Sight-Seeing in the Bluegrass: Part 3

The last you’ll (probably) hear about my week with The Visitor…

On a crisp and sunny Friday, we rode a lift up to the panoramic views of the Natural Bridge on the edge of Eastern Kentucky. Our aim was twofold: to show our Visitor some different terrain during her stay, and to spread some of my father’s ashes there as he’d requested.

There are laws prohibiting what my husband and I planned to do, plus it was gusty atop the rock. So we had to choose a sequestered spot where no one would see us or be disturbed by us (i.e., get “sprayed” by bits o’ Dad). Our Visitor, long divorced from my father, chose to wait for us in a clump of trees where she felt protected from the wind.

When we finished our mission, we rejoined our Visitor, who told us lots of folks kept trying to get her to sit in a nearby shelter where she’d be warmer. Worried what people would think of her standing in one place for so long, The Visitor finally spilled the beans to the next person who approached her: The Park Ranger.

Yes, The Visitor chose to expose our illegal activity to the one person with the authority to punish us. Yes, unbelievably, my own mother gave us up.

“I told him exactly what you were doing and he thought it was a beautiful idea!”

“Mother! It was illegal. We didn’t want anyone to know!”

“I know,” said The Visitor. “That’s why you have to be careful who you tell.”

“Exactly.” WTF? “He’s probably waiting for us at the end of the trail.”

“No, no, no. He thought it was beautiful,” The Visitor reassured us.

“Right. And now he can hardly wait to arrest us—at the end of the trail.”

My husband chimed in at this point, warning The Visitor, “Don’t be surprised if we pretend not to know you.”

We followed the trail to another scenic view, offering small talk to passing hikers along the way but not mentioning “the incident” again. As the trail opened onto another massive rock and aerial view of mountains and valleys, there before us were not one, but TWO PARK RANGERS.

There was no escape. I had no choice.

“We don’t know you,” I whispered to The Visitor.

Sight-Seeing in the Bluegrass: Part 2

A tad more about my week with The Visitor…

We passed a field full of foals as we wended through the countryside the other day. I’ve never seen so many tiny horses in one spot—and all by themselves, too. Not a single mare anywhere near them.

Had there been a place to stop the car, I might have gotten a picture for Lull. (Of course, had I remembered to take my good camera, I might have tried harder.)

Before we reached a sign that read “Congested Area”—which translates to “Careful! There are a couple of houses ahead!”—we passed a field full of cows. I commented that there seemed to be an unusually high number of calves in the herd for this time of year and then…

I couldn’t believe my good fortune: One of the cows was about to give birth! We had a chance to see a new calf come into the world. As I looked for a place to turn the car around, my Visitor said she’d already been through childbirth. She didn’t need to watch someone else (human or bovine) experience the pain.

I obliged and kept the car moving toward a quaint town where we could shop for inanimate objects. But my heart was miles back with the herd.

[Pic from Victory Rose Thoroughbreds.]

Sight-Seeing in the Bluegrass: Part 1

I’ve neglected Lull this week because my mother is visiting from the Land of Lincoln. I haven’t had a chance to write until now, and I have to be quick about it.

We started the week with an early morning tour of a few thoroughbred farms, where I could have stayed all day communing with the horses yet my mother had to be coerced into feeding a single carrot to a single pony. We do not share my equine appreciation.

The stallion pictured in silhouette is a “teaser.” He’s introduced to a female horse to determine her mating readiness. If she shows interest, she’s swiftly transferred away from the scene into a breeding barn, where she’ll consummate her desires with a stallion of provenance. If she’s not interested, which she’ll make clear through kicking and biting the Teaser, both horses will be returned to their respective living quarters until another attempt is made.

Though never allowed to mate with the royalty of the farm, the Teaser is free to pursue the wet-nurse mares (these are the horses kept on hand to provide milk to the blueblood foals whose mothers either reject them or can’t produce milk). Regardless of the Teaser’s consolation prize, I still felt bad for him. The poor bloke was a mere footnote to the tour and didn’t even get any carrots.

Rats. I have to cut this short because The Visitor is awake. I’ll try to post more tidbits later.