What Could’ve Been, and The Covid-19

We timed it and we have the whole process down to 40 minutes from when we get to the barn to when everyone is dressed and geared up and out the gate. Impressive. We are getting better at goat wrangling.

Melissa and her son Elvis, and Sophie and I packed our pockets with treats and headed up into the hills. The cars were mostly polite, except for the one asshole who we apparently inconvenienced by approximately five seconds on his way home in his fancy Mercedes. We actually asked him to stop while we got Jon Snow out of the road. Nevermind that we saved his car from being wrecked by hitting one of our goats. He threw his hands around in the air and had a conniption and instead of flipping him off, I waved politely and mouthed Thank-You and gently waved him around Jon Snow. I didn’t call him a mother-fucker or anything.

We headed up Prison Hill and started around the North Loop. The boys were carrying more gear than they had before, except Sharkey. We didn’t have any weight on him at all because we ran out of gear available at Mom’s house with which to pack the panniers.

Oatcake was a champ. We didn’t weigh his packs but he was carrying three times what he did last time and he didn’t even seem to notice. Love that big old boy.

The hillside is steep on the East side of Prison Hill. It’s a single track, and we were making our way along, happy as could be, when something spooked Oatcake. He ran up to Bosco and slammed into him and around him, on the shoulder of the hill. That pushed Bosco straight into me, and tossed me right off the trail down the steep hillside. The trail was under my feet, and then it was suddenly at the level of my armpit. Quick as a bunny. I was completely uninjured, but I’ve spent some quality time on the PCT, and I know there are drop-offs that are more cliff-like (Sketchy-McSketcherson) where I could’ve been seriously injured had this incident happened there.

I was really shook up for What Could’ve Been.

All the goats acted weird for a while, so Melissa had Elvis ready to dash uphill into the bushes if the goats bolted. Which they tried to do once or twice. Melissa dragged Oatcake into a cleared spot and I got Bosco back into the lead before he caused any trouble for Oatcake and then everything started to settle down again. Just in time for some women to come up behind us with some pugs.

Stay back a ways, I said to them. We will get out of the way when we can, but we will be in front of you for a while.

There was nowhere to get off the single track, so we trekked along, my heart still in my throat from my little fall, the goats still on the verge of being weird, and these ladies not freaking listening, getting all up Sophie’s butt with their little pugs breathing heavy right behind Jon Snow.

I found a tiny pull off and turned around to Sophie to ask her if it was big enough. Just then the ladies decided to pass us with their pugs in their arms. The goats freaked out and ran straight through Melissa and right at Sophie. She threw her arms out and whoa-whoa-whoa’d them.

DON’T RUN. I said to the ladies. THEY WILL CHASE YOU.

They speed walked instead, up and around the corner.

I guess we still need to practice our human to human interactions. Melissa was okay, but had a good start.

We finished the North Loop, had some gluten free brownies that Sophie made, and headed up over the next range of hills. On the way down, Jon Snow took a knee. Twice. Then he just lay down right in the trail. We stopped next to him, took off his panniers and gave them to Sharkey. We sat right there in the dirt with him. He was tired.

Bosco decided it was time to go again, so he whacked Jon Snow and he got up and then everyone was re-energized. We made it to mile 7 and home through a corridor of blooming wild desert peach bushes.

Pink and delicate, perfuming the air.

The goats felt it was a delicacy, tasting bits here and there.

We fed them sunflower seeds and calf manna when we got home. Until they were stuffed. We filled up their feed trough thing and willed them to eat all the things.

Get Fat, we said. Get Your Covid-19 On.