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Wild Ride, with WoodpeckerMay 04, 2007 So late yesterday afternoon Allie, Rhodry, and I set out for a short trail ride. The weather's been spectacularly mid-spring perfect the last few days: bright, breezy, cool enough for long sleeves, too warm for a sweater. Allie was full of it -- she spooked at the metallic glint off a No Trespassing sign near the Stoney Hill Road -- and Rhodry was trotting briskly to keep up with her power walk. We headed up the Peacock Trail, which is actually an official road with an official name (Takemmy Path, if you've got a recent map handy), but we tend to call trails after their distinguishing characteristics, and sometimes after noteworthy events that happened on them. The Lost Whip Trail is where Ginny lost her dressage whip a few winters ago. I found it maybe three weeks later, which was something of a miracle because a couple feet of snow had fallen and melted between the losing and the finding. No idea why we didn't start calling it the Found Whip Trail, and the Miracle Whip Trail didn't occur to us either. Just as well: it might have got us in trademark trouble with some food conglomerate. Anyway there are indeed peacocks on the Peacock Trail. They live in a big coop in the woods to the right of the road. Before you get to the peacocks you have to pass the nastiest golden retriever I've ever met. This dog comes charging out of the woods looking like a poster for a canine remake of Jaws or maybe the cover of a Stephen King novel. She's usually accompanied by her yappy accomplice who looks like a Lhasa Apso or maybe a Shih-Tzu. Rhodry's presence usually tempers both the snarling and the yapping, but Rhodry was lolly-gagging along some ways back. Allie was less flummoxed by Jaws than she had been by sunlight glancing off a metal sign, so I rode her toward the dogs. The dogs backed off but they didn't shut up. Why do we talk about the vicious dog on the Peacock Trail and not the peacocks on the Vicious Dog Trail? I'm not sure about that either. In any case the trail may be in for a name change, but dogs have nothing to do with it. Allie and I trotted on; Rhodry lingered to exchange a few sniffs with Jaws and Yappy. With no warning Allie stopped dead, snorting, neck arched and braced hard. I looked where she was looking, didn't notice anything different, persuaded her to take a few steps forward. She kept snorting and started making little feints to the left, like she wanted to bolt and run in the opposite direction. Finally I saw what she saw: several huge boulders just to the left of the road. Well, no: I saw several huge boulders -- not just big stones, mind you; these looked like they'd fallen off the last retreating glacier, though this was unlikely because they weren't there a couple of weeks ago and no glaciers have been reported since then. What Allie was seeing wasn't boulders; it was trolls, or at least surefire troll habitat. Allie was freaked. Allie was doing little pirouettes. Allie was piaffing backward. Possibly Allie was remembering the ride about a month ago when after five minutes I managed to coax her to pass between two very large rocks at most two feet apart. My stirrup clanged against one of them, startling Allie into a Great Leap Forward that nearly knocked my head off on a low-hanging branch. Allie wasn't reassured when Rhodry peed on a troll and didn't get eaten: it's well known in equine circles that trolls don't like the taste of dog. Sometimes discretion is the better part of valor so we backtracked a bit and picked up the Dead Truck Trail, which winds through the woods and down a hill, then passes the small hollow that is the final (so far) resting place for six or eight trucks, the youngest of which probably last saw a paved road about forty years ago. Trotting on, I heard the ratatatat pause ratatatat of a woodpecker. After several ratatatats I looked back. No Rhodry. Sounds like . . . ? Too late it dawned on me that Rhodry thought he was being shot at. The fact that Allie was advancing safely under fire didn't reassure Rhodry: just as trolls don't eat dogs, woodpeckers don't shoot horses. Based on Rhodry's disappearing act last week, I figured he'd just go back to the barn; at worst I'd have to ride up to Island Co-housing and entice him away from whatever kid had befriended him. So Allie and I kept going. Maybe half a mile from the barn on the Left Fork Trail a somewhat confused malamutt emerged from the woods just ahead of us. He was relieved to see us. I was relieved to see him. I tossed him a cookie and the three of us rode home as if nothing untoward happened.
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