Suzy lives beside a stream at 8,200 feet, and the storm last week left her with piles of snow.
About a mile and a half upriver of her house there’s a mesa on Ute Mountain Ute land; the tribe kept a herd of horses up there last summer. When the herd was moved last fall, one little yearling was left behind. She has been toughing it out alone every since, and was doing OK until the deep snow came and she got stuck. Since then, Suzy’s household has been taking the little horse hay every day. She was getting terribly dehydrated without access to water, so Suzy’s renter skied out with a five gallon bucket of water that morning.
I snowshoed and Suzy skied on a trail through deep snow–it looks reasonable except if you fall off this path you’re floundering around in three or four feet. It’s a little sketchy for my old dog, who steps on the back of my snowshoes for an assist every chance she can. We went over the river and through the woods,
across the fields, we turned left and right and I’m thinking that if this little horse depended on me to carry her hay every day she’d be a goner.
To get on top of the mesa is so steep and soft that the dog can’t make it, so Suzy keeps them down below while I snowshoe up and look who’s here:
poor little guy can’t get anywhere, doesn’t have any food. She’s totally wild, and would run away if she could (when there was no snow, there was no way to catch her, and now there’s no way to move her.)
And that strand of hay hanging from her mouth is from Suzy toting those bales by backpack. Suzy said, we named her Thankful. I think she really is.
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