I just looked up my thesaurus word for the A to Z Challenge and I have no idea how, off the top of my head, to use it with the word “spell,” which is the prompt for SoCS.

Now I have that out of the way (did I cheat?), I’ll say that when I hear the word “spirited,” my mind immediately goes to horses. I’ve known some spirited horses in my day. And I’ve known some lazy ones.

Through my 20s, I worked on a dude ranch, taking trails out. Some of the animals we used for the trails always had kids on them–they were the horses that were easy to handle, meaning they did nothing out of the ordinary, never moved any faster than they absolutely had to, and never strayed from following the bum of the horse in front of them. Until we got to the apple orchard. It was fine most of the year, but when the apples started growing, we’d constantly have a paying customer scraped off their horse by the low-hanging branches.

So why didn’t we put kids on smaller horses? Most of them were too rowdy. Or too easily spooked. And apparently people enjoyed being dragged under a tree better than they liked falling off.

I worked at that place for years. I loved it. I was paid $20 for an eight- or nine-hour day, which doesn’t sound like much, but as I often said to people — I was getting paid to do something I loved.

Me ‘n’ my pony

Riding bareback with a halter and lead rope

Shadow after a nice roll in the dirt

I never thought I’d give up riding, but I have. I don’t have the time or the money for it any more. I’ve been on a few trails, but after leading them myself, I can’t stand being told what to do. The last time I took a trail, I took my feet out of the stirrups to stretch my legs only to be told by the trail guide that I HAD to put them back in. I told her where to stick it (in so many words) but the trail wasn’t very pleasant after that.

I hope one day I’ll be able to start going again. My dream was to own a farm, but that’s never going to happen. Even if I could afford it, it would be necessarily too far away from the nearest hospital for Alex’s sake. But maybe, someday, I’ll take out trails again. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll come across the trail guide who told me to put my feet in the stirrups and I can get her back.

This post is part of Stream of Consciousness Saturday. To find out how to join in, click the link: https://lindaghill.com/2017/04/21/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-apr-2217/ It’s fun!