Amanda: Zamora, Day One

The Zamora hills arise out of nowhere. The flattest fattest agricultural land in the USA, continues for miles. Its almond, cherry, any kind of fruit orchards and walnuts occupy acres by the hundreds. Rows and rows of flowering trees as far as the eye can see, with fresh stacks of bee hives occupying the ends of the rows. What a dazzling sight. Suddenly out of the flat are the romping grassy hills of Zamora. Some ground must have dropped away to make them and other ground pushed up. You drive through them for a few miles and things flatten out again into the rich agricultural land of the San Juaquin valley. But the Zamora hills are are tucked away in the flatness, a little undulating miracle, invisible from the flat surroundings.

The trial site is spectacular. The sheep are located up a draw about five hundred yards with steep hills up each border, that good outrunning dogs must climb for the coveted twenty pointer. Those not endowed with a local sheep dog trial environment like this one would drive by such a place and say. And say “Now there is a place for magnificent sheep dog trial.”

The weather had other plans. Several days of rain had put a lively water course into an otherwise dry creek bed at the bottom. A fog settled in early in the morning and the planned 6:30 start was delayed by at least two worrisome hours. When if finally blew off in a hurry, we started, Clive up first. His outrun was a botch. He was confused, temporarily lost and permanently lost a lot of points by the time he picked up his sheep and critically, time. The shed had been dropped from the course and time shortened to account for the lost hours from the fog. After he picked up the sheep, he was efficient in the extreme but ran out of time at the end of his shed. On the first day, no one penned and the leaders were the only one to finish their drives.

This made a trial of conundrums. You were required to rush but some of the sheep couldn’t rush for stamina’s sake. But you could not tell if yours were some of the sheep that could not be rushed until you took a stab at it. So the results show many no scores and scores in the ball park of 32 where the drive was not finished. It must have been hard for Patrick to judge.

Roz had a perfect thrilling outrun. But had a sheep cave at the post. Retired.

It has not been a particularly social trial–too cold to sit out side and the rain has been relentless. But lots of pleasant conversation in cars.

We went out to a hip meat and potatoes restaurant, the Buckhorn, in Winters. California is full of great little towns that address good food in attentive ways. Winters was one of those. Beef and a glass of good Pinot
are right for cold rainy days.