over and over silently. I didn’t want to lose it entirely in front of the vet, who was only doing her job and just starting her work day. She left promptly after he was gone and said the office would mail the bill.

Within twenty minutes of her arriving, I was sitting alone with a dead horse in my front yard. I was worried neighbors would rubberneck or stop to ask questions so I covered his head with a small tarp. Not knowing what to do while I waited for the men who would take him away, I started carrying buckets of water to the living.

Chores that day were slow, trapped in hovering time. I looked around at the leafless trees, the chill in the air. It felt like the spring morning Gibson died. Half a turn of The Wheel and I was saying goodbye to a boy I love under barren branches, again.

Merlin at a friend’s farm, 2012

Logistics of Loss

When you’re new to horses you don’t think about the day your pony dies. You don’t consider needing to dispose of a thousand-pound corpse. Horses are not like having a dog or sheep to bury, you have to arrange things differently.

So throughout the summer I talked with folks that did the kind of landscaping and construction work with backhoes and bobcats that could possibly help me find a spot on my property to compost a large animal. When I spoke to a local professional who also owns land near me, he told me burying a horse on our mountain would be difficult. There is a limited amount of topsoil over bedrock.

I’d have to have a place on my land where enough sitting soil could be removed for a large grave. I didn’t have that anywhere heavy equipment could access unless I wanted to build a road to it. I asked local riding stables and veterinarians what one does with a dead horse they can’t bury?

My veterinarian told me about a professional large-animal disposal service. It cost $400 to have your euthanized horse dragged with a winch onto a trailer and taken to a mass-composting operation two towns away. Since I couldn’t bury him here, that is sadly what I had to arrange.

It wasn't what I wanted for him. I wanted him buried on my land but the cost, logistics, and circumstances were too much. This was what I could manage with the hand I was dealt.

When the men came to attach chains I asked if I could pay them in advance and respectively head back inside. I didn’t want my last memory to be dead weight hauled off like a broken-down car. They were understanding. Within two hours he went from grazing in my front yard to gone forever in a potter’s field I’ll never visit.

It felt disorienting, like I’d woken up from a dream where I had him and summer forever. I went back indoors to the fire and my body gave out and I collapsed with Friday in my arms. She licked my face like she was trying to bring me back to life.

I didn’t get any work done the rest of the day that didn’t involve necessary farm responsibilities. I thought I would want to write about it, but his loss felt like 5 chapters of my life were ripped from my book never to return and I didn’t dedicate enough time to memorizing the prose. Sometimes grief isn’t a roar or a whimper, it’s pacing.

Like so many of us, we mourn so much more than a body on a trailer. We grieve memories that fade, smells we’ll forget, touches and sensations we will never return to... Who we were in the before of it all when we believed the lie that love is forever tangible. It’s not. He’s gone.

Instead of writing I spent extra time with Mabel. I opened her pasture to let her mingle with the sheep and goat for company. I made sure she saw the body and understood, but she still called out to him all night. Part of me did, too.

There has been so much loss these past few years.
You just can’t know.

The view from my neighbors’ land across the road. Down below is home.

Onyx and Auburn

When I remember him I will return to late summer on this mountain, back when I was younger and more whole. I will remember tacking up in the front lawn and riding uphill after the day’s chores were done. My work was finished, but my heart-rate was just getting started.

We’d head up mountain, passing tree-lined dirt roads that cracked open like an over-ripe melon into grassy fields, splendid views of the whole Battenkill Valley.

I’d ride when the sun had already set behind the western ridge. I learned that I could chase the light on horseback, ride up to the places I could still feel warmth on my face if we were fast enough. That was the closest the two of us ever came to wrangling, chasing warm light.

There’s one field on the mountain that’s so special to me. Where I’d dismount and take in the sunset, sitting down in the same grass the horses were given permission to graze. I’d pull a drink out of a cooler in the saddlebags and watch my life happening, trying to be present.

The sunset infused everything with golden nostalgia as I was experiencing it in the moment. Some switchbacks in your life drip with biss like honey. How before the darkness came, I still had everything that mattered right beside me.

Occasionally, I memorized prose as it happened.

Watching my two horses before sunset—one dark and stalwart, the other auburn and bold—opposites which together made a perfect team. He was brave where she was nervous. She set the pace that challenged him back.

They are both recorded forever in this burned-screen image I cherish. His dark coat shining like polished onyx, her auburn and white-streaked mane blowing across her eyes in the wind. How perfect everything was when we were together and the world was magnificent and safe. Lightning strikes of that memory will be the last thing I see before I die.

I choose to hold onto love like a locket, ornamenting my life with the sentiment it offers. The choice doesn’t negate the grief. It’s my turn to carry him now. But nothing can ever take away those summer sunsets on this mountain. They are the best thing I ever had.

Love doesn’t die. It doesn’t fade, or soften, or become something else. It’s a part of you that you hold and the resolution you’re left with is a simple one:

Use the sadness as a map to find love again. Maybe lighting strikes twice.