For reasons I will yet unveil, I chose today as a day in which I could take Serena on a trail ride (that’s on a horse, folks). Note that Serena had exactly one week of Pony Camp last summer. totalling her horse experience for her entire lifetime, and though I grew up with horses I haven’t actually been on one since, um, about 1991.
Yes, I can still walk after today.
Actually, I think horses are rather like bicycles; it all comes back to you. I’m thankful for that.
In the one-hour trail ride, Serena three horses ahead of me in the mind-numbing trail-ride-horse-order (I brought up the rear, a position of perhaps authority, one befitting my experience and thinness…the mom ahead of me must have weighed in at about 300, causing her horse to constantly lift its tail to emit gas or solids during the ride, a sight I enjoyed from perhaps 2 feet away as MY horse was fond of sticking his nose up the ass of the horse immediately preceding him), I had the opportunity to do a lot of thinking. A LOT of thinking.
I thought about the leaves (yellows, oranges, reds, glowing through the trees in the late afternoon sun), the lake (silvery in that same sun…is that a speed boat?), the mud (it rained yesterday, buckets and buckets, and the mud was knee-deep on the trail. I kept imagining what I would do if I fell off INTO THAT MUD, or worse, if my cell phone fell out of my pocket INTO THAT MUD), the sounds (oh, birds, nice…..WHAT THE HELL IS THAT? GUNFIRE??) but I thought mostly about the exquisite pain in the sides of my knees. My knees that haven’t been within 50 feet of a horse in over 12 years. Those knees.
Ouch.
October 22nd, 2006 at 3:31 pm
Every spring when I work cattle for the first time—which requires hours on a horse—the inside of my knees hurt like nothing else…well, except childbirth. I feel your pain.