Distinctly Montana Magazine

W W W. D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA NA . C O M 29 I had three mares confined. Two had already had their colts and the third, my adored quarter horse LuLu, was three weeks late and very uncomfortable. e saddle horses, five geldings, including two venerated pensioners in their twenties, stayed close to the corrals in their pasture because they were interested in these births and had proven to be doting uncles over the years. But in the summertime at first light, they were usually lying down asleep in the sun. Nothing moved, not even their tails, because it was still too cool for flies. I usually get up early and head to the bunkhouse, where I work. I don't always go straight in there as I try to suggest by my brisk departure. I worried that in that building, hunched over a legal pad still in the trance of sleep, I might feel irony was required and it was much too early for that; though in the early quiet, it is often to big issues one's mind wanders, guilt at all this tranquility, the feeling that I and my work had been diminished by thirty years of rusticating among the Missouri's smallest headwaters. At such times, I console myself with some literary anecdote like Mencken's remark that he didn't care how well Willa Cather wrote, he wasn't interested in anything that happened in Nebraska, a remark that blew up in Mencken's face like an exploding cigar. Or, I think of the ways Montaigne got everyone to visit him in the boondocks. And so on and so forth. I was carrying my coffee. A small river whispers around the edge of the yard and down behind the barn, a sparkling freestone river that springs from the mountain range I can see to the south. Its height changes daily according to melt-off and storms in the mountains, events I couldn't detect; but can see the dark rings around the stones when the river is falling, the shells of transforming stoneflies, the dart of yellow warblers crossing the river to their willow nests. LuLu had not been happy, not eating, strangely unimpressed by the snacks I kept in my coat, and after two weeks her broodiness had infected me. When I reached under to feel her taut udders, its heat and softness were pronounced; she pretended to lift a leg toward me with an annoyed grunt but I knew it was because she was sore. Her foal liked one side of her body one day and the next was on the other, pushing a knee around the side of LuLu's stomach. LuLu laid her ears back close to her head at this provoca- tion. It did seem that the nipples had faintly exuded some wax, which, just ahead of the colostrum, could mean imminent birth. LuLu was the tenderest of animals, D E PA R T M E N T L I T E R A R Y L O D E A Foal I T ISN'T REALLY SUMMER UNTIL THE SHELTER BELT ON THE EAST SIDE OF CORRALS LEAFS OUT. at makes all the difference because it blocks the sun in the first corral. It is also the time when, if you sit in the ancient Crow vision- quest site on the western side of the ranch, you will see the sun rise at the center of the valley in a remarkable suggestion of the first light of the world. by THOMAS McGUANE

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