Stories

You never know when you might die. You can prepare for dangerous situations, but it’s the ordinary places that can take you; the neighborhood swimming pool, the road to a friend’s house, a day hike. When I was eight or nine lots of the girls had horses. There were very upscale English riding groups, and very down-scale western riding cliques. My friend Nancy and her friend Bug had ugly western horses out at the cheapest pasture near town. We didn’t go there often because it was a 2 ½ hour walk each way and involved negotiating with ranch dogs and a river crossing.

One summer day the three of us started out early. We were tired, hot and dusty by the time we reached the pasture. There were a couple of older boys from school hanging around the corral. We greeted them, and Nancy and Bug went to ride their horses, but it was too hot really, and they came back to lie in the pasture grass with us. The corral was a sloppy affair, full of rocks and loosely fenced in with a triple strand of barbed wire. The horses were let out on weekends to graze. There were about forty horses corralled.

"Look out for that mustard-colored horse", the boys told us. "Yeah, he was beaten by his last owners and he hates people. He’s real mean." They said

Out in the pasture grazed a solitary pony. He was very small, with a spotted pewter coat and white mane and tail. He was so tiny that he could work his way through the barbed wire fencing and escape the corral to the green grass. We walked over to see him. He was so fat that his stomach actually dragged on the ground.

"Look at how fat that pony is!" we laughed. "That can’t be good for him, let’s run him around and make him exercise!" so we chased the pony around and around the pasture until he tired of the game and sulking, went back into the corral to avoid us. We felt bad. We had ruined that pony’s day.

"Awww, he doesn’t want to be out here at all anymore! Look how hot he is in the corral". We decided that we would take some greens and lure him back out into the pasture and be nice to him. I gathered a big bunch of fresh dandelions and went into the corral to get him. Here came all the other horses wanting a bite. The pony edged away. I waved my arms to spook the other horses away and stepped deeper into the corral. That mean horse gave me a dirty look and side stepped away from me. Then he attacked! As I passed him he sprang from behind me.

The horse bit me in the center of the back, reared, pulling me up in the air, and proceeded to pummel and kick me repeatedly with his front hooves. I was helpless, suspended. The other children boiled through the fence, waving and shrieking, and the horse dropped me in the dust and galloped away. They dragged my body back to safety to the other side of the fence. Everybody’s face was white with terror. I could hardly move. They helped me over to the creek and put my legs into the ice water. It was difficult to stand up and the heel on one foot had taken a terrible blow; I couldn’t put weight on it. Blood was soaking through the back of my shirt. They lifted my shirt for a look and there was dead silence.

"I think we’d better start home" said one of the boys, and we began the long walk. I’d never had so much difficulty breathing. At Nancy's house they poured Peroxide over my back and gave me a clean shirt. They showed me in the mirror that I had an eight-inch ring of teeth marks punched through the skin in the center of my back. A few more seconds and the whole area might have torn off. I went home and went straight to bed.

The next morning I almost couldn’t move.. Every part of my body burned and ached. There was an enormous scab across my back. I inched my way gingerly down the stairs. When I reached the bottom step, my Dad rushed up and unexpectedly gave me a big hug. I nearly screamed.

But I thought to myself:

"If that horse had killed me, today my Dad would have missed me." and I felt glad.

___________________________________________

There were other close calls in common places; falling into the huge empty Jerome Hotel pool in the winter time. Falling in the Roaring Fork river. Falling out of trees. Falling off buildings

The Aspen Institute and Music School campus in Aspen were just another public park for those of us growing up in the town. The Institute auditorium building had an inverted roof for catching rainwater, lined with white plastic. During the cool spring months my friends and I would scale the building and drop down into the protected space, where we could laze around in the sun all day in privacy.

The music tent had a solid roof projecting to the center from the North side. In the winter they would take the tent down and we could walk up onto the roof from the high snowbanks. The center of the tent floor was sunken, forming an inclined amphitheater, and it was a long drop from the roof to the concrete at the center of the pit; maybe fifty or sixty feet.

On a summer night I was running around in the area with some boys and we hoisted each other up onto the solid roof, then walked to the center and climbed up onto the top of the canvas tent. It was a clear moonlit night, and with the mountains above before us and the huge white expanse of the tent spreading out below us it was a magical and surreal moment. When we were too chilled to stay any longer, we decided that the thing to do would be to slide down into the steep pleats of the tent roof to the ground, just like a mail chute.

One of the boys in the exuberance of our mood took a running leap. The tent was old at that time, degrading in the stark high-altitude sun and dry mountain air. When he hit the canvas one leg punched through the cloth. Being a skier, he leaned into his momentum and rode his top leg down the chute; with the canvas splitting open at his crotch the whole way down. There was a giant ripping noise and every one of us held our breath. If he leaned back he would fall through onto the concrete and iron benches. When we all got down he was shaking like a leaf. We called it a night.

Falling ceilings, even. We had for a time, a fort built inside one of the mining tunnels at the base of Shadow Mountain. One day we went back there and the whole thing had caved in during the night.

Authored By Jess Bates
Aspen CO                      

Reproduction allowed with attribution

www.jessbates.com
jessbates (at) gmail.com