Wild Horses? You Couldn't Drag Me Away

A trip to northwestern Colorado, where "hey!" really IS for horses. WRITTEN and ILLUSTRATED by PETER MOORE

MY WIFE AND I HAVE BEEN MARRIED for a long time. “Last century” doesn’t even begin to tell the tale. Heck, I can’t even remember who was President on that day of days. I do remember that when I took a shower before the ceremony, I stepped into the warm stream of water and thought I was having a stroke, because my vision suddenly went blurry. Inconvenient for my brain to explode on my wedding day! Turns out that, after I had removed my clothes, I neglected to take off my glasses before showering.

I guess I was preoccupied. Marriage is a big deal!

As I know from having experienced it for the better part of four decades. We were in a celebratory mood for this one, and nothing says “celebrate” like the Wild Horse Refuge, north of Maybell, Colorado. I won’t write too much more about that, here; my friends at Colorado Life magazine have given me an assignment to write about it, so I better avoid the spoiler alerts.

But as far as I know, they won’t be running any of my drawings of this adventure. So I’ll share them with you, my extra special subscribers here on the Road2Elsewhere.

1. The view from Craig, Colorado, part one. We rented an AirBnRV, which remained blessedly rooted in place the four nights we spent in it. When we weren’t ranging around the largely empty northwest portion of the state, we were sitting around outside the RV, admiring the view. And I tend to admire with a pencil in my hand. Hence, this drawing of Black Mountain.

About halfway through this sketch, a farmer came out and cranked that wheel at the bottom of the drawing, and released thousands of gallons into an irrigation ditch. The rushing sound reminded me that I had to pee, so I didn’t get a chance to draw the farmer. You can picture him though, right?

2. The view from Craig, Colorado, part two. I wanted to know what I was looking at, mountain-wise, so I paid $5 for the PeakFinder app, and pointed it at the horizon. Evidently, those tiny green things are cedars, because this is Cedar Mountain.

3. “What the hell is that?!???” Early on our first morning in Craig, I assumed my position in a chair outside the RV and began getting to know the neighbors. That’s when I whisper-shouted the above, which is how I often launch a birdwatching session. I focussed my binoculars on a family of sandhill cranes, plucking at the grasses across the street and flapping and squawking madly at perceived threats.

I’ve seen the cranes in southern Colorado, in central Alaska, and now in northern Colorado. They get around. Probably on the lookout for sand hills, of which there are zero in this part of the state. But it was a special treat to see their fuzzy, hilarious babies. I hope foxes don’t eat them.

4. This one is all about the gates. I stared lazily at this view for a long time one morning, watching that robin flit back and forth between the nest she was building, the grasses she was plucking to build it, and high poles where she could look for more and better tufts of grass. She was so industrious, in fact, that I mustered the will to fetch my sketchpad and get to work, too. That’s when I spotted that one gate swung out, and the other swung in. Worth an hour to record that, of course.

5. Horses! Finally! Claire had been talking about the wild horses of Colorado since we moved west seven years ago, so I finally made a plan to get her out there where the deer and the antelope (and wild horses) play. They really oughta write the horses into “Home on the Range,” because they certainly are.

Yes, the horse on the lower right was extending his fifth leg. I didn’t like the way he was looking at my wife, either.

6. Bears Ears! Can you spot the twin peaks? I’m glad it wasn’t an actual, very large bear, coming over the horizon.

7. Sunrise in Colorado. I’m an early riser. Blessing or curse? Either way I can’t help myself, as perhaps the only person who feels FOMO each morning when I open my eyes. So I leap from bed and see what’s on offer. On this particular day it was: 1. Backlit grasses, 2. a post casting a shadow, 3. a telephone pole, casting a longer shadow, and 4. a crop-duster taking off and landing repeatedly in an airstrip a mile from our RV. It made a lot of noise, but not enough to wake up my wife, unfortunately. More solo time for sketching, though.

8. RV, or not to RV? That is the question. After this trip, we decided not to. But we were happy enough to rent somebody else’s with the strict understanding that we didn’t have to drive it or empty the wastewater tanks.

That animal came down to visit us, and wish us a horsey anniversary. Who were we to say neigh?

“Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people.” – W. C. Fields

Oh wait. Care to bet on me?

Thanks for joining me on the Road2Elsewhere.