Hoofprints from Flagstaff to Oregon

In January of 1983, we moved from Flagstaff to Tenmile, Oregon. Gary was no longer a forestry student pursuing his Master's at NAU but a bonefide BLM employee in Roseburg. We found a beautiful piece of property with 8 cross-fenced acres complete with pond, perennial creek, barn and a little doll house ( or so I thought...Having only been married to Gary for 6 months, I had not yet learned to value and appreciate his ability to appraise a situation and when he said the place needed a lot of work, I was unconcerned. How could we ever have known that given a little time, we would end up gutting the house, putting in insulation and new windows, and tongue in groove wainscotting, wall-papering, drilling a new well when the old one went dry, building a holding tank, putting in a new septic tank when the old one collapsed, etc?) The land was surrounded by ranch land and infinite acres to ride. Billy was more than happy to graze all day and munch blackberries when in season. We acquired some milk goats and chickens and in time, another horse. We had begun to home-school and life was good.

Hoofprints Ancestry

Omar Sheriff, Grand National Champion as a 2 yr. old


I once asked Emery why they gelded Billy. His instantaneous response
"He wasn't stud quality!"
Since, in my eyes, Billy was everything beautiful any horse could represent, I was a bit taken aback. But as I look a bit closer at the only photo of his sire, Omar Sheriff, that I have, I must admit, he was probably right in his assessment. He did not mean to be cruel, just pointedly factual. Omar, as a 2 year old, took high point at the All American Horse Show, and this was among ALL breeds represented by 5 states... NV, CO, UT, WY, and ID. Billy took more after his mother, Beryl Belle, who was of the government breed Morgan.

A very early photo of Billy while still in American Fork, UT

Hoofprints...,along the Verde River

One of the first excursions we took as a new little family (complete with horse of course, which Gary never formally adopted, but certainly would have if called upon) was to go camping somewhere along the Verde River with some friends, Vic and Sherrill. Billy was awesome, even despite the lunacy of a teenage target shooter across the river who inadvertently hit the horse trailer, but thankfully nothing else. The girls were rapidly falling in love with this big gentle colt, as were Gary and I. He was just always ready and willing to do most anything, although he definitely had a mind of his own, from the start.

Hoofprints in Training

I compared Billy to a Brumby because as part of our training, Emery took us up in some of the red rock cliffs by Verde Valley School and took us down and by the time we emerged alive and well, I was as white as a sheet. Emery just chuckled and said "I just wanted you to see what this horse can do!" Without doubt, I never feared for the girl's safety from that point on.
Thinking back on some of the things Emery put him through, one thing we never did with Billy was pack, even though he would've been great at it. He was great at everything we asked of him. And that included loading in ANY trailer. Only one caution here...watch out once the door was open because Billy was not far behind. He knew that trailer meant two things...food and adventure and he was always up for both. Once, after Gary and I were married, we had the brilliant idea of turning the axle to lift the trailer, which often dragged on some of the roads we took it on. Problem was, it made the trailer about 3 feet off the ground. Yet, I have no doubt Billy would've at least tried to get in it had we asked him to :-) (yes, we made the trailer normal again).

Hoofprints across my heart...the beginning.

The day was January 21, 1981. Crisp, cold and bright. We'd been waiting all morning, my 3 year old twins and I . And suddenly, there he was in all his 18 month glory…a Morgan colt out of the famous Omar Sheriff, and straight from American Fork, Utah. He was the anonymous gift of untold people from Page, Arizona where Bill Murie (my late husband) was first stationed as a DPS patrolman 5 years earlier, before being fatally injured on Nov. 19^th, 1980 enroute the DPS academy where he was to be a counselor for the upcoming class. Probably one of the greatest ironies of this gift is that the young horse’s registered name was “Mary Mels Billy”…in truth!

So began the saga of 30 years…as he stood there, a huge red, white and blue bow wrapped around his neck, ready to frolic across the pasture kindly offered by my neighbor across the road from Pine Del (Flagstaff) where we now lived. Several months later, I was able to take Billy down to the Verde Valley to be professionally trained by Emery Henderson. When he returned a year later, he could have been a Brumby in Snowy River, so capable and sure-footed he was! He had been taught to drive (pull a cart). And, among many other feats, would even stand motionless while a chain-saw (without chain of course) was started and rubbed all over his legs. He was basically fool-proof. Emery told me “this horse will never kick” and he never did.

...to be continued

Saying Goodbye

Leaving Page late in the afternoon yesterday, I was struck with the irony that all these years my sister Teona has lived in this haunting land of sandstone and azure waters, it never crossed my radar that going up there just to chill and enjoy her and Kaysee's company was an end unto itself and something we both would've enjoyed utterly. But alas, Friday they will be leaving for New Jersey with their U-Haul and dreams of a new and happier life, a certainly a life of totally different vintage than they have known these past 11 years. I am very close to my sister. The thought of her living thousands of miles away is difficult to entertain. I admire her immensely. She has strength that eludes me at this stage of life. I pray that the perfect home will be found, that her new job will be even more than she anticipates and that friendships will emerge to fill the emptiness she will know all too soon. May the U-Haul hold up, may everything fit, may the plants survive, may you find someone to travel with you, may the weather hold, may you and Kaysee have the roadtrip of your lives, may angels surround you and protect you in all ways. I love you.

Afternoon reflections

Sitting beneath the Chinese Elm gently (and not so gently) whipping around in the wind, my mind flits to the white mountains of once beautiful pristine Arizona where everything we knew and loved there has been ravaged by fire...still 0% uncontained, and it's been raging since May 29 when a campfire was left unattended. Our many friends there have been evacuated. The torment of the unknown hovers. 0 % uncontained. How can this be? I heard that the man in charge forbid water be extracted from Big Lake because of an endangered fish. Truly? Have we come to this? That human life and human homes are trumped by an endangered fish? The last I heard, they were trying to save Terry Flat where we used to ride the horses....that's the exquisite meadow at the foot of the climb to the lookout. My heart aches for those whose homes are in jeopardy, for the firefighters so hampered by wind, smoke and command. I pray for God to have mercy and grant that the winds cease their merciless onslaught and the fires be quelled. And I weep...that I must remember these things as lost.