Remember when I blogged about the New York Times coming to our house to interview us and take our photos? Well, I have just received an email from our very own Tracy, informing me that the piece is up on the Times’ website. You can view it here.

There’s a slideshow on the Times site and I’ve nabbed some photos to post here.  The photographer, Andrew Sullivan, was really great, as was Beth Maker, the reporter.

Now do you see why I love that grey horse almost more than life itself?  Have you ever seen a horse with a sweeter expression. Love.

Here I am trying to be all pose-y.

Well, it’s hard being photographed next to HIM.  He always looks good..

I’m still trying to sort our how to arrange photos in this new format.  Is it weird to have typing in between the photos like this?

Here’s a shot of our home:

Please go on the site if you want to see the slideshow.  There are a few blog mentions, so everybody on their best behavior tonight.  Tea bags are for brewing tea!

A few weeks ago, I received a call from my book publicist. He told me that he had just given my agent’s phone number to somebody at Town and Country magazine.  Town and Country had an idea for me, he said. He actually used the word “collaboration.”  It was something they wanted me to write. They would be in touch by the end of the day

My first thought was that Town and Country wanted me to write an article for them.  But why wouldn’t they just contact me directly?  And why did they use the word “collaboration” and want to speak with my agent?  Suddenly, I knew what they were after.  Town and Country wanted me to write a column for them.  A regular column in which I would cover all my exciting goings on in town…and in the country.  It would be sort of like this blog – but I would get paid.  A lot.

I actually rushed out and bought Town and Country, and after leafing through its glossy pages, I realized why they wanted me.  They needed me.  This is one dull magazine.  Where to Shop, Where to Stay, What to Buy –  do people even care about stuff like that anymore?  No, thought I, they most certainly do not.

I was then stricken with this toxic combination of self-delusion and self-glorification that was escalating by the second and making it hard for me to sit still.  The publishers of Town and Country needed somebody to change the whole tone of the magazine and they knew just the gal to do it.  With a zippy column penned by me, about the really important things in the Town (where you can safely lock your bike, best dog parks, cool movie premieres) and the Country (horses, dogs,attack sheep, cool author interviews) they would have to brace themselves for the swelling circulation, the demands for space from advertisers and the need to start throwing an annual Town and Country Oscar party, hosted by … well, me!

Everywhere I looked I saw an idea for my column.  Everyone I spoke to became interesting future interviewees for my column.  Oh, my column.  My beautiful, beautiful column.

Well, the day ended with no call from my agent (whom I, of course had alerted to be on standby for their call).

The next day, still no call.

About a week later, I received a call from a friend in my town who is also a writer.  She was writing a piece for Town and Country!  Could she possibly have a photographer take photos of me riding my horse in Steep Rock for her piece?

So, they didn’t really want me to write a column.  I found out from a friend that Town and Country was looking for names of writers in the area, to write this piece, and my name was one.  My friend was the other.

I’m not exactly in a shame/self-loathing spiral.  It’s more like a little shame/self-loathing curtsy.

Well, yesterday, I had to leave the country to go to the town. I took a few photos with my iphone so that I could fool around with the photo placement capabilities of the new blog format.  I like how you can place them side-by-side.

I took the photo to the right while driving over my “Bridge of Sighs.”  It’s the bridge I must drive over every time I enter or leave our area.  I always sigh at the beauty of the lake, whenever I cross it, though it does have a rather spooky history.

When I arrived in the city I took a picture of the George Washington Bridge. Entering Manhattan, the way I do, on the Westside Highway has got to be the most beautiful drive into any American city.  The mighty Hudson is on your right, the George Washington Bridge looms ahead, and if you’re stuck in traffic, you can watch the trucks and cars crossing its span, carrying cargo and executives and musicians and waitresses and maybe even a writer or two into and out of the city.  There are massive barges being guided up and down the river by tugboats.  There’s a boat basin where sailboats bob up and down during nicer weather and there’s even a little lighthouse at the base of the George Washington Bridge, though you can’t see it when you’re driving. We have an apartment downtown, and I’m finally used to that hole in the sky where the WTC towers once stood.  Instead I focus on all the beautiful parks that have sprouted up along the river in the last decade or so. I love New York.

Yes, I took this photo while driving. Yes, I know, I know.

Somebody needs a little horsey Prozac:
He was just sad to be left behind today. Have I mentioned that I’m rather fond of this horse?
Well, I was up with the dawn to feed the horses and then I met up with the Little Britches gang at the Washington Horse Show. The Washington Horse show is an annual horse show to benefit Steep Rock Land Preserve and there is a category for handicapped riders. I assisted three young riders who all won ribbons (deservedly so, they all did an outstanding job). Then, when the Little Britches riders went home, it was still early so I drove home, watched Denis and his friends play street hockey for a nanosecond, then loaded up Snoopy, picked up Jen and a new horse she’s trying out and headed BACK to Steep Rock, just to see how the new horse would do with the show crowd and the trails and the river and everything. New horse (yet unnamed – have at it, blog readers) did wonderfully.
He’s a Paint Horse, which is a type of horse that usually has large white splotches on a darker colored coat. Sometimes it’s the opposite – dark splotches on a white coat. This horse has a white splotch that looks like the continent of Africa on his rump. I wish I took a photo of that. I thought Africa might be a good name, but Jenny already has a mare called India.

Well behaved Paint Horse with Africa on his butt is for sale by the way. Christmas is just around the corner!

(Blogger’s note – photos below were added later. They were sent by our friends whom we saw at the show):

And to prove you can hug your horse with helmet on:

It was just another gorgeous fall day. When I arrived home, I let Snoopy graze in the yard while Denis and I sat outside, and I heard all the gossip about this week on the set, while the dogs put on a show:


Then I hung with Mark a little. Sorry about the dumpster. It’s still there from my dehoarding weekend with Meg.

I’ve blogged before about what a spooky time of year this is, here in New England. The days are getting shorter, but our windows are still open so we can hear all sorts of madness outside, which makes some of us a little mad inside. During the last full moon, I had a terrible time sleeping. The next morning, I was talking to a friend who lives in a neighboring town, and he said that he had been sitting out on his porch until three in the morning, unable to sleep as well.

“It was the coyotes screeching that kept me up,” I said.

“Oh no, that was me,” he quickly replied. “I’m surprised my cries of anguish carried that far.”

Last night I got a little spooked again. I was standing at the back door, calling in the dogs, before I went to bed. I leave the screen door closed when I call the dogs, because I believe that the past few times we’ve had bat invasions, they flew in over my head while I was yodeling out the door for my dogs. So, last night, I was calling away, when I noticed a small piece of paper that somebody had slipped in between the screen and the frame of our screen door. It was on the outside, so I opened the door and removed the paper. On it was a name, which appeared to be Cory or Rory, and a phone number with a local prefix.

I studied the paper carefully, then looked out into the darkness, my heart racing. We live in the middle of nowhere. If a civilized person drove up the driveway, they would have left their number at the front door. You would have to come creeping out of the woods to leave your number at our back door. You would have to be a madman who came creeping out of the woods.

Who was this Rory (or Cory)?

I studied the number. There was something familiar about it. The last digits were (let’s say) 1212. I kept repeating them over and over. 1212, 1212. There was just something about the number. I remembered that you can do a reverse phone number search so, after the dogs came inside, I went to my laptop and shakily typed in the entire number. That’s when I realized who it was. It was me. That’s our number. I looked at the slip of paper, now, with my glasses on, and saw that it said, Leary, not Cory or Rory and that it was followed by our number. Then I realized that we had the screen replaced, recently, as a certain mentally challenged member of our pack leapt through it not long ago, leaving a hole that was like one of those cartoon silhouettes of her body.

Mystery solved. The screen door people had stuck our name and number on our new screen. It only took me 45 minutes (of hyperventilating inner hysteria) to solve the whole thing. Really, I should offer up my services to the Feds. There is no mystery I can’t solve, given ample time and a working computer, as long as the culprit is me.

This is what I managed to do before I got kicked in the head by a horse today:
Yes, I was going to have hard-boiled eggs for breakfast. I put the eggs in the water, set the pot on the burner and said to myself, remember what happened last time! Mustn’t forget the eggs! Then I decided to run upstairs to answer a couple of emails and …yadda, yadda, yadda…what’s that funny smell coming from downstairs?

People, I can’t tell you how many times I have done this. A timer. Why don’t I set a timer?

So I had oatmeal for breakfast, then trailered Mark to my friend Jen’s again. Jenny and I are trying to get our very unfit horses into shape. We think we might take them to a few hunter paces this year. So, off we went. It was chilly and sunny and windy today, which I love. I just love the fall. We rode through fields, up and down hills. We admired a wonderful old tree with a very inviting swing hanging from one of its branches.

Can you see it?

It was just one of those days when you think, if my life ended right now, I would die a happy woman. And then my life almost ended and I realized that I wouldn’t die a happy woman, I would die a very angry woman with a horseshoe embedded in her brain.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here. First I want to explain that my daughter went to a 4/H camp for a couple of summers. The kids all brought their little ponies to camp. Dev brought Snoopy. On the first day of 4/H camp, the kids are shown a film called Every Ride, Every Time. It’s a safety film about the importance of wearing helmets when riding horses. There are all sorts of testimonials from bereaved parents and spouses of people who were killed because they were riding without helmets. The film was very effective because after watching, Dev and her friends didn’t want to be in the same county with a horse without helmets on. So, I always ride with a helmet. Except for the other day, of course, when I took it off so Dev could take my picture.

I didn’t want to be photographed wearing the dorky helmet. I put it on after the photo. Thank goodness a gigantic tree limb didn’t come crashing down behind us as it did today, causing Mark and Levi to spook and Mark to spin so rapidly that I was caught unprepared (I was slouched back in the saddle, gossiping to Jen, the rein dangling from my fingertips) and I was unseated and fell under my horse and then was kicked HARD in the head with his big metal horseshoe-clad hoof. He didn’t mean to kick me, my head was just in the way of his flailing hooves.

Well, I was wearing a helmet. I stood up and said, “I was kicked in the head!” Jen had caught Mark and she asked if I was okay. I just stood there for a moment, waiting for gray matter to come seeping out of my ears, for my frontal lobe to suddenly burst out of my forehead, but I realized that I was fine. My head didn’t hurt at all. There was dirt up my nose and in my eyes – I had done a faceplant – my neck and shoulder were sore, but my head was fine, thanks to this amazing helmet:

When I arrived home, Denis was lying out in the sun, enjoying his last days of vacation (they start shooting again on Monday). I told him about getting kicked in the head.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“I’m not sure,” I said.

“Do you feel disoriented?”

“Yes,”

“Confused?”

“Yes, terribly!”

“Did you remember to pick up that stuff I asked you to get while you were in the Depot?”

“No.”

“So you’re your normal self?”

“Yes, yes I am.”

But I have learned my lesson. Every ride, every time.

I feel that Snoopy has been underrepresented on this site. I adore Snoopy, but as I’ve blogged before, he’s a little bit too laid back at times. He just likes to chill:
But today, I decided to load him onto the trailer and take him to my friend Jen’s farm for a ride. I urge you to click on the link and look at the pictures of one of the most beautiful farms in Connecticut (in my opinion).
When we arrived, Jen and her horse Levi were waiting for us and we headed into the Hidden Valley Land Preserve, which is actually a part of Steep Rock. There’s a beautiful pine stand in Hidden Valley:

We went into the river, which the horses love:

Levi, really gets carried away with the splashing. We were all soaked:

The boys were conspiring to dump us, I believe:

When we returned, we saw young Oliver, who was two days old when he was last on this blog. He’s a big boy now:

Then I loaded up Snoopy, and Jen’s beautiful Aussies, Rugby and Flora, bid me farewell. Have you ever seen a more beautiful pair? They both competed in sheepherding trials this weekend and earned titles.

Gorgeous!

Yesterday I had no photos. Today, I had a photographer – my daughter Dev.

She and Daphne came along to Steep Rock. I went for a ride, she and Daphne for a hike and to take photos. Here are a few:

I’m very unhappy with my camera situation. Don’t ever take out a warranty on anything but a car, that’s my advice to you. I took out a dumb warranty on this camera at Best Buy and it was supposed to cover anything that you could do to the camera. You could run the camera over with the car and they would fix it or replace it, said they. “I’ll take it!” said I, and handed over a giant wad of cash.

Now, the camera is damaged. I took it in, and and the customer service guy told me to take it to the “Geek Squad” desk. I don’t think the Geek Squad concept is nearly as cute as Best Buy does. I handed the camera to a true geek and he promised, in spitting, stammering sentences, to send it off for repairs. If they couldn’t repair it, he drooled, they would replace it with a brand new camera. This pleased me very much. Several weeks later, the geek returned my old camera. When I went to take a picture, it made the same grinding sound it had made when I gave it to them. And I can’t bear to face another geek.

Oh, how I loved my old camera. They’ll never replace it. They’ll keep geeking around with the old one.
So, for now, I’ll have to just use my words. Yesterday was a glorious day – there’s just no other way to describe it.

I decided to groom up Mark and take him to Steep Rock for a ride. Mark has been in a field all summer and was wearing the field on his coat and in his long, bushy mane. Mark’s mane doesn’t grow like most horses’ manes. Instead of lying flat along his neck, it grows out and up. It’s a little like Don King’s hair and it collects all sorts of flora and fauna in it’s coarse and shockingly upright strands. So yesterday I took the clippers to the mane and sheared the whole thing off. This is called “roaching” the mane. I think in England they call it “hogging” the mane. Anyway, whenever I do it, it takes me a few days to get used to his new look. I think that men often look a little boyish when they first get a haircut, and the same is true for Mark. He looks very off to school in in his big boy pants. I’ll try to get a photo today.

So we went to Steep Rock and Mark hasn’t been there in a while so he was a little bit jazzed. I think I’ve blogged about this before (am to lazy to provide a link), but when you ride a nervous horse it can make you nervous. When we humans are nervous, we sometimes hold our breath. So do horses. So, when a horse notices that his rider is holding her breath, he will become very anxious indeed. An older, experienced horse person once told me that when riding out alone on a nervous horse, it’s a good idea to sing, as you cannot hold your breath while singing. Also, the vibrations you produce are soothing to the horse. This is absolutely true, I have tested it many, many times.

I must interrupt my little story here to restate my vows of love and devotion to my Ford Diesel F-350 pickup truck that my husband so thoughtfully earned for me. I LOVE this truck. I used to just haul the horses in order to get them to the place where I can ride. Now, I enjoy the hauling almost as much as the riding and have often thought I might just load up the horses for a spin around town and then bring them back home. One of the things I love about the truck is that you can plug your ipod into the dashboard and your songs come out of the stereo! Yes, I know that most new cars have this technology, but my car isn’t very new, so this is extremely thrilling for me.

I have many playlists on my ipod, and yesterday I was listening to one I have titled “Torch Songs.” They’re all great love songs sung by Etta James, Dinah Washington, Norah Jones, Aretha Franklin, etc. Songs of yearning for men. Songs begging men to love the singer. I just love these songs, so yesterday, we were clip-clopping down the deserted trail and I was singing,

Take me to he..a..rt, and I’ll always love you
And nobody can make me do wrong
Take me for granted, leaving love unshown
Makes will-power weak and temptation strong….

and

Will it ever cloy
This odd diversity of misery and joy
I’m feeling quite insane and young again
And all because I’m mad about the bo-o-o-y

Of course, it never fails that when I hit the notes that are most at odds with my very limited range, I encounter a horrified hiker. I’m not joking now, I’ve seen people run.
I don’t do the songs justice, but I love these songs and I hesitate to share this, but when I’m singing them on the trail, I’m singing them all to Mark. I’m just mad about that boy.

Old, pre-roach photo taken at Steep Rock
Our favorite view:

Photo by Moses Pendleton

On Thursday, as many of you know, I was in a bit of a funk about the condition of my house. It’s just that I was away for much of the summer and then, when I returned, I saw all the work that needs to be done. When you live in a house everyday, you don’t see the clutter. Or at least I don’t. So, I was sort of spinning wheels, moving piles of books from one place to another, muddling over whether or not to keep a pair of old tights or throw them away, when I got a call from the Pendleton-Quinn household. Would I like to come over for tea? There was something so wonderful and childishly rebellious about running outside when I was supposed to be cleaning my room – running off to play with my friends. Well, it was a beautiful, beautiful afternoon, too nice a day to be doing housework!

When I arrived at their house, Cynthia and Moses were standing on their wide wrap-around Victorian porch, looking out at the light. The natural afternoon light. They are planning an event that will take place in their backyard in two weeks. It’s a fundraiser for the Susan B. Anthony Project – an area organization that provides shelter and counseling for battered women. They’re having a cocktail party/dance performance with their dance company Momix and they needed to decide where the dancers would perform, where the people would watch, etc. It was the exact time in the afternoon that the performance would take place and they wanted my opinion on some of the decisions regarding these matters. I was so wildly flattered that they wanted my advice, that I only scolded them a few dozen times about the fact that they hadn’t invited me to the party.

“It’s a fundraiser – people bid on it at an auction,” they replied.

“Well, okay, I’m coming, if you insist,” I said.

After we had discussed the party and admired Moses’ garden, we all decided to ride bikes over to the farm where Moses leases land to grow his beloved sunflowers. The ride over to the farm was so bucolic and scenic. Moses and Cynthia only live ten minutes from me, but if felt like I was in another world. We arrived at the farm and there were fields of sunflowers all around us. Moses has rows and rows, acres and acres of sunflowers. He tends to them all day, everyday, during their growing season. He uses them as inspiration for his choreography, most recently in his show, Botanica, but mostly, he just cares for them because it’s his calling. He loves his sunflowers like children. He grows them for the pleasure of watching them grow. He’s a true artist in that he works to create beauty – for beauty’s sake. Not for profit or show. Just to create and nurture and photograph and admire beauty.

Photo by Moses Pendleton

When we arrived, the sun was settling low on the fields and it provided a wonderful backlighting to the flocks of brilliant flowers that surrounded us. You notice the light, when you’re with Moses. The light, the delicate fuzz on the stalk of a sunflower; the way an opening blossom looks like the crowning of a baby’s head during birth; the way that a sunflower has shimmering hues of purple and green in its center; the way that the surrounding wheat grass has a golden, hazy crown on the top of its stalk.

There were several different stands of sunflowers. Moses had them separated by types. We walked up to a patch of sunflowers that were all about eye-level with me. There was something girlish and adolescent about their stature. They were slender and of a type that doesn’t grow into the towering one-eyed monsters of the mammoth variety. These dainty sunflowers all faced the same direction, oddly, away from the sun, and Moses positioned me in front of them and I got to have the experience of having all eyes on me, they way he does each day. It felt like they were waiting for me to offer them something – like I was their sun, and since I was facing them, and the setting sun, my face was warm, and… well … it was really something.

I told Moses that I thought that sunflowers followed the sun during the day, that their big, brilliant heads always faced the sun. Moses explained that during most of their growth, they do that, but when they reach maturity, they stop following the sun. In the morning, they may be facing it, but in the evening, they keep it on their backs. They are their own sun now. Their heads are so heavy and full of pollen and seeds, they don’t need any more sustenance. They’re sort of like people, in their middle years, I thought, as Moses, Cynthia and I pedaled off on our bikes. At a certain age, you become saturated with the knowledge that comes from a lifetime of alternating darkness and light, until one day, you’re just your own source of light. Your own sun.

We rode home in the dusk, we three, past fields of hay, and darkening woods. We were home before dark, and then, I went back to cleaning my room.

Photo by Moses Pendleton

Yesterday I went to Steep Rock twice. In the morning, I took Mark. It was sunny and so chilly that I had to wear gloves. Perfect riding weather. We came across my friend Helen and her son Rowan on the trail.

Helen competes in triathlons, and her son is obviously a swift little fellow. Mark is still on the tubby side and we were left in their dust. My friend Leah started jogging past and we kept pace with her for awhile because Leah and I needed to chat. Eventually, I said goodbye to her and I steered Mark over to the old railroad bed that runs along the road.

The footing is excellent there and I thought it would be very cool for Leah to see us gallop off. So I urged Mark forward and as he struck a canter, my camera bounced from my pocket and landed in a giant puddle. All my foul language brought Leah over to investigate and she kindly dried off the camera and handed it to me. It still takes pictures but it makes very strange grinding noises when you turn it on and off and I’m afraid it’s not long for this world. We’re going on a trip next week and I’ll need a camera, so I might have to get a new one. Love my camera. It’s a Canon PowerShot SX100. Almost every photo on this blog was shot with the camera.

Then yesterday afternoon, I went back to Steep Rock to meet with Bruce, the cool rocker guy, and his friend Rachel. Bruce had told me, when we first met, that he had some very interesting stories about strange, sort of supernatural incidents at Steep Rock, so of course I wanted to hear about them. As I have blogged here, in the past, I believe in paranormal experiences, but have a bit of a grudge against ghosts, because they usually ignore me. I hate being snubbed by the supernatural.

But I do feel that Steep Rock is a magical place. I’m drawn to it so often because I feel renewed by the energy there. And there are certain places along the trail where Mark always stops and spooks and carries on, where I imagine there’s some kind of ghost or spirit that is, of course, not interested in me, but focuses all its wickedness on Mark.

Yesterday morning, I was riding along the river thinking that if we are allowed to come back and haunt places after death, I will choose this place, and haunt the riverside. So imagine my amazement when Bruce told me that he has encountered ghostly female presences in Steep Rock! He believes these spirits are similar to the Cailleach spirits found in Scotland and Ireland. Click on the link if you want to find out more. I think I share some traits with these Cailleach hags, and I’m not the only one I know. They are believed to herd deer, Sandy! Anyway, we spent hours talking about Native American and Druid spirits. I was interested in his experiences for my book, but I was also just interested in hearing his experiences in a place I find so compelling. Bruce is VERY in tune with and interested in the spirit world. I told him that I was surprised, when I moved to Connecticut by the fact that virtually everybody I know here believes in ghosts.

The same is true in rural Ireland, where Denis’s relatives live. A person can have multiple PhDs and still talk very seriously about the ghosts that they see and hear all the time. In New York, if you tell a person you believe in ghosts, they will very likely assume you’re insane. Bruce lives in the city and we discussed the possibility that all the worldly noise and energy in the city creates a sort of static that drowns out the ghostly vibes that people in the country see and feel.

I also shared with him my only experience with paranormal goings-on in my house. That would be the toast ghost. I mentioned this in a recent comment. Every afternoon, around 4:00, my house is filled with the smell of toast. It smells like somebody is toasting bread in the toaster. BUT THERE”S NOBODY HOME BUT ME!

Hope you can sleep tonight after hearing about the toast ghost. I know it’s frightfully weird and scary but I swear it’s true.