A Long Way to Owl Pavilion: There And Back Again

Admittedly, nothing on 80 acres is really that far from anything else.  But thanks to the terrain and vegetation, some things *feel* like the far end of everything.  Used to be more that way, when no one lived on the property to the west and all the neighbors there were bovine (the farmer occasionally brought a tractor and brush hog in but otherwise that end was silent except for cattle & wildlife.  Loved it.)   Owl Pavilion, the second rain barn, is the same basic design as Fox and Cloud, but built between those two, and has one “deck” on the east end, giving a view of the SW meadow.  To get there requires either hiking through the creek woods, not easy if the creek or the swamp overflow is up, and downright dangerous once the last big black willow died and started dropping limbs as big as most trees down without warning.  It’s possible to go right on the south fenceline, if you’re a goat-footed person, but the main creek has vertical cut banks from flash floods and it’s quite a scramble, complicated by greenbriar.   So our usual route has been to cross the creek at Tractor Ford just down from the north fence, heading west, and take a trail inside the larger trees on the west end (the west fence trail is passable if it’s not too wet or muddy, but not that pleasant since people have started moving in here and there in the scrub on that side.) Cross Westbrook (tributary of the main creek–we call it that; it has no formal name)  on a rock crossing we built, and Owl (named for the Great Horned Owl we saw fly over the fence where it is) is near but not exactly in the SW corner.

It has bigger tanks than Fox, our first rain barn/pavilion: two 2500 gallon tanks set under the metal roof on the west end supply an artificial “spring and small curved “stream” with a solar powered pump like Fox’s.  And it felt quite remote at first.  Wintering sparrows love that water and the grass seeds and weed seeds they can find.  So today, after R- left for the west end, to take out a bunch of baby Ashe junipers we don’t want, I got the idea of tacking up Rags, *leading* him over there (since I can’t tighten the girth enough to be safe on my own), and R- could then tighten the girth, hold Rags while I mounted, and I could ride back.   It’s roughly a mile over there because of having to start south of the south fenceline, get to the north fenceline and get back down to the south fenceline, and follow a windy path from north to south.  The alternate trail, right now, takes off from the one described earlier shortly after the Tractor Ford crossing, twisting and turning around trees and bushes and finally coming to the gully system, turning south along the gully system, winding around Fort Cedar (our name for a circle of junipers that we trimmed up and laid branches down between them like a kid’s “fort”–to us a resting place with some plastic chairs and a little plastic table) and then back and forth more or less westward until it comes to the old n/s trail on that end.   I don’t know how much, if any, distance that trail cuts off, but it’s so winding, in several places, I suspect it’s almost as long.

I set off with Rags (a bit confused to be LED out onto the land…what was that?) after calling R- to be sure he was still in the west end; he was at Fort Cedar so that decided my route.  It was boisterously windy, the wind making plenty of noise in trees and the tall dry winter grasses & weeds, but there is a mowed trail.  We took it.  Rags had been fine all the way until we left the trails he’d been on before, and then–what with newness, really tall dead weeds (Giant Ragweed) and grasses (Indiangrass, Switchgrass, Lindheimer Muhly, Little Bluestem, and the new noises and smells, he got more and more anxious and kept wanting to hurry.    So we had a bit of a tussle here and there with me making him back up and give me room and also not try pulling me around and heading me home.  We found Richard where expected and he walked with me and Rags over to the main trail, where, to spare Rags’ bare hooves, we went into the bed of Westbrook and then up a slope on the other side to a smaller opening into the SW meadow.  Once at Owl, I filled a bucket (left there many months ago, on purpose for watering a horse) and gave it to him.  Mostly he washed dry dead grass stems he’d collected out of his mouth.  Then two cookies, and a few minutes to graze on the grass that still had anything for him, and I positioned the mounting block (positioned there two years before)  near one of the Owl main posts, Richard held him, and I got on without even having to grab the post’s brace.

I rode him back, rejoicing in FINALLY riding my own horse on my own land’s farthest side, and he–knowing we were headed back–and still not loving the strong wind gusts and noises–wanted to hurry.  We walked *almost* all the way.  R- took the short route through the creek woods on the south fenceline and we arrived near the grassy dip turn to the Near Meadow almost at the same time.   It was a wonderful (long!) walk and ride, and it was also quite warm, so Rags had sweat not just under the saddle but on his shoulders as well.   Another reason not to let him trot much is that he doesn’t need to sweat up with that long, dense pelt he has in winter.   I had a little sweat, too.  But it sure was fun, and despite the awfulness going on in the Ukraine and elsewhere…it’s possible to pray for peace and kindness on horseback…often easier than staring at Twitter.  Dismounting is till harder than mounting, despite the known fact that a) the ground is always there below and b) gravity still works.  But I’m making progress and so is Rags.  That’s the longest ride we’ve had, and his walk on the land’s trails was twice as long as what he carried me over.

Depending on exactly when the various storm fronts arrive and how severe the temperatures are and whether we get the freezing precip as expected, I may not get to ride again for several days.  I’ll try for tomorrow, but when the Arctic front gets here…no.