We reached Spruce Lake around six. There are some tents and cabin there, the cabin is pretty modest, and used mostly just for cooking. It sits at the edge of spruce lake, there is one other cabin on the lake. Apparently the guy who owns that cabin had it before all of the Chilcotin land became crown land so the government couldn’t kick him off. Every once and awhile a floater plane lands on the lake, usually to drop mountain bikers off.
We started making supper right away and had finished eating around seven-thirty. The sky was already starting to get dark and we still hadn’t staked the horses. Staking is basically when you take a stake drive it into the ground, tie one end of a long piece of rope to the stake and the other end to one of the horse’s legs. You do this so that they can graze but they can’t run back to the ranch (although if they really wanted to they could pull up the stakes and take off). Usually you stake four or five of the horses that are the more leaderly type and then you hobble the other horses. Hobbling is when you take a lead rope and loop it around the horses two front legs. The idea is to slow them down so that they can’t wander off to far, but it doesn’t always work. I’d never staked or hobbled before this, and I realize that it may sound a bit cruel. The truth is the horses are still able to get around pretty easily, and they really don’t seem all that concerned or bothered by it. When hobbled they look like really big bunnies.
So we headed out to stake and hobble the horses, it was about a twenty-minute walk to the field where we were staking, by this time it was getting pretty dark. The field wasn’t so much a field as it was a steeply slanted patch of grass. I actually got sort of scared because it was really steep and my boots were slipping on the dry grass. I kept on imagining myself falling into the abyss of dark forest below us. We finally finished staking and hobbling and headed back to camp, it was pitch black by this time and we had to navigate on pretty bumpy terrain with only a couple flashlights spread out among the eight of us. None of us were very impressed, and we were all exhausted. When we got back to camp we had to clean up the mess from dinner and I think it was about ten-thirty or eleven when I got to bed.
