Beauty and Barbs

I love all of the seasons....in all of their glory.  Having said that, this winter has been somewhat disappointing so far.  We do have a little snow on the ground but only a little.  And, while we are already half way through December, there has only been one day of fat lazy snowflakes swirling to the ground.  With that in mind, I was delighted to wake up the other morning to a freezing fog.  In lieu of fat lazy snowflakes, I just love the look of hoar frost coating the landscape....and freezing fog brings hoar frost.  Sure enough a quick look out the door showed me a glittering, sparkling white coating on everything - trees, bushes, fences and buildings.  My plans for the day suddenly changed as I knew I had to be out in this wintery landscape wandering through the forest and enjoying the beauty in Mother Nature.  I decided to start my wander through the horse field as I realized it had been over a day since I had seen our pair of mares.
Our mares are rather interesting horses.  We do not have a barn here large enough to house livestock so when I went on a search for horses shortly after our move west, I knew that I had to find horses that were used to being outside all year round and dealing with a variety of wildlife while they were outside. This was no easy task and the fact that I found this pair of mares literally around the corner from our ranch made it seem like a deal made in heaven.  The fellow who owned them was a multi-generation rancher in Alberta.  He had recently built a house down in our area to be close to his daughters while they attended university; however, he also owns a large ranch in northern Alberta.  The ladies, as I call our horses, hailed from that ranch in northern Alberta and he had only recently brought them down to his southern spread.  He would use them to hunt in the mountains and had even hauled a bear on the back of one of the horses out of the mountains to his base hunt camp.  In the winter, he would turn the ladies loose on his large ranch in the north and would not look for them again until spring thaw.  They would be expected to fend for themselves by foraging for food and eating snow for water when the waterways froze.  This is not unusual for old time Albertans and the ladies were in reasonable shape so he obviously cared for them.  They are an older pair of girls now though and are no longer suited to that lifestyle which was why he was selling them.  While we do not have a barn, our winter pasture is large enough to give them the freedom they need but it also has groves of trees for shelter.  I provide warm water in a trough for them which they refused to drink for quite a while and I also put out hay.  They think they are living in the lap of luxury and have gradually adjusted to their new life.  One thing that has not changed about them though is their hyper vigilance.  They are always aware of their surroundings and are especially aware of the wildlife in their surroundings.  I have seen Chinook chase coyotes out of the horse pasture and poor Annabel Lee was most certainly on the other end of Chinook's defenses until we managed to get Chinook onside with the idea of a domesticated dog.  We have had to learn the ways of the mares and come to an understanding of when they are working and when they are not....because one should never get in the way of a working woman...
So off I wandered the other morning feeling like I was walking through a field of diamonds and loving every minute of it.  It took me a while to locate the ladies which was fine because I was enjoying my meandering.  When I finally came upon them at the very back of the pasture, the calm in the morning suddenly disappeared.  Both mares had their heads up and their nostrils flared and they were staring intently into the scrub of the neighbouring pasture.  While Misty remained fixed in place, Chinook was actually pacing back and forth along the fence line.  I knew there would be something in that scrub as I have seen these girls working like this before.  This time though there was certainly more of an urgency in their behaviour and that got my curiosity up.  I wanted to see what sort of animal would put them both on edge like that. I started to approach the fence line where they were standing.  Chinook wheeled around and snorted at me which stopped me in my tracks.  She then turned back to the scrub and snorted at it several times.  I have heard Chinook snort at moose so this was no new behaviour on her part but there was no way a moose could be hiding in that scrub.  It was only knee high on me.  So I started to walk toward the fence line again to get a look at whatever was bothering her.  Chinook wheeled around in my direction and ran straight at me.  She stopped right in front of me, snorted and then turned sideways to block me from walking forward.  After she felt she had communicated the message to me, she wheeled around and ran back to the fence line where she commenced snorting again.  Several snorts in succession.  Never having been blocked by a horse before, I was a bit confused and thought perhaps this was just a coincidence....and I really wanted to see what she was looking at.  So I started walking toward the fence line again.  Once again Chinook wheeled about and ran at me blocking me once again.  This time, she even leaned against me to push me backwards.Then she ran back to the fence line where she started a side stepping move, while snorting and staring at the scrub.  At that point it dawned on me that these ladies live outside year round in the daytime and the nighttime and they are way more aware of the other creatures in the wild than I am.  I also remembered that amidst all of this beauty there are barbs.  I decided that I had best listen to my wildlife ladies and head on back to the house.  I could hear Chinook snorting and carrying on for quite a while on my walk back and as I approached my house I then also heard the long low howl of a wolf.

Chinook sashaying back and forth along fence line snorting at scrub

Chinook heading back to fence line after finally getting it through my thick head to go home.