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| Frost still covered the ground when he caught the gray horse from the pasture. He fed it an apple. Then he placed the pad and blanket over its back and swung the saddle on and tied the cinch. The sweet cider of the apple foamed from the velvet corners of the grulla’s mouth and onto the rider’s fingers when he slipped the bridle up over its ears pulling the bit into place. The horse’s exhaled breath pulsed in bold streams into the crisp morning. He swung up and the horse put its ears back and stepped once to adjust its footing, then stood waiting, the barrel of its ribs kinetic and loaded under the rider’s heels, and sprung with a touch, and they were moving unified over the crunching grass leaving glyphs of dark smiles upon the ground behind them as they went through the salted vetch grown thick on the meadow and down the crooked fence line where they flushed a mountain bluebird that fluttered up the bluest thing in the pinto horsehide world and then arced over the field and was lost within the morning sun warming him and the horse and fusing their shadows cast upon the ground to a tattered and jangling entity of unity appearing then dissolving then appearing again as they went over the home ground and then up onto the road where they stopped and waited listening and the silence broken with the clop clop of the horse stepping over the blacktop going across and gaining soft earth again on the far side where the cadence of sound changed to goodluck goodluck goodluck as he urged the horse to a slow canter over the wide and tilted open country under the long sky leading to the mountain and they passed as a small dark shape over the land which was formed of cataclysm yet holy in its firmness and the horse made good time and soon they were among a blaze of yellow aspens where a passing wind ignited the trees with a sound like water rushing over stones or legions of hands clapping in a hall forever lonesome and they passed through and up onto the steeper slopes going up the shoulder of the mountain and he loosened the reins so the horse could drop its head close to the ground and pick its footing up a rocky draw where the going was easier than through the dense fir woods and the air smelled like cold water and the yellow ranks of tamarack and groves of birch raged impossible yellow and the vine maples along the draw burning red as they topped out under the high blue autumn sky almost purple at the edge of space. |
Steven Bird Bio Steven Bird was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, where his grandfather gave him one of his old bamboo fly rods when he was four years old, and he's lived a life based more or less around fishing ever since. Steve, along with his wife, watercolorist and illustrator Doris Ann Pease, settled in Northeastern Washington in 1974. |
Steve obtained his first guide license in 1980, but, that first year, was unable to convince a single soul that fly fishing the Upper Columbia was a worthwhile endeavor. Steven Bird is the author of Upper Columbia Flyfisher – Notes, Stories and Secrets from the Shining Reach, Amato Books Press. Featured Writings:
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