Following a quiet run of rainless days, a hammering downpour, with no warning, yanked folks out of bed to close windows and double check doors.
While impressive, it proved to be too short — and at the wrong seasonal time. Good for lawns and gardens, but not good enough, or timely enough to spur plans of planting crops.
I’d been under the weather, and the rough rain yanked me abruptly awake, pushing me to groggily pull on denims and rain gear. I was sliding under a lengthy piece of plastic with a hole chopped in the middle for protection against mountainside downpours. Outside, I began rounding up an easy-going gray gelding as Eufemio Silva showed up grinning, astride a slightly-drenched gelding.
“For somebody who’s sick, you seem ready to go.” He called out.
Gritting, I pulled my gray beside a step-up in the driveway. Jamming my left boot into a stirrup, I laboriously hauled myself aboard, gritting at the pain. “Your saddle wet?” I asked. My finicky back didn’t like the saddle. I grimaced, trying to find a comfortable seat. This equestrian adventure was turning into a challenge.
“Just a little drizzle.” Femio shook his head as we started off. “Your back hurting?”
It had suddenly turned cold in the Jalisco highlands. Like me, Femio had a sweatshirt on under a denim jacket and a wide slice of transparent plastic. I was chilled and hoping it wouldn’t rain a lot more as we went after a small herd of our combined livestock — cattle and four horses. We ran our stock together on a mountainside known as Las Agraciadas. It abruptly was now being brushed by a coleman — a westerly wind from Colima — that turned our breaths white. It also made our limbs stiff as we had tied rope, cinched stiff leather.
Rocks clattered, and brittle weeds rattled as we cut along a narrow boulder-strewn burro path. The stubby end of the rainy season had appeared well exhausted. Still, the recent crazy weather meant the burro trail had become battered by the hard-weather struggles.
I hadn’t been out on that trail in some while. The pain in my neck, back and lower legs made me swear. My equestrian adventure was seeming to be a bad idea.
We each had one crazy mount in the herd that called for special attention. Femio was in good shape to handle that, but my attempt to keep up with his keen control was clearly laggard.
To completely ease pain, I had to keep my mount at a walk, which was useless for the herding we needed to do. Instead, I had to put my gelding into a smooth — not choppy — gallop which luckily he usually possessed. But anything else tended to create lancing pain in back, legs, even stirruped feet. I gritted my teeth, as we kept herding despite balky moments, trying to get over that as briskly and smoothly as possible.
Then accidentally, a well-protected swath of green appeared. It included guaba, fuaje, agave and a list of other attractive trees at its edges. Just this sudden crowd of so much lavish greenery made even me — hauled to a slow pace of change — happy.
“How you feeling?” Femio asked with a grin. I recognized weird flights of pain.
“Stabs like hell, but that mini forest takes one’s mind off it more than a little,” I said, rubbing the painful places.
“Pos, we have to come back here fast to make this horse and cow garden perfect, keeping our best stock close at hand.” Femio grinned. “We’ve both been here before and it has never been as lush as it is now. A tonelada of luck, amigo.”
He was one of those friends who recognizes good luck when it slides into view. My bitching about pain didn’t irritate him. He knew what good luck looked like and how to use it.
We’d had warmish weather, suddenly interrupted by an abrupt hard rainy storm. His response: How to make that dizzying combination work keenly for us. My response needed to be a cut in bitching about pain. Something with which the Mexicans I knew were mightily accustomed.
Femio made me grin. Both at his use of “fate” and his quick utility of a new opportunity.
“Come along,” he was saying. Once we fix that “opportunity,” the livestock will thrive, and good luck will ease pain. He wheeled his horse around and kicked it into a gallop.