by Darcy Dean
As soon as the wheels of the car stopped turning, I leapt out of the car and threw my bookbag violently just inside the front door of my house. I ran to the pasture to retrieve my horse, Oy To The World, and slung a bridle over his ears and a bit into his mouth. We had to hurry before it got dark, or we would not be able to see the trail in front of us.
I climbed up the four-board wooden fence that contains my horses when I’m not riding and swung my leg over Oy’s back. After this large exertion of energy, we were off to go on a trail ride.
We slowly made our way around the back side of the pasture and continued across our gravel driveway on our way to the dense, welcoming woods. Oy and I reached the trail that is lovingly nicknamed “The Loop” and began our trip together. We crunched through the fallen leaves and relished the crisp fall air. I admired every leaf that we passed and remarked at all the brilliant nuances in their colors.
Too soon, we reached another field and we had to exit our haven of leaves and peace. This was a special field; however, this field held haybales. Oy has decided that circular haybales, that are meant for cows, make perfect scratching posts and convenient snacks. His most favorite spot to scratch is his butt. He wiggles his fuzzy bay bottom back and forth on the haybale and thoroughly enjoys himself every time. This field is one of my favorites as well because in the spring, delicate, white wildflowers bloom everywhere and wave elegantly in the soft breeze as you trod by them.
Soon, we were back into the woods and making our way past my uncle’s soybean field. The deer are regular occupants of this field and tend to eat a portion of the beans despite our best efforts to scare them off. This field is probably the largest on our trail and if you choose to go around it and see the large white oak tree on the other side, which may be one of my favorite trees on my property, then you could add up to ten minutes to your ride time. Just past the bean field is an area of the trail that we like to call the Puddle Place. There are eight large watering holes for deer, rabbits, and other animals that become a major hazard if you are trying to keep your feet dry. Fortunately, Oy loves to splash around in the water.
When you finish your expedition in the water, you enter back into the embrace of the woods. We could hear the soothing crumble of the leaves underfoot as we made our way to the next area of attraction which is a beautiful pond in the middle of a clump of large pine trees. This is the spot where I plan to mount my barred owl box as soon as I find a good camera to put in it so that I can monitor them.
When you pass the pond, there is a little way to go before you make it to my deer stand where we had a vulture make a nest over the summer. We named the vulture Agatha. She laid two eggs and incubated them for about three weeks. One day, something broke into the nest even though it is quite tall. When it got up there it ate one of the eggs and broke the other one. After that, we never saw Agatha again. As soon as you reach the deer stand that was the sight of Agatha’s pervious nest, you only have a short time left in your ride before you reach the first field, which now becomes your last field, and make it to the driveway and to the barn. By this time, it was already dark, and we had to get back to the barn soon because it was time for dinner for me and for Oy, so we continued back to the barn and down the driveway.
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