The Icee-Berry Sky, and The Happy Chattering Noises

The sky was icee-berry-blue-flavored and I could just eat the whole thing up.

Amanda met us and we squealed and hugged each other and danced around a bit because it had been so long, and then it was off to the goats. Amanda wore her dress and leggings and hiking shoes and we were soooo happy about that. She helped me figure out weights on panniers since my replacement scale from packgoats.com hadn’t arrived yet. We stuffed everybody’s tummies with sunflower seeds and tied up Bosco in case he decided to be a pill. Then it was exactly 40 minutes again to load them all up and get them out of the gate.

My mom’s goat Casper decided he was going, too, and ran right out the gate with us. He blinked and looked a little startled at what he’d done. We turned around some of the crew and took them back in. Casper followed and breathed a sigh of relief to be back home. He’d had his big adventure for the day.

The road was quiet and the goats were well behaved and I thought about the other day when Bosco kept laying down. Maybe he had a piece of hay stuck under his saddle or something else was bothering him. If he did that again, I’d be sure to check his gear first thing.

The cars that did pass were polite and their inhabitants stared a lot, but they slowed to a crawl and the inhabitants waved, and we felt really safe. The quiet of the morning broken only by the giggling of grown women.

We passed through the gate to BLM land and I kept leading Bosco in case he got bossy, but he didn’t, and the wind picked up, and as we got to the top of the ridges, my hair was blowing all over the place in a happy sort of way. We met two gentlemen at the trail intersection who were kind and interested in what we were doing, and we visited until Sophie had enough and then we pushed on.

By then the wind was blowing so hard I couldn’t hear anything except the occasional tinkle of laughter coming from the back of the pack and I wondered what great stories I was missing by being up front with Bosco. But the trail went on, and so did we, and then it went on some more. We walked out to a new point overlooking the river valley and ate our snacks. Jon Snow and Sharkey mobbed Amanda but she didn’t give up any of her food. Bosco tried to steal my apple but got squirted with the squirt bottle, and everyone knew better than to mess with Sophie.

We made it up and over the next ridge. Wind-wind-wind-wind and lots of happy-chattering-noises from behind me. I’d catch bits of stories about grandmothers and ghosts, love and aliens, and it all made my heart glow. We made it all the way to the downhill before Jon Snow needed to take a break. It was mile 7. They are getting stronger all the time. We gave him about a ten minute break and then he seemed fine and happy and ready to go on, so we did.

We made it nearly all the way home when I heard a noise behind me. I turned around and there was Kristin, in her socks, running down the street to see the goats. Sophie was stressed out because we were very close to a house where a big-ass Rottweiller lived, so poor Kristin had to walk around the corner, still in her socks, to stop and talk to the goats. She was a little sweetie with curly hair all tied up and a big smile. She used to live near the PCT and hiked in the Vasquez Rocks often, talking to lots of thru-hikers before she moved here. We talked about the TRT a little, and I realized it was a perfect day, and we were all making happy-chattering-noises. Together.

Under that unbelievable icee-berry-blue-flavored sky.