HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY AND THE TRAIL RIDE FROM HELL

If you'll look at the reflection in my front door you can see that this picture was taken on the one day that we've had snow this year.

A few weeks after that, on Saturday, March 7 to be exact, Eden and I went on a 6 hour trail ride for Holley's birthday. We rode on Weyerhauser land right off the Hatley-Detroit Road in Monroe County, MS near the Alabama line. The weather was beautiful and it started out pleasantly enough, except that Eden brought a 2 year old filly, Jill, to ride. She had been ridden maybe twice, so we couldn't go anywhere near them.

There were about 40 other riders, along with two wagons, one pulling the grill that we cooked our lunch on. About 15 minutes into the ride, the grill fell off. I think they finally hooked it back on the wagon with someone's ponytail holder. We were good to go.

I got up on the horse that had been picked out for me to ride (Clay), just as someone jabbed a hypodermic needle into his shoulder. He needed to be sedated so he would behave. Clay was used to cowboying with his 9 year old owner. Needless to say, since I hadn't been on a horse in 15 years, I didn't really want to run like the wind right off the bat. He did fine for me as long as we went where he wanted to go and at his pace. Otherwise, he would try and buck me off. Eventually Holley and I traded horses. Hers wasn't spunky enough for her so she took Clay and I got the only stud horse in the whole bunch. I never did know his name, but he discovered the Filly that Eden was riding and wanted to "be with" her. Eden and I had to do a forced separation of the two. Eventually someone riding in the wagon asked if she could ride my horse for a while so I willingly got in the wagon.

The wagon riders consisted of two or three kids and about 5 or 6 girls (mostly blonds) in their twenties and a twenty-something year old driver, who seemed to me (for lack of a better word) like a nutjob. One little boy in the wagon was cocking and shooting his BB gun over and over and this was making me a little nervous. The horses pulling the wagon were two huge Belgin Mares and I could just see a BB hitting one of their wide rear ends. He wasn't my kid so I tried to mind my own business and not think about it. We plugged along the gravel roads up and down hills. That is until the driver seemed to fall asleep at the wheel and drove us into a ditch. We had fallen behind the horseriders so there was no one around to help us. The other adults in the wagon had no clue about how to get them to go. So I had to get them out of the ditch, which consisted of standing up and slapping them on those huge rear ends with the reigns, all the while screaming at the top of my lungs, "GIT UP GIRLS!!", "HAW-HAW!!", and other cowboy talk such as that. Literally, it felt like something out of Bonanza. I was able to get them out of the ditch and they tolerated my driving for awhile. After about a half hour my neck, shoulders and arms were on fire so I had to have some relief. I decided it was time for lunch, so we stopped to eat.

The wagon driver was also the cook. Since he was out of commission others of us managed to get the grill started and the hamburger patties and smoked sausage cooked. When we got ready to eat we had about 100 hamburger patties and sausages and 24 buns. And nothing else. Someone had left the rest of the bags with the other food and supplies at home. We ate out of our hands with our hands.

I wanted to take some pictures while we were stopped and started looking for my camera. I remembered that I had wrapped the camera strap around the saddle horn of the horse that I had traded to Holley. I found her and the horse, but there was no camera ($250.00). Imagine that. So no pictures.

When we got started again someone else wanted to ride in the wagon so I took their horse, Lilly. Lilly was a dream horse! She did just what I asked her to, when I asked her to. I got so caught up in riding Lilly that I lost track of time. It started to get dark so I went to look for Eden and couldn't find him. I located Baker and he told me that Eden's horse had started limping so he decided to head back to the trailer. Eden's sense of direction is not so good, so I decided to go look for him. I should've gotten Baker to go with me, but something about being on Lilly made me a little over-confident, so I headed off on my own. In the dark. On Weyerhauser land. I had been on Weyerhauser land before, but had forgotten how it all looks the same. The only way I could really tell if I was going the way I had come was to look for horse poop. Eventually I concluded that ours weren't the first horses to ride these roads and some of the poop wasn't our horses'. I got lost. Lilly loved to run so we ran and ran. In the dark. I just figured we could get "unlost" faster if we ran. Eventually we almost ran into Baker and his horse. He was out looking for me. His sense of direction turned out to be pretty good and we ran and ran some more and found our way back to the other riders pretty quickly, but we still didn't find Eden. (At some point during all the running my glasses fell off my head ( $300.00), and of course I didn't find them in the dark. Lost my sunglasses too ($25.00).)

Eden never goes anywhere without his phone. Unfortunately, the cell phone reception wasn't too good back in the boonies and we couldn't get him on the phone.

We finally got back to the place where we started. I was near the point of hysteria and in tears. I was tired and my whole body hurt. I lost my camera, lost my glasses, lost my sunglasses, lost my husband. I could just picture Eden somewhere in a ditch with a big hoof print in his head. I should've known better, but I wasn't in my right mind. Baker got on someone's Gator and headed to a main road to try and get Eden on the phone. He came back, said they had found him and were going to get him. He had somehow gotten to a black top road and was headed in the direction that he thought Hatley was in??? By the time he got there, I had the truck warmed and was ready to go.

Once I could walk upright and sit down again, I could see the humor, and will chalk it up to another life experience. However, considering that ride cost me almost $600.00 and turned me into a blubbering idiot, it will probably be a cold day in hell before I go on another. I'd Rather Be in the Garden.