Night Maneuvers

There was a horse neighing madly two nights ago. It sounded agonizing. Layne somehow figured out how to sleep through the row but I was sitting outside in our luxurious recliner reading “Barbarian Days” a surfing memoir, of all things captivating, by William Finnegan. The horse prompted me to investigate its apparently dire condition. 

Rancho Acosta is a working farm  tucked away out of sight behind the luxury pool and fifty dollar hotel rooms. Rusty likes wandering the campgrounds we stay in as they don’t tend to hide street dog ambushes, consequently he and I have walked and stumbled most of the paths through the abandoned projects in the back of the walled compound that protects us from the world outside. 

It was eleven o’clock at night and Finnegan was still enjoying surfing Australia when I shut the Kindle app on my iPhone and lumbered to my feet to go sort out the damned neighing horse. I imagined it might be stuck or something similar, trapped in barbed wire or threatened by raccoons or some other impending disaster. What I would do when I found it was unclear but I assumed my initiative would come to the rescue of myself and the horse. 

I stumbled back through the debris in the dark campground picking my way and listening to the ever present horse still clearly in distress on the other side of the wall and I wasn’t going to be able to do anything for it  from inside the campground.

I had to accept the need for a good long trudge up to the campground  entrance  and then turn left  on the street to go past the cemetery and then find the bloody horse down below the hill somewhere. The driveway  in question  seen in daylight: 

Headlamps make me feel like a suburban idiot pretending to be a coal miner so I was not in a great mood as I stumped up the endless drive in the dark with the beam from my headlamp jerking around at the slightest movement from my head. 

With my headlamp jerking around wildly I tried to keep an eye on where I was stepping. In daylight the road past Rancho Acosta, hidden by scrubby bushes is just dusty dirt. At night the cemetery wall throws added darkness and every rock is a potential ankle twister. Luckily I don’t believe in ghosts or that dread would have put paid to the entire expedition by requiring me to turn back before I encountered the nameless horrors of the cemetery’s undead. 

Rusty hung back a bit, watching as  I went out into the unknown, then he followed me closely and eventually passed me, trotting ahead as I strode downhill to look for the horse in distress. Apparently no one else in hearing gave a damn or had superhuman sleeping abilities (like Layne back aboard GANNET2) because the frantic neighing continued at ear shattering intervals and no one else was moved to help the animal. 

The cemetery (“Pantheon” in Mexico) looked lovely and evocative like the Key West above ground cemetery of fond memory. Rusty rooted around as I stopped at the locked gate to snag a couple of pictures. No evil spirits made themselves known (as usual; they never appear for me). Lacking scary stories to hold me back I could hear the horse continuing to call out and I still felt obliged to continue my quixotic quest for its relief. Had I seen a ghost I’d have turned back most likely, but no such luck. 

It wasn’t hard to figure out where the horse was. Rusty was having no part of this phase of the walk and wandered off into the night preferring not to commune with animals ten times his size. The horse was lurking almost out of headlamp range and was fine of course, lonely all by itself in a huge field. It trotted off calmly when it saw me and that was a piece of luck as otherwise I’d have had to do battle with a barbed wire fence and I’ve been rather hard on my shirts this trip. I have three slightly darned ones left after various encounters with dogs thorns and fence posts…and had I been forced to get into the field with the horse I’d probably be down to two torn up shirts by now. 

The walk back seemed rather long and dreary, a lesson in minding my own business, as the neighing continued only slightly abated, but at least I knew the creature was okay. The campground dog found her courage and appeared back at GANNET2 in time for refreshments, a cookie for the dogs and water for me accompanied by Layne’s symphony of heavy breathing in B flat major and the staccato brass of the lonely horse all by itself in the field. 

Which is why in a more compassionate world you will see at least a goat happily grazing next to a contented, silent horse. Horses like company and apparently this one did not like being left alone all night. Especially next to that cemetery full of who knows what that might have been lurking within?