Huge Clean-Up Job Begins on Mountain

By Patric Hedlund

The hills echoed with a song of chain saws on the first weekend of April. Unless you’ve seen it with your own eyes, it is nearly impossible to imagine that trees can split down the middle from the sheer weight of wet snow piled in their branches. The damage to local piñon forests from the snap snowstorm of March 20, 2011 is almost incomprehensible.

Towering pines have split open with both halves falling to the ground, like exhausted dancers. Broken branches and entire canopies of piñon woodlands litter the ground in Cuddy Valley, Pinon Pines and the Yellowstone area of Pine Mountain.

"It looks like a hurricane passed through here," Greg Hughes of Pinon Pines said.

As they work to clean up the damage, mountain neighbors are also swapping tales. The story of a golden palomino named ‘Hugs’ that once lived at Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch brings tears to the eyes of Foxtail Ranch’s Tina Jaskiewicz.

The 32-year-old Hugs has been with her for 26 years. She knows he is at the end of his life now, and every day begins with a question. His eyes are bright and filled with a mischief only horses with intelligence and a sense of humor can show, but Hugs’ body is bowed with age and often painful.

"I wonder every day if this is the day he’ll finally lie down and not want to get up," Tina says.

Hugs shares a wide tree-studded paddock bisected by a pipe fence. His neighbors are four frisky German warmblood colts born just last April. This is their nursery.

They are being nurtured for international equestrian superstars Richard and Kaylen Spooner, celebrities of the U.S. Equestrian Federation World Equestrian Games. Richard Spooner has won over 100 Show Jumping Grand Prix. These colts will graduate to the Spooners’ farm in Agua Dulce for training. Some will go on to compete around the world, from Switzerland to Monaco, to Italy and France.

"Hugs loves the babies born at Foxtail Ranch," Tina says. So in the March 20 snowstorm, when she tried to get out in her pickup to check on the animals, she wasn’t surprised to see Hugs standing out in the open field with snow up to his belly, leaning toward the fence, watching the babies that were clustered under a tall piñon pine.

Just then her truck got stuck in the snow. She called for help, then sat in the cab, peering through the blizzard toward the horses. Suddenly she saw Hugs go into what she thought must be a seizure.

"He shuddered and shook, he jumped up and down, he turned in a circle and then lunged at the colts, scattering them out from under the tree," Tina said. As he did that, the tree cracked, and lethally heavy limbs crashed to the ground.

"He knew," she says with wonder. "He is old enough that he knew what was going to happen. He must have heard a crack. He pulled together all his energy to save the babies from being hurt, and it worked."

That Sunday, as Tina Jaskiewicz took this visitor around Foxtail Ranch to see the devastation, a steady parade of pickups and trailers loaded to overflowing with broken branches filled the mountain’s roads. All were heading for the transfer site in Lebec or the green-waste chipper in Pine Mountain. Telephone company and Southern California Edison workers and their trucks were still busy with repairs around the mountain late into the afternoon. But it was a bright day, and spring appears to be finally on its way.

This is part of the April 08, 2011 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.

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