Everything

Everything

It has been a very long, cold and snowy winter.  It started way back in November this year.  The river froze early and stayed that way for months.  When it finally thawed, it washed up a huge pile of ice blocks on our trail that leads to our river crossing; making it impossible to cross.  It took weeks for it to melt.  When it finally did, Kevin and I planned our first trail ride--only to find that the hurricane force winds we had the day before knocked 3 trees down across the trail on the hill leading to the river.  

A few days later, on St Patrick's Day, my sister and I met at the barn for our morning ride.  We decided to ride in the indoor arena since it was very cold.  I had Cole saddled up first, and I brought him into the arena, while Ellen was finishing up saddling Dante in his stall.  I ride English, so I was running down my stirrups when I heard an enormous bang.  My first instinct was to grab Cole's reins.  He is a great horse that doesn't need to be held while I mess around with the saddle, but this was too much for even him.

He handled it well--just pranced in a circle around me and stopped and listened.  It was so loud that the walls shook.  Ellen rushed into the arena and asked me what the noise was.  I told her I didn't know, but it was still going on.  The first big was followed by a series of smaller bangs that faded off after probably 30 seconds.

We were both perplexed.  Ellen went outside and looked around but saw nothing.  We decided to ride--hoping that whatever it was wouldn't repeat itself.  I wondered if it was an airplane exploding since we are right in the flight path and very close to the airport, but in just a few minutes we could hear the planes going overhead.  Than we thought it could have been an earthquake since the barn was shaking, but would an earthquake make such a loud noise?

I asked her what Dante did, and she said, "Nothing."  While it was going on, I didn't think to look and see how the other horses in the stalls alongside the perimeter of arena were doing.  Cole settled down so quickly, himself, that I wondered it this had happened before.

We had a nice ride.  When it was over, Ellen got a text from her boyfriend saying that it was a meteorite.  Later reports said that it was a 7 ton asteroid that crashed into our atmosphere at 45 mph and broke into pieces.  It unleashed the energy of 250 tons of TNT.  We weren't far at all from its path, so we got the full force of the sound.  I wish we could have seen it, too.  They say it was a once in a lifetime event, so no, the horses never experienced it before.  Maybe they handled it so well because, like us, they just didn't understand it.  Or maybe they are just good horses.

The whole thing was quite a cool event.

Over the years, Ellen and I have experienced so many crazy things.  There have been countless trees that have fallen close to us--one right next to us.  We have both experience car crashes by the trail, too.  People have brought strange things on the trails.  Canoes and kayaks in the river really confuse the horses.  We've been attacked by geese.  All sorts of things.  Well now, we can say that we have experienced everything.