A great present

A couple weeks ago, we hauled a horse trailer down to our friend Bucky's ranch in southern Arizona, near the Chiricahua Mountains (no spell check, it's NOT the "Chihuahua Mountains").  He runs trail rides into the National Monument, and into the national forest down there. The mountains are not terribly tall (hmm... maybe spell-check is right), but they do get their share of snow in the winter, and the trails are criss-crossed with small and medium downed trees after the winter storms.

We all saddled up some of Bucky's horses and went for an early spring ride in the national forest to check trail conditions for the season.


Bucky knows I love my short horse, so he tries to give me a 16 hand  or better so I crack my forehead if I quit paying attention.  I'm back there somewhere, honest.

We found that there were indeed downed trees all over the trails.

This past Christmas our oldest son and his family gave Juanita and I a pair of small, backpacker's cable saws.  When we got them, we thought, "These will be perfect for spring trail clearing!" and we stuck them in our saddlebags to make sure they were always with us when we needed them.

Since we were just delivering and leaving Bucky's trailer, we didn't take our horses down this trip. 
Since we weren't taking our horses down, we didn't take our saddles. 
Since we weren't taking our saddles, we didn't take our saddle bags.
Since we didn't have our saddle bags, we didn't have our stinking, perfect, brand new cable-saws.

I love my "Leatherman Wave" multi-tool, but its saw blade leaves something to be desired when you are taking down trees that have fallen across the trail.  I used it to finish cutting the broken stuff at the stumps, but damn.

On the plus side, the cable saws are still brand new!

 It was nice to ride, even though the snow did finally turn us back.  It was 80 degrees, but the 4-year-olds that some of us were riding had never seen snow.  Scary to a southern Arizona pony.

I wish we had had our horses with us. One foot of snow?  No problem!
(I would have had my saddle, too!)

Bill