Posted by Woody on October 15, 2005, 12:11 pm, in reply to "Re: more wolf stuff" Hey, remember the lightning on your first N Bar visit? We all were on some hilltop, the usual summer storm approaching quickly and your three lovely daughters decided to ride on out ahead fast for the home ranch. They were a good way off and below when we realized they'd got our instructions mixed up, and that they'd thought it was safer to ride just next to the fence when they'd really needed to be as far away from it as they could. I was on what I recall as one of the finest horses I ever will be (can't remember the name) and it fell to me to take off after them. Events and that high-country life itself gave one chances of feeling important like that, and necessary, and feelin' sorry for actors who only get to pretend such scenes in Westerns; then again, most any minute of the day also saying you're no more than a mortal with some set amount of hours you'd best savor. I take fewer chances now, but that's because people are less likely to let a 53 y.o. put himself in harm's way. I'm still in Arizona, mostly--go out to the Islands now and again when Hawai'i calls and I can't resist her song and enough time passes for me to forget all the ways Hawai'i can make you crazy. Will likely go again this winter to work for the Big Island ranch whose family I've had a connection with for nearly 30 years. Yikes, this'll be longer than one of Preston's logs. Take care, Rosanne -- Woody
Rosanne--what a nice posting from you, made me feel good to know folks might think kindly of me from my couple N Bar years. Forgot that you were there when I came in from that lightning strike. That hour remains fresh, with fright and wonder and thankfulness in equal measures. I knew that storm had a mind and madness about it--and it was looking for ME ... a solid curtain of electric bolts sweeping up from three sides at once in front of a circular black wall of rain and sleet, mean with the blind anger of a wounded animal. The thing that I was fretful over, though, was that I'd lost the guests that had been along earlier, couldn't imagine what would happen to them. (Of course unknown to me, by this time they'd found their way back to the cooktent and had got into the Jack Daniels, heh heh.) Well I knew what was happening soon as my hat started to tingle, then came down from straight overhead what felt like a thin pipe conked onto my skull, the world turned entire into orange-pink light and the loudest single noise I'll probably ever hear that I'd live to tell about afterwards ... the light not followed by the noise, but WAS the noise ... while being lifted bodily out of the saddle on Rio's back I yelled out a wholly irreverant demand to the Almighty, "No God! not yet!" and a double vision of pink electric snaked down on the back side of both my eyeballs, and I recalled the time I stuck a fork in a wall outlet when I was five. The shock ran down my neck, left shoulder, down that arm and out my fingers. Don't know what Rio felt, don't know how far up out of the saddle I rose but when I came down that horse took off and all I could do was nudge his steering a little. Down that canyon full bore, lightning bolts crashing down onto the ridges up on each side as we passed. Who cared? I sure didn't, didn't care if I shot off his back like a meteor onto the stream rocks though I still kinda wish someone had seen the one ride of my life deserving of a gold buckle. "To think I get paid for this ..." I mumbled to myself. And then Rio and I had to get into the trailer with those metal racks fully overhead, lightning of course still coming down all over the place. Didn't care about that, either. On the road just after, I stopped some ranger to try to ask if he'd any news of those lost guests, but I could only remember how to make with my mouth about one word out of four, although I could still think what needed to be said. This had a for-sure effect on both physical and mental health, though the problems are long gone now. I've read that only one out of every six people are killed by a bolt that hits them.
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