Section II. Little Bennett

The barn is located snuggly at the southern edge of Little Bennett state park, 3,700 acres of woods cut by a wide creeks and rolled over endless hills. The park is also cut by Clarksburg road, which at the time of the park’s creation in 1983 was an established road, but not so trafficked as it is now that suburbs have migrated up past Germantown. Several historical landmarks dot the park. The only one of which I am personally familiar with is the schoolhouse, located by a particularly wide section of creek in which we have often let our horses splash and refresh themselves on hot summer rides. It is a white, clapboard, one-room schoolhouse, established in 1893 and abandoned in the early 1930’s, when the Depression forced the area’s families to relocate.
I do not know the land well on foot. I have walked maybe three quarters of a mile of trail, one summer week when the radio stations named the day “code purple,” surpassing “code red” and not a soul was supposed to stir from the comfort of their air-conditioned home. We spared the horses and went out into the trail ourselves, escaping into the cool of the woods with hand-saws, pruning shears and orange tape to hack a new trail.
I know the land on horseback. It is a higher-up view, an often faster-paced-view. The steep hills are at once more accessible and more dangerous, the creeks gain new meanings both of challenge and of rest, and the sound of hooves and breathing accompanies everything. Trees gain a meaning they do not have to walkers. Branches often hang low enough to merit ducking, and I ride with my head quite literally among the leaves. Tree trunks growing close to the trail can bruise my knees or rip my stirrups from the saddle, and fallen trees demand either jumps or finding a new path.
On horseback, one learns to be aware first of anything that could provide a danger to one's horse, such as holes in the ground, or anything unnatural, such as metal poles or difficult-to-see fence-lines. At the next level are the things that could distract the horse—deer, pedestrians, and in the cases of spookish or “green” horses, squirrels, falling leaves, anything that moves. Then there are the low or protruding branches, the high water, hanging vines—anything a rider might wish to avoid. The beauty of the landscape—and beautiful it is—is the final piece. Its low-down position on the list of one's awarenesses by no means belittles it. I remember the orange mushrooms that grow on tree-trunks and the way the sun illuminates the leaves as it sets after an exhilarating fall ride much better than I do anything related to safety (with the exception of my very memorable missteps). But a rider cannot survive as a mere observer of the landscape; she must know it, scrutinize it, react to its every detail, which in turn deepens the beauty a casual hiker might seek with their Nikon.
My memories of the trail, from which I have been apart too long, are in every one of my senses. Different sections of trail have their own distinct smell, that strongest of memory-senses; here—honeysuckle; there—a smell like that of almonds, but earthier; here—the clean water of the creek, hooves churning up mud, releases a smell of fresh dirt, rotting leaves, and the indescribable living smell of freshwater. Where it smells of honeysuckle or almond, the sky is close to invisible, so thick with branches that we have, on several occasions, been completely sheltered from rain. In the summer, these stretches of trail are a refuge from the heat, and the sweet, flowering smells are thick and pungent, broken up by our own breezes. Sometimes, we ride through blackberry bushes, and as our horses graze or stretch, we lean down and grab handfuls of warm berries, grazing along with our creatures.
By the schoolhouse, where the widest section of creek runs, as well as in the now disappearing fields that border the park and trails by the campsite where girl-scouts sometimes crowd, the sky is completely unobscured; the horizon is free from buildings beyond that simple white schoolhouse, and the horses, in their natural environment, raise their heads and tails, letting their riders know that they are in control here, that they are the gods of this domain.