The Spell Of The Yukon

[labelwench]

My horse occasionally communicates in 'proesy' which she bids me take note of....
From our adventures of yesterday, I offer the following observations, and yes, we found Pussy Willows, which are doomed to perish as the temperatures plummet in the days to come.

Winter Ride

The red mare waited expectantly.
The woman would come for her today.
The mercury had risen and the air was mild,
perfect for winter riding.

The car turned down the drive,
the woman had returned.
Into the house…….waiting,
while clothes were changed,
a snack hastily eaten.

The back door voiced egress.
Rider coming, halter in hand.
Sidestepping at the gate,
pushing her nose into the halter,
striding with importance
beside her long-legged owner.

Soft horse sounds of pleasure
To see no other horses at the rail.
Today was hers alone. Yesss!
It was always more fun
to be relieved of
the responsibility for others….

A quick flick of the brush,
followed by pad and saddle.
Caramel lowered her head
to pick up the bit,
daintily taking proffered treats.
She munched in contentment
as the throatlatch was buckled.

A toe in the stirrup
and her rider was astride,
the hooves of the mare
breaking trail through
18 inches of snow.
They rode over the ridge
and through the pines,
startling a red squirrel
awakened from winter slumber.

The mare sniffed the tips of conifers
and nosed the tracks
which intersected their path.
Most of the sign was old,
few creatures had been stirring.

Lacy stalks of sweet clover
protruded above the snow,
the subtle scent of vanilla
still wafting from dried flowers.
The crimson contrast
of rosehips
adding color
to an overcast afternoon.

As bidden, she stopped.
Sideways steps
in response to leg aids given,
then to stand
while her rider snapped a limb
from a south facing Red Willow.

January 12th
and the first pussy willows
of the New Year.

[labelwench]

Forty below this morning. As I leaned into the truck to start the engine, the plush upholstered seat felt like a velvet covered boulder and the belts whined in protest as the big engine cranked to life. I left it to idle as I fed the horses their morning hay and carried buckets of warm water to my frosty furred friends.

Twenty minutes later, the engine was warm but the side and rear windows were not yet defrosted. I grabbed the block heater cord and carefully looped it's 15' length into the back seat, for I would need to plug in at the workplace. The cab was habitable but far from warm. I pulled ahead slowly, making a wide gentle turn to save wear on the rubber 'boots' that cover the ball joints. They are expensive and sharp turns in cold weather will damage them. I rolled slowly up the lane, letting the tires come back to round before I increased the speed.

A sliver of moon hung in a clear sky as I reached the highway. A few kilometers further and the visibility was obscured by wood smoke and ice fog, the headlamps of oncoming vehicles mere pinpoints of light. Traffic was moving at a sedate 85-90 km/h.

As we turned off the highway and dropped into the valley of Whitehorse itself, the ice fog became seriously thick. We crept along now, bumper to bumper almost, and even then the tail lamps of the vehicle ahead barely visible. Traffic downtown was light and there were few pedestrians about. The few who were to be seen were unisex in that they were bundled so warmly that one could not discern if the person was male or female.

I arrived at the office 15 minutes early by intent, to ensure that I would have access to a parking place with a plug in. No one else had yet arrived, and I unfolded the cord, now somewhat more limber than when I had loaded it. The little indicator glowed, assuring me that we had contact at both ends. Good enough. Mission accomplished.

We had arrived.

In these extreme temperatures, even just getting to work is a tiring experience and care must be taken to avoid potentials for harm and mishap.

[labelwench]

The early part of February has brought a reprieve from colder temperatures, which has been a mixed blessing as freezing rain and sleet has now crusted the snow and made travel beyond the established tracks a challenging prospect. I have some venues left to use for training the horses but I cannot take Handy along on my rides with Caramel for the footing is too risky. The young horse has been started under saddle now, at first by my simply mounting and dismounting several times, then progressing to a few laps in the round pen and then a few traverses of the training arena.

Although he is just over 21 months of age, he is solidly built and does not even shift his weight as I clamber into the saddle, somewhat less than gracefully in my heavy winter turnout gear. He stands like a rock while mounting, which is one of the most desirable safety skills in a horse. I have now started to ride him away from the barn where the mares stand tied at the hitching rails and beyond their view, riding inside the fenced larger paddocks that are the perimeters of the stable yard. Handy has grazed at liberty all around these pens and hay sheds and so the sights are familiar to him and he is a very confident and independent fellow, never sounding a neigh of concern. Rather, it is Caramel who bleats with indignation at being left behind while Handy is occupying my time, outrage clearly evident in her voice. She doesn't mind babysitting the youngster when we ride as a pair and she tolerates his coltish silliness very well, leaving me to clout the colt when he nips at her mane, merely giving him a threatening roll of the eye, lol...."Mom's going to smack you, nyah, nyah...", but being left to cool her jets while Handy gets ridden quite plainly is annoying to the mare.

Yesterday, my friend who is interested in becoming the new owner of Madelaine, Handy's dam, came out to the stable and we took the opportunity to have Hubby get some pictures of us working with the pair.

Afterwards, I took Caramel out by herself, always her preference, and we went scouting for some new trails to break in as the subdivision roads are too glazed from vehicle traffic for safe riding. We broke some new ground and a few more trips around will make the going less laborious for travel.

Here is a picture of Handy and his dam from our adventures of yesterday.



Rather hard to believe how quickly he has grown up from this little fellow born on May 1st, 2010, shown here at 4 days of age.

[labelwench]

I'm having a beverage (dark rum and mango juice) before retiring and still chuckling about the squirrels that I interrupted during their spring ritual.

I stepped into my 8 x 12 tack shed to put back the scissors as I had just done trimming the mane of my mare. Hearing a scrambling sound very close, I turned to see a pair of squirrels running up the studs and along the sills of the inside walls, bounding over my saddles on the racks, careening of the glass of the window and all but running over me as I stood in the center of their fornicating frenzy.

The male had caught the female, but was not positioned to successfully copulate. He was trying to advance his hold while she was literally climbing the walls.

Just as I found a large towel to hand, thinking to snap it at them and shoo them out the door, the male reached ground zero. All forward motion ceased while he went for a record short time and I knew he was done when they both released their grip on the wall and tumbled behind my horse shelving, still clasped in the 'congress of the cow'.

I surely do not want squirrels setting up shop in my tack shed so I grabbed a longe whip and poked around blindly with the handle until first one squirrel ventured forth and found the door, and after another minute or so, the other also found the egress. Hopefully, I have convinced them to look elsewhere for permanent accommodations.

As I headed to the house, there were three squirrels dashing about the yard.

Apparently the first male has a rival for the attentions of the resident female.

Yes. Spring is most definitely on it's way.



Red squirrel females will mate with as many males as time and opportunity permit, according to a study done in nearby Kluane Park.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/1..._n_797709.html

[labelwench]

Hubby came across some footage of Handy taken on May 3rd, 2010, when he was less than three days old, experiencing the world outside the barn for the first time in daylight. He had rolled under the fence on his midnight excursion into this world and we had 'rescued' him and placed the mare and foal in the barn pending a late season snow squall.

Yes. That is snow on the ground on May 3rd in the Yukon, which makes for a short gardening season, lol.

The music used on the video is copyright in some countries so for those who cannot view it, I apologize in advance. We are working on that, or rather I am gently urging hubby to use some of his own original music. If I am successful in my negotiations, I shall update this video with it's successor.

[labelwench]

Here is the updated video. The one in the previous post has been pulled.

[labelwench]

Easter or Eostre?

Does it matter?

The season of earth's fertility addressed in a melodic poem set to video.

My offering on this day.

[labelwench]

The night sky was superlative this night as I stood beside my vehicle allowing it to run for a few minutes before I headed in to work, the time being 12:30 a.m. A gossamer veil of northern lights subtly illuminated the clearing and I could just make the outline of the mountains in the distance and the tall pines 100 yards away. The temperature was already below freezing and forecast to drop a few more degrees yet and the stars glowed brightly against the moonless sky.

I was facing to the east when a movement caught my eye and I fixed my gaze upon a bright spot in motion at nine o'clock on the horizon. A brilliant comet with a wide streaming tail was arching toward the earth as if caught in slow motion. It seemed to take about three seconds to complete it's journey before vanishing soundlessly below the horizon. I glanced at my wristwatch and in the reflection of the taillights of the car, I noted that it was 12:32 a.m. I would have to do a search on-line in the morning to see what I might learn.

A quick search leads me to believe that I witnessed a 'fireball' of the Lyrid meteor shower that happens every year around this time. Weather conditions were absolutely optimum for viewing and my departure schedule coincided with the peak meteor activity. Many times I have been aware of the timing of forecast meteor schedules and scanned the skies in vain, most often hampered by inclement weather. Last night, I had no expectations and the viewing was all the more special for being totally unexpected.

Ned Potter
ABC World News

Did you see it?

If the visibility was clear from your location after midnight Saturday night and if the Lyrid meteor shower of 2012 is good to you, you were able to see the sky falling.
Every year at this time, the Earth passes through the orbit of an old comet called Thatcher, and the result is a meteor shower -- shooting stars, usually about 10 to 20 per hour, streaking across the night sky as debris from the comet enters the Earth's atmosphere and burns up.
The comet is far away from us now; Thatcher orbits the sun once every 415 years in a long, elliptical orbit. But debris from it has spread out along its path, mostly pieces of dust or rock smaller than grains of sand. As they come slicing into the upper atmosphere, at speeds of more than 100,000 mph, they burn up 50 to 70 miles over our heads. It is a quiet, vivid way for them to end.




The Lyrids are one of the weaker annual meteor showers (most skywatchers prefer the Perseids in August or the Geminids in December), but this year the Lyrids coincide with a new moon.
"Typical Lyrids are about as bright as the stars of the Big Dipper," said Bill Cooke, who heads NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama. "And it's not unusual to see one or two fireballs when the shower peaks." So-called fireballs happen if an unusually large piece of debris makes it into the lower atmosphere, breaking up -- sometimes audibly -- at altitudes of less than 20 miles from Earth.
In general, there are more shooting stars in the morning hours because the morning side of the Earth faces forward as we orbit the sun, so it's less shielded. While the shower actually peaks Sunday morning, meteors are often spotted several nights before and after.

The 'shooting star' that I saw looked very much like this image for scale and brightness.



(Note: No photo credit that I can find to give the photographer their due.)


T

[Bogie]

I envy you your night sky supposing night lighting from surrounding civilization is much darker up there than here in Tampa. What a thrill such a sighting must be. I bet it is burned into you brain for instant recall to enjoy at your pleasure; awesome .

[labelwench]

We live just 13 miles from downtown Whitehorse and there is significant interference from lights if one looks toward the town as there are several rural subdivisions and a lot of highway lighting as well to the west. The population thins out quickly once beyond where we reside with agricultural development to the east, the river just over 1 mile to the north and a hill to the south. The northern lights most often display in an east-west pattern and the widest field of view is across the yard so quite natural to look in that direction to see if there is any wildlife.

Seeing the fireball was a rare treat alright and that it was such a slow moving body as it was burning up gave me time to really note a few details. How many falling stars have we seen which were so quickly gone that one almost does not believe they may have seen them?

The only other time I have seen another meteor to even come close to compare was along the Yukon river about 13 miles north of Eagle Alaska when I was racing my dogs in the 1988 Yukon Quest. It, too, was a bright fireball but low on the horizon and with me positioned in a river valley, my viewing time was very brief, less than half of the time of my visual treat on the 22nd.

Thanks for dropping in. How goes the pondering in other venues?

On another topic, how was the sap run in Ontario this year? I hear via the media that the warm winter really affected production in the U.S. as the trees came into leaf far ahead of their normal schedule. I thought you might have heard as you frequent the Maple Pavilion.