Thank you for your service to the local equestrian community,
Karen and Eldon Reyer.
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It is with great love and admiration that we take a moment to honor the lives of Karen (1940-1921) and Eldon (1933-2022) Reyer . They gave of themselves to every community that they touched. And there were many not the least of which was NNMHA. Without Karen and Eldon's support over more than twenty years, our organization would not have prospered into what it is today. They were the backbone and the soul of NNMHA.
Thank you both. You are missed and will always be loved. Eldon's obituary Karen's obituary |
The Place
Eldon Reyer
There are places I know where time stands still. There is nothing behind you and everything ahead. But you don’t really think about what is ahead, you think of now. This relationship I have entered into is one of the moments, of now. Now has me in the saddle, on a gray horse, heading down the trails of pines and spruce and mountains and stream and meadow.
Behind me, connected to me by only my hand and a lead rope, is another gray horse, an almost identical match to the one I am riding. I call them by name, as if the were human compadres. We talk as we make our way along the ridge trails, their heads nodding and all I have to do is ride, and ride I do.
The evening dusk brings my compadres and I to a chosen camp. It is a good place with a meadow spread before me, room for the horses out in green grass and camp back with the lodge poles, and my kitchen down a ways. I ease off the gray’s back and stretch my muscles with that stiff-good, worked-hard feeling and straighten my back and begin to unload the packhorse. Thanking him. In a while, the horses have the hobbles and picket ropes on and are out there munching grass and swishing their long white tails. It’s time to get camp set up before dark.
The tack and packs are all stowed away for the night. The campfire is safely made on the gravel bar with the sound of a hawk circling in the dimming sky above, and all is right with the world. This is my world. I haven’t thought about anything but this world and I don’t think about not thinking about the other world. Lying on my bedroll with a warm cup of chocolate, I count my blessings. I give thanks for the place I am in and the compadres I share it with.
At dawn I rise in the cool and soak it in. A cup of coffee steams in my palm and it is cool enough to wear wool and I watch the horses and stand, and sip. I turn an ear to the sound of the hawk somewhere down meadow. From somewhere down there and the horses have their heads up at the peculiar sound and I tell them, “Don’t worry, Socorro and Leo Silver, it’s only a bird that doesn’t eat horses” and they go back to their grazing, their peaceful munching and calm snorting, as if they understand what I just said and maybe, just maybe.
As the day warms and the wool is packed away, I work fluidly and quickly. Everything has a routine: the packing, the padding, the hefting, and weighing. It must balance and feel right and go well on those straight, good equine backs or it will be off and my day will be long and uncomfortable. There is a lesson here, I think. A life of balance and padding and going right with the world. Too long between pack trips in the mountains and there is no balance and I wobble through the world off-kilter like a horse with a stone in his hoof.
I turn out of camp, saddle the horses and kick their manure around so it will break down quickly and look around, satisfied. The place looks untouched except for a little chewed grass. I swing up and feel those tight muscles again and damn, it feels good to be on a horse headed into wild country. Once again on the trails we swing to the squeak of saddle leather.
As the day warms and the sky opens up I smell the dust of the trails and the taste of it on my tongue. The smell of horse sweat and my own and the feel of soft muzzles nuzzling me as we stop for a cool lunch under a pine next to a gentle stream. Muscles turning hard with the riding. Eyes sharp for wildlife and riding, always riding. In camp, meals quickly eaten and my belly full and the satisfied feeling of everything going well and of the present. And I ride.
What an amazing thing to have an animal carry my hide up and over and through and far. And I grasp that here is the connection, the element that is everything: a partnership. A bond between man and animal that has lasted for thousands of years and only in the last one hundred has been forgotten by most. This is the animal that has carried our people to war and peace and beyond and then home and here is the connection and I think how damned lucky I am to have found it. It is a good, rich life, this life of mine. It is here before me and the partnership brings the balance to my being, the straightening of things so I can walk right and do well.
I’ve spent my life in the mountains and desert of National Parks, outside where a Park Ranger is at home and can breathe. You never really can see the country until you see it from the back of a horse. It’s an incredible feeling, moving down a trail on an animal you care for, looking ahead, seeing elk, deer and bear, traveling timber and meadow, fording streams swollen with snowmelt. Horses and wildlife fit. Aldo Leopold, the father of the wilderness concept, used horses to define wilderness. In 1921, he wrote, “By wilderness, I mean a continuous stretch of country preserved in its natural state, open to lawful hunting and fishing, big enough to absorb a two weeks’ pack trip....”
I believe there’s something about mountains and horses. Taken alone, they move your soul. Taken together, they move your life and take you to “the Place”.
Eldon Reyer
There are places I know where time stands still. There is nothing behind you and everything ahead. But you don’t really think about what is ahead, you think of now. This relationship I have entered into is one of the moments, of now. Now has me in the saddle, on a gray horse, heading down the trails of pines and spruce and mountains and stream and meadow.
Behind me, connected to me by only my hand and a lead rope, is another gray horse, an almost identical match to the one I am riding. I call them by name, as if the were human compadres. We talk as we make our way along the ridge trails, their heads nodding and all I have to do is ride, and ride I do.
The evening dusk brings my compadres and I to a chosen camp. It is a good place with a meadow spread before me, room for the horses out in green grass and camp back with the lodge poles, and my kitchen down a ways. I ease off the gray’s back and stretch my muscles with that stiff-good, worked-hard feeling and straighten my back and begin to unload the packhorse. Thanking him. In a while, the horses have the hobbles and picket ropes on and are out there munching grass and swishing their long white tails. It’s time to get camp set up before dark.
The tack and packs are all stowed away for the night. The campfire is safely made on the gravel bar with the sound of a hawk circling in the dimming sky above, and all is right with the world. This is my world. I haven’t thought about anything but this world and I don’t think about not thinking about the other world. Lying on my bedroll with a warm cup of chocolate, I count my blessings. I give thanks for the place I am in and the compadres I share it with.
At dawn I rise in the cool and soak it in. A cup of coffee steams in my palm and it is cool enough to wear wool and I watch the horses and stand, and sip. I turn an ear to the sound of the hawk somewhere down meadow. From somewhere down there and the horses have their heads up at the peculiar sound and I tell them, “Don’t worry, Socorro and Leo Silver, it’s only a bird that doesn’t eat horses” and they go back to their grazing, their peaceful munching and calm snorting, as if they understand what I just said and maybe, just maybe.
As the day warms and the wool is packed away, I work fluidly and quickly. Everything has a routine: the packing, the padding, the hefting, and weighing. It must balance and feel right and go well on those straight, good equine backs or it will be off and my day will be long and uncomfortable. There is a lesson here, I think. A life of balance and padding and going right with the world. Too long between pack trips in the mountains and there is no balance and I wobble through the world off-kilter like a horse with a stone in his hoof.
I turn out of camp, saddle the horses and kick their manure around so it will break down quickly and look around, satisfied. The place looks untouched except for a little chewed grass. I swing up and feel those tight muscles again and damn, it feels good to be on a horse headed into wild country. Once again on the trails we swing to the squeak of saddle leather.
As the day warms and the sky opens up I smell the dust of the trails and the taste of it on my tongue. The smell of horse sweat and my own and the feel of soft muzzles nuzzling me as we stop for a cool lunch under a pine next to a gentle stream. Muscles turning hard with the riding. Eyes sharp for wildlife and riding, always riding. In camp, meals quickly eaten and my belly full and the satisfied feeling of everything going well and of the present. And I ride.
What an amazing thing to have an animal carry my hide up and over and through and far. And I grasp that here is the connection, the element that is everything: a partnership. A bond between man and animal that has lasted for thousands of years and only in the last one hundred has been forgotten by most. This is the animal that has carried our people to war and peace and beyond and then home and here is the connection and I think how damned lucky I am to have found it. It is a good, rich life, this life of mine. It is here before me and the partnership brings the balance to my being, the straightening of things so I can walk right and do well.
I’ve spent my life in the mountains and desert of National Parks, outside where a Park Ranger is at home and can breathe. You never really can see the country until you see it from the back of a horse. It’s an incredible feeling, moving down a trail on an animal you care for, looking ahead, seeing elk, deer and bear, traveling timber and meadow, fording streams swollen with snowmelt. Horses and wildlife fit. Aldo Leopold, the father of the wilderness concept, used horses to define wilderness. In 1921, he wrote, “By wilderness, I mean a continuous stretch of country preserved in its natural state, open to lawful hunting and fishing, big enough to absorb a two weeks’ pack trip....”
I believe there’s something about mountains and horses. Taken alone, they move your soul. Taken together, they move your life and take you to “the Place”.