Alone at Home (Sort of )

Magic and I went for a ride on Amigo and Rocket yesterday. We did the loop--the one with the most beautiful views in the world. Amigo did all right. He was pretty pokey at first, but once we left the road he perked up and was able to catch up within a minute or two of any given run. He did his rocking horse canter. Magic said he was a lot of work at first, needing so much urging, but then he was ok.

Back from the ride, tired, feeding the horses.... and afterwards Memphis decided to go explore the field next door. Now, the next door neighbors see nothing nice about having horses grazing their field that they pay to have brush-hogged, so they have put up a fence between the properties to keep our horses out if they break through my fence. But they did a lousy job. The fence is so high that Memphis went right under it. Took her about 10 seconds to get past it. So I sighed and went after her, caught her, and tried to bring her back. Nothing doing. The fence was very easy to go under when you are going where you want to go, but pony style, Memphis was positive that going under the fence the other way was completely impossible. So all my ignorant and self-centered neighbors managed to accomplish was to make it harder for me to get any breakaways off their property.

I flipped the house the bird, unfastened the fence at one of its many weak points, led Memphis home and fed the herd. Then I trudged back out there and fixed the fence where I had unfastened it, rather regretting the bird-flipping.

The people who live in that house have no idea that the whole meadow the house sits in was once the main meadow for my barn. And they don't care. The fact that they have a large field that they pay to have mowed, while I struggle daily to move my horses a much further distance along the road, has nothing to do with them, really, and I do get that. But Vermont is changing. The farmers who have made Vermont what it is are having very hard times continuing to defend their livelihoods as they are pushed slowly off their lands by wealthy flatlanders who have come here to enjoy the beauty they are strangling.

But they have a legal right to do this. The woman next door has so much money that all she has to do is wish for something and it happens. I struggle for heat and hot water, and sometimes don't have them. I have no car because I had to sell mine when the crazy court system took a wild turn on my case. I'm facing painful surgery and dramatically reduced functioning for at least 3 months and probably longer. If they were to let my horses graze their field, the horses would be safer, I would have hours less of work, and so on. But they prefer their privacy, and really I have no right even to think enviously how their land could make my life easier. I don't even know why I do it. I'm the one in the wrong here, not they. But still, I think that if the shoe were on the other foot, I could teach them a thing or two about neighborliness.

Mel, on the other hand, is about as good a neighbor as a person could possibly want. She has offered us her large meadow, and been patient while we deal with fencing issues. She is okay with us using her water source, even her electricity to charge the fence. All of this from the goodness of her heart. Magic and Alan have one of my horses on their land and they take care of him as well as I would.

I guess that's life. People are people. You take them as they come, and try not to resent too much the impact privilege and insulated attitudes have on those of us who hold our lives together sometimes with a wish and a roll of scotch tape.

It's the American way, this individualism. Supposedly. Every man for himself.

Except sometimes.