Winter is like a hospice patient – you know that she won’t be around much longer, but that she’s not going without a fight. Ron, my Taekwondo teacher, said today that there is going to be one more winter storm. He mentioned going out and seeing his garden covered with snow. I remember that particular storm. It was the one in which Anne Corinne and Steve’s Icelandic pony arrived at their place. It was snowing hard. The horse didn’t mind.

I do not know what became of that horse. From what I could see, he ended up having a very easy life – the daughter who was gifted with this horse had many things going on in her life, and doing horse related things was not one of them. We had four horses here at the time, and so we didn’t have the room for more.

Trillium riding Tinni

I’d have at least one more Icelandic horse if we lived in a place with more room. I would, I would, I would. There were photos in the New York Times of Icelandic horses arriving at Kennedy International Airport in New York. They were to be in stables for the length of their quarantine period before being shipped to Vermont, California, and upstate New York. One of the two looked like a show horse – it was sleek and well groomed. The other, which was being led, looked like a shaggy family horse.

Seeing those pictures, I momentarily forgot that I live very, very far from New York, and that it would cost at least $30,000 to get the horse from Iceland to here.

Money would be no object if I’d been working and saving money. As it is, I am penniless. And I am wondering where our next load of hay is going to come from. We have perhaps a month’s worth in the barn. I’m not going to fret. Someone, somewhere, has hay. We are just going to have to pay, gulp, $30.00 a bale or more. Had we acted a month ago, we might have paid $20.00 a bale.

Yesterday’s ride was good, but the horses are woefully out of shape. Both Raudi and Hrimmi broke into a sweat on the return trip home and hadn’t dried off last night. Fortunately, it was warm. Spring is fighting hard for supremacy.

I thought I might get a ride in today; I had no such luck. I am now assisting Pete in developing the literacy component of the Bright Lights Book Project. Today I talked to Greg Hill, the founder of Guys Read, Girls Read, which is a literacy-based program in Fairbanks. He said they need books for the boys, for their school-based lunch program, in multiples of 60. I said I could help out. And yes, I sent him photos of two sets of books this evening.

Could I live in Fairbanks? Most definitely if I had a heated barn and a decent sized pasture and a nice place to live. This would be a tall order, and I’m told that I’m short.

Next: 78. 3/20/24: Crunch Time