On a green-meadow day, when the sun is an orange marigold in a blue, silk, Utah sky, and onion tops are whiskers on Earth’s black velvet face, Grandfather pulls me up to his John Deere tractor, and we sit cozy, looking far away into the crevice of an unnamed mountain peak high in the Wasatch Mountains to the east.
“There she is,” Grandpa says, his voice soft and whispery like an early summer breeze. “Can you see her up there, Pea Pod?” Grandpa’s brown eyes twinkle as he calls me his pet name.
“Looks like a snow goat,” I giggle. It’s an old joke between the two of us, and I know exactly what my grandfather’s next words are going to be.
“No, it’s a bob-tailed draft horse—a Percheron, just like the one my daddy had before we got this tractor.”
Grandpa’s eyes get shiny. He pats the John Deere’s dented sides, as if the big, three-wheeled machine were a dear, old friend. It’s no coincidence that our family’s antique tractor bears the old draft horse’s name.
“Good, old Nellie Belle,” my granddad says, his voice getting husky. “I used to ride her bareback in the fields.”
I know by heart where this conversation will go. Grandpa likes to tell me how the ghostly, horse-shaped figure shows up every year on the mountain ridge that runs down Webb Canyon.
We both know the Snow Horse is just a patch of un-melted, winter snow, a massive white mural painted there by strokes of sunshine and shadow.
But I love hearing Grandpa remember how early settlers began using the Snow Horse as a planting gauge soon after Mormon pioneers began farming Davis County in the 1850’s,
The Snow Horse usually appears around the first of June, and the old farmers warn, “You shouldn’t plant your tender crops until you see the Snow Horse prancing on the mountainside.”
Tomato seedlings and corn shoots might freeze on days cold enough to keep the mountain snow from melting into the familiar draft horse shape.
If you spot her early, say in the middle of May, that’s bad news. People say that means the winter’s snowpack was shallow, and everybody worries about water shortages or what Grandpa calls a drought.
Once the Snow Horse becomes visible, farmers hope she’ll stay awhile. When she lasts until the Fourth of July, farmers know they’ll have plenty of moisture for their crops to grow.
“So what do you think, Pea Pod?” Grandpa asks each year after he’s rehearsed the local Snow Horse lore, though he knows exactly what I’ll say.
I crane my neck and look at the majestic Snow Horse standing there with her long, long legs and short, bobbed tail.
“Still looks like a snow goat,” I giggle.
Grandpa tugs my braids and laughs, “Snow Horse in June--good harvest moon.” His voice is all silver ripples—like soft, summer rain.
For a moment, a faraway look shadows Grandpa’s face, and I know that he’s remembering every snow horse he’s ever seen prancing on that mountainside on a sunny day in June.
And he’s right about the harvest moon. Come autumn, on a wheat-gold day, when the sun is a bushel basket in a blue-linen, Utah sky, and wheat stalks are stubble on Earth’s brown, leather face, Grandpa and I will once again sit cozy on old Nellie Belle, the tractor.
By then, the Snow Horse will be just a memory on a burnished, gold ridge.
But when the sweet, acrid scent of newly dug onions spills into the crisp, harvest air, and ripe tomatoes hang like red jewels on tough, green vines, the corn cribs will be full , and we’ll remember how this year’s Snow Horse had lingered well past June’s long green-meadow days into July.
