COVID, Loss, and Cypress Hills 2021 – June 15-28, 2021

Waaaaay back when – well before I started all this equine road tripping business – there was THE horse, and then there were three “other” horses. THE horse was Fred, a Standardbred I’d met when he was four, a horse I had eventually bought when he was seven and ready to quit the track. The “other” horses were Phabulous, a flamboyant one-eyed Oldenberg dressage horse who was far more talented than this rider is; Alf, the big orange off-track Thoroughbred I had known since the day he was born; and Paikea, the young up-and-coming who at that time had not yet grown into her Queen of the World persona. Four was a ridiculous number of horses to keep ridden for a person who was working more or less full-time.

Alf, Fred, and Pai

I buried Fred, the horse of my heart, in 2012, at the age of 30. Phab, my gorgeous, good-natured warmblood, had died in 2011. The shrinking herd took on a much more reasonable magnitude of two: Paikea, and the chronically soundness-challenged Alf.

Just as it was for so many riders across the country, 2020 was for me a total bust when it came to anything other than solo rides handy home. My grand vision of taking Pai to PEI, as I had in 2019 and 2012, gasped its last and died a sad death right around April last year.

Probably like many other equestrians, early on in the pandemic, when the message was to avoid engaging in high-risk activities that might see a horse-induced head trauma take a hospital bed away from a COVID patient, I questioned whether I should even be riding. I stopped going out into the backwoods on my own.  The provincial park next door to the barn closed down, and I stopped riding off-property. After a stellar April, the weather turned dismal in May, and I stopped riding at all. In the frigid, relentless rain, the grass kept growing. While I was looking the other way, my usually meticulously-managed but now-idle insulin-resistant horse got fat, and foundered on that late lush grass.  Riding was taken off the table entirely for months, while she recovered.

Despite having the physique of a pin-up boy, Alf, the spare horse, had the constitution of a teacup poodle. He would injure himself at the drop of a hat and, over the 18-ish years that I owned him, had been a complete and utter dud as the back-up horse he was intended to be. He was a joy to ride, and yet was almost never sound for more than a few months. He had anxiety issues and intensely disliked being alone. In short, he bit cock as an understudy. I loved him to pieces. But I rarely rode him, and the Pai-less period of that COVID summer was no exception. I was grounded. 

The beautiful, rarely sound Alf

Despite some early optimism on my part that summer 2021 would redeem the postponed 2020 X-Canada road trip, various provincial lockdowns and travel restrictions in the spring suggested that setting out with a dog and a horse across the land of quarantines was once again likely be ill-advised. I was bummed.

On the brighter side, my beloved Saskatchewan cowboys sent word that they were still planning their annual late-June trip to Cypress Hills, and it initially looked like a quick out-and-back trip to SK might be safely do-able. 

And then Alf came up lame. And not just lame. What initially appeared to be a typical, run-of-the-mill Alf-esque sole abscess became more clearly defined as a perfect storm of hyperadrenocorticism (Cushing’s), sole abscess on one foot, and laminitis with imminently catastrophic rotation on the other front foot. His health situation was too precarious for me to bugger off and leave in someone else’s care. Cypress was off the table.

After weeks of me sticking ineffectual thumbs in Alf’s various medical dykes, that mother of a sole abscess – despite a prolonged course of antibiotics – progressed to osteomyelitis (bone infection) on the less foundered foot.

The Big Orange Horse was done.

The Big Orange Horse.

Pai, my independent girl who had always displayed a violent disdain for most horses, had shown a somewhat unexpectedly intense level of depression at the loss of her lifelong friend. The metamorphosis of my big, beautiful, sweet horse into an ex-horse meant a last-minute trip to Cypress Hills had reared its head again as a possibility, and getting Pai off the farm for a spell seemed like a good idea. A week of scrambling ensued: get the truck serviced. Get the trailer serviced. Fix the things that needed fixing. Replace the things that needed replacing. Buy the things that needed buying.

My usually languid journey out to Cypress became a wham-bam-thank-you-ma’m two-day trip with an overnight in Golden. Cresting the hill that drops you down into the equestrian camp at Cypress usually gives me the same soaring lift of spirit as does cresting the bridge to PEI. But this year, when I was pulling in to the rodeo grounds in Golden, I had gotten word that my sweet, amazing veterinary colleague of 21 years had, despite winning her fight with an aggressive cancer, died the morning before, from a completely unrelated cancer. The next day, as I took in that first view at Cypress over Baldy and the hills south of camp, I asked myself, “How do you feel right now?” Between the double hit of the death of my horse and the death of my friend, the answer was, “Pretty sure I don’t feel anything at all.”

When I arrived, all the pens were full, as were all the small stalls. Even the less attractive tie-stalls were half-occupied. I quickly set up an e-corral in the catch pen, and as I did, I was greeted by Brenda. “Hey, bitch!” we hollered at the same time. Other familiar faces popped over soon after, and, though all the campsites were occupied, Brenda’s hot tip about her neighbour imminently leaving meant I could hang out like a vulture by their spot until they departed, which also meant I was ultimately camped between Brenda and Greg on one side, and my boys Doug and Rob as well as Glen from the Wood Mountain Wagon Train on the other.  My friend Pam from the 2019 Writing-on-Stone and Ya Ha Tinda trips pulled in right about the same time I did, and settled in with a crew that included Rick and Jane, the folks I’d joined on the 2019 cattle drive. It was like a family reunion.

The thing about Cypress is that it is good for the soul and good for the spirit. It’s a good place to be when your heart hurts.

Even though I am not a natural early riser (consider: my usual routine is to have a latte delivered to me in bed by my loving man at 7:00 am, and to maybe consider throwing off the bedcovers around 8:30 or 9:00), at Cypress, I’m up and about by 5:30. This preposterously chipper get-out-of-bed situation is necessitated by the need to (a) do horse chores and (b), more importantly, imbibe a sufficient quantity of caffeine prior to heading out on a brisk daily 6:30 a.m. morning walk with Doug and the ever-rambunctious Spy the Dog. Being one of the first people up and about in camp is actually a very pleasing thing. The mourning doves are calling. There is frost on the grass. The horses nicker softly as you approach. No one has yet fired up their generator. The sky is bright behind the hill that sits to the north of camp, and before long, sunlight starts to bathe the camp.

Morning coffee in camp.

Before long, other campers are out and about feeding their beasts, and setting out their camp chairs in the sun to sit and chat with a cup of coffee. Breakfasts get eaten and more coffee gets drunk, and eventually horses get saddled up and folks hit the trail.

This year was my sixth trip to Cypress. I generally tend to pat myself on the back for having an excellent sense of direction, but at Cypress, one meadow looks pretty much exactly like the next. One deke into the poplars looks like another. One plateau looks exactly the same as the one across the coulee. At Cypress, I have typically had only a general sense of which direction we’ve ridden, and only a faint hope of being able to find the same route on my own. This year, I finally got my shit together and downloaded Caltopo, an excellent mapping App recommended by one of my Back Country Horsemen buddies. Though the boys were initially dismissive of my technology, I have to say that a most satisfying expression of interest in distance ridden and elevation gained was shown at the end of that first ride and every ride thereafter.

Our 20 km loops.

We hit the usual suspects – the Mystery Rocks, the Cougar Caves, High Vista, the Ridge Trail, the Bug Trail, Fort Walsh – but also rode some valleys and ridges I’d not seen before.

As time wore on, our group slowly dwindled, until, for the last two or three days, it was just me and the boys. And then, after a solid two weeks of daily 12-mile rides, and lazy afternoon beers, and group dinners, and swims in the creek, and evening guitar-playing around the campfire, Cypress 2021 was over. It was time for Rob to head back to Calgary and Doug to move east to ride at Grasslands with his family. Despite having been extended a very tempting invite to follow Doug there, my practical side uncharacteristically won out, and I packed up by bags and picked up my tent, and headed back to my man on Vancouver Island.

Camp Notes for Horsey Folk:

I’ve described the equestrian camp at Cypress a couple of times – in 2015, and an update in 2019. Since then, a cell tower has been installed, which means you no longer have to drive up the road or climb a high hill in order to call home (I chose to pretend there was still no service, and set my phone to airplane mode). Camping is still a super-reasonable $20 for you and your horse, which includes firewood.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned before, but Cypress is bear-free. There are cats around, but that fact won’t alter your camp behaviour the way bears would.

One great thing about Cypress is that you will not be turned away, even if camp is full. The campground was insanely full for a few days during my stay: there are 17 designated campsites with picnic tables and barbecues, and for a couple of days, there were 30 rigs in camp, with 55 horses on site. It’s reassuring to know that you can arrive at a place, and not find yourself scrambling to implement a Plan B.

That said, there is the definite possibility that on a busy week, there will be no pen for you. If you’re cool with a tie stall or turning your horse out in the catch pen with a mob, more power to you. If not, make sure you bring along the necessities for setting up an e-corral.

I have also probably not mentioned that there’s this crazy hill going down into camp. It is a shit-show after a heavy rain – just don’t even. (I did, and barely lived to tell the tale).