One Scary Site...Horse with no Rider...

It truly was a scary site..

Remember I live very rural.

Let me set the scene...Yesterday late afternoon around 4PM.  We had just come home from an incredible afternoon attending the Tamale Festival down in Indio (that will be my next post.)  We had just loaded up our booty (lots of tamales) in our truck and was headed home.  It was raining and had for the past hour or so.  As we turned the bend, Andy says, "Look, I see a horse running over there".  He was pointing to a meadow which a home owner does keep his horses over there but the horse was runinng  too far and I knew the cowboy had moved his horses to another facility down the hill for the winter.

As we passed the horse, we both realized at the same time that this horse had a saddle on it but no rider!  Andy flipped a U turn immediately, then we watched as the horse started running towards the road!  Andy starts blowing the horn and incredibly the horse starts running parallel to the road!  I roll down my window, stretch halfway out of the truck and grab her reins.  I don't even remember getting out of the truck.  Boy, she was terrified!  Eyes wide open, mouth foaming, open wounds, man oh man, this is not good.  I was talking to her, calming her down, walking her around looking around at the vast area getting sick to my stomach, knowing she has a rider out there somewhere.  It's cold, damp, raining with snow, and to top it off, it was getting dark. 

At that time, a car pulled up and asked if she was our horse we told him no and he said he was going to start looking for the rider in the area that he first saw the horse running.  What a sinking feeling I had.  Across the street, there is  a rental riding stables and we walked her over there and put her into a corral to further check her out.  For the most part, she was pretty good, but the saddle, oh the leather on the side of the saddle was gone.  I thought I was going to throw up!  

About 45 minutes later, here comes the car with the rider in it!!!  He wasn't your cowboy type, actually looked like he should have gotten off a Harley, not a horse.  Black pants, black jacket, black shoes and a black and white bandanna on his head.  He got out of the car limping and gave many many thanks to the driver.  I am sorry now that I didn't get the driver's name.  I yelled out to him as he was driving off "We make a great team!"

The rider said "Man, I thought I was going to die today, it terrified me!"   He was shaking horribly. I was pretty sure he had a consussion and when I asked if I could take him to the hospital, he said no, he just wanted to get back to the house.  Unfortunately, he didn't know where the house was!!!  He had been visiting his girlfriend who just moved out there and he lived in LA.  He just wanted to take the horse for a "quick ride" along Pacific Crest Trail (that is going to be a future post). He was going up a narrow trail and the horse slid in the mud and starting falling to the left down a cliff!  He fell backwards and she caught herself before a drop he said of over 300 feet!  She took off and there he was all by himself.

He was completely lost.  So Andy started asking him specific questions and all the rider could say is the house he is staying at is a log cabin, WOW, we are in trouble!  There are log cabins EVERYWHERE!!!  So we got in the truck and started driving in the direction of the PCT (Pacific Crest Trail).  He said it was past a blue house (WHUUUT!)  I sat in the back and kept praying and praying hard..  We only had about 15 minutes before it was totally dark and now the snow and rain was coming down HARD!

We took one dirt road, needless to say it all dirt road here.  He said this is the road where she lived at and we turned around and went back to the corral.

He looked her over and got on.  She was so calm, what a good girl...and Andy and I followed him all the way home, to make sure he was ok.  As we turned the truck around to leave, the rider yelled out, "Thank you so much man, I love you two and I thank God you were there"!

Come to think of it now, we never got his name either.

When it was all said and done and we were just pulling up to the garage, that is when I lost it and started crying and couldn't stop.  Why?  To know that person was out there by himself and had no clue where he was.  For the horse, who was terrified to be without his rider and not know where he was running, just to run to get safe.   That people, out of the blue, stopped and helped, without knowing what was in front of them.


I truly believed in my heart that God put us there right then and there for that man, along with the other driver.  There are angles in our lives and yesterday the three of us were that man's angel.

I am happy to say that his story had a happy ending versus what it could have been.  I still woke up this morning with the fear what could have happened...What a blessing.

Now to go eat a tamale!