Haiku Farm

Endurance Granny shared a nice spooky story on her blog this week, and asked other folks to share their favorite haunted tales. I am a storyteller--I know LOTS of scary stories. I spend the entire month of October every year telling scary stories!

This one is a story that I'll be sharing in the schools this week, leading up to a scary story program at the library right before Hallowe'en, and our super-scary-storytelling radio program on Hallowe'en morning. And now...I'm gonna share it with you.

I call it:

The Dare, or, Why I Became a Storytelling Librarian

My parents were teachers, which meant mostly that I knew something that most of my classmates didn’t know: teachers have first names.

Because my parents were friends with most of my teachers and their families, I knew that my 2nd grade teacher’s first name was “Roxanne,” that my 4th grade teacher’s first name was “Walt”, and that my 5th grade teacher’s name was “Greg.”

It didn’t occur to me until years after that I n…

Lisa was soooooo excited to be taking riding lessons at last!
Her lesson horse is Guy, the same weight-in-gold horse that Willy (and many other kids) got as a very first lesson horse.
Clearly, Lisa has never seen some of these amazing tools before in her life (it was a hoofpick).

She was pretty enthused about the brushing, which Guy clearly enjoys. I think every kid should have a grey (mud-covered) pony as a first-lesson horse. As I recall, my first-lesson horse was grey. After that, I graduated (permanently) to horses the color of Swampland mud.
Feet. They are big and scary. Nobody else was inclined to clean them for a rider who was too scared to pick them up and clean them. She cleaned them herself.
Saddling is....
complicated
but eventually, accomplished.
Check stirrup length.

The bridle...also complicated.
Tacking up: accomplished! We head towards the arena. Posted prominently in the arena:
She hops aboard: not graceful, but she did end up on the up-side of the horse. When Guy st…

At the Foothills ride last weekend, there was a "keyhole" section of trail. Basically, it looks like a lollipop on the map:
Riders approach the watertanks at the base of the lolly. A sign on a tree at rider eye-level says "OUT --->" . There is also a sandwich board on the ground that echoes the message: "Out --->" and ribbons on the trees leading riders in the correct direction.
After completing the keyhole, riders approach the watertanks from the other side, and are greeted by another pair of signs. These signs read "<----IN".
Pretty clear, right?
But you know: If it can go wrong, it usually does for somebody.
Two riders went off-course at this location.
The first was a young lady new to the sport. She was riding an elegant foxtrotter stallion who had clearly spent a lot of time in the show ring, but was sufficiently conditioned to do fine in the 25-mile event. Somehow the rider got turned around, missed the keyhole, saw the ribb…

We went to Foothills of the Cascadesand the weather (unlike recent years for the event) was FABULOUS!

(blog reader Karen W, is this you drawing on my pony's nether end?)

I drove to Molalla to help Sky celebrate her birthday by riding one of our favorite rides together! Although we've known each other for years, and we ride together whenever possible, we've never actually ridden together at an endurance event. This year, the weather was forecasted to be not-rainy, Sky's back wasn't sore, Cricket had a shiny new set of shoes, and Fiddle was finally ready for the additional challenge of doing an event with another horse.

We went!

We rode!
We had fun!Some pictures from the (beautiful) trail:I loved the trail signs. Most of the trails are named for kids and grandkids of ride management.Yes, lytha , there were plenty of rocks on the trail. Next time I do this ride, I will put shoes and pads on my horse's feet. Fiddle did fine with just shoes, but for this ride th…