So if you're a really long time reader, you might vaguely remember that when I lived in Memphis my riding area flooded pretty badly in 2008. I've got a whole series of posts about it. I rode Champ (miss ya, buddy!) through water that came up to MY knees. Cersei was a tiny thing, and the water was really frustrating for her. Most of our trails, along the Loosahatchie River, were completely closed off - a few a couple miles up the floodplain were rideable.
Apparently, the part of town I used to ride in has flooded even worse. The Mid-South had a series of really violent thunderstorms come through last weekend. My mother-in-law lives in Millington - her house flooded! Where I used to board is in Frayser. Those are the two worst-hit areas of Memphis. "My" river, the Loosahatchie, rose twenty-three feet in 24 hours. That's the height of a normal one-story house! In water! Here's the local news about it.
Nashville's actually even worse off than Memphis... but I didn't live in Nashville, so I'm not following their news as closely. Sorry, yall. If you want to read their crazy flood news, check out the Tennesseean.
If you do go read the old flood posts, Quinn is Dixie. When I first got her, I thought Dixie was a dumb name for a TWH so I tried out some different names. None of them stuck. And I still think Dixie's a dumb name, it just suits her better than anything else I can come up with. It's just really cliched, like naming your paint Hidalgo or your palomino Trigger. I must say, the further I move from Tennessee, the less dumb "My Walking Horse's name is Dixie" becomes. :)
And I rode today. We had a perfectly normal very short ride, so all is well between us.
Showing posts with label floods. Show all posts
Showing posts with label floods. Show all posts
Monday, May 3, 2010
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Floods, part one zillion
tl;dr: Water still very high.
Long version:
The water at the chain-link fence has reached the top. The driveway I see on my way up to the barn is now officially six feet under.
Saturday James and I went out to see what we could see. All we could see was water - we crossed the road, went by the football stadium and up the soybean field, and just let the horses graze. The last 50' or so of the bean field is under water. The trail leading to the dead-fish lake is under water. The woods at the end of the field - the entire forest - is underwater! A pair of mallards were quite annoyed at our presence, and a lot of big fish were sploshing around in the field.
We found a "lay" of some kind right near the water. The foot-high grass was smashed down in a couple of irregular oval depressions. Our top three theories: deer, coyotes, or ducks. Personally, I'm leaning towards deer. I've seen deer lays, and they're pretty similar. Deer in the daytime tend to lay up in open fields. But the lay we were looking at was really near the water, and some of the depressions were fairly small. Maybe a couple of does with fauns?
We talked a little about the impact these floods have had on the local ecosystem - of course, we didn't say things like "impact" and "ecosystem," cause we're pretty country. :) We were wondering where the deer are hiding now, and what's happened to all the snake eggs, and what about the squirrels and chipmunks? We're eagerly waiting for the flooding to recede so we can see what's changed.
The NOAA says the MS is still not through flooding - the water should go up another foot in the Big River over the next couple of days. That means the Loosahatchie will stay full, and the creeks feeding it will stay overfull, and the fields will stay flooded, and DAMMIT I probably can't ride anywhere cool next weekend. Grump.
Update: The NOAA says the Loosahatchie at Arlington (about 10 miles upstream) is totally through flooding - 2' below normal now. Maybe the water will recede? Researching floods is totally new to me.
Long version:
The water at the chain-link fence has reached the top. The driveway I see on my way up to the barn is now officially six feet under.
Saturday James and I went out to see what we could see. All we could see was water - we crossed the road, went by the football stadium and up the soybean field, and just let the horses graze. The last 50' or so of the bean field is under water. The trail leading to the dead-fish lake is under water. The woods at the end of the field - the entire forest - is underwater! A pair of mallards were quite annoyed at our presence, and a lot of big fish were sploshing around in the field.
We found a "lay" of some kind right near the water. The foot-high grass was smashed down in a couple of irregular oval depressions. Our top three theories: deer, coyotes, or ducks. Personally, I'm leaning towards deer. I've seen deer lays, and they're pretty similar. Deer in the daytime tend to lay up in open fields. But the lay we were looking at was really near the water, and some of the depressions were fairly small. Maybe a couple of does with fauns?
We talked a little about the impact these floods have had on the local ecosystem - of course, we didn't say things like "impact" and "ecosystem," cause we're pretty country. :) We were wondering where the deer are hiding now, and what's happened to all the snake eggs, and what about the squirrels and chipmunks? We're eagerly waiting for the flooding to recede so we can see what's changed.
The NOAA says the MS is still not through flooding - the water should go up another foot in the Big River over the next couple of days. That means the Loosahatchie will stay full, and the creeks feeding it will stay overfull, and the fields will stay flooded, and DAMMIT I probably can't ride anywhere cool next weekend. Grump.
Update: The NOAA says the Loosahatchie at Arlington (about 10 miles upstream) is totally through flooding - 2' below normal now. Maybe the water will recede? Researching floods is totally new to me.
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Floods, part five
It rained for a while this morning. More rain tomorrow, yuck. Anyway, the fence by the driveway is still "shrinking" - a couple inches more are underwater. I'd say there's about a foot of fence still showing over the HUGE LAKE.
Poppy did not get trimmed today. He has lost all his manners. I worked with him a long time, though - stand nicely in the crossties, pick up your feet a lot, some round pen work, and a lot of walking around nicely. I'm just going to have to work with him every single day til I can get those feet trimmed. (Yes, I say that all the time about all the horses. Yes, I have too many. Can't just get rid of them though.)
Poppy did not get trimmed today. He has lost all his manners. I worked with him a long time, though - stand nicely in the crossties, pick up your feet a lot, some round pen work, and a lot of walking around nicely. I'm just going to have to work with him every single day til I can get those feet trimmed. (Yes, I say that all the time about all the horses. Yes, I have too many. Can't just get rid of them though.)
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Invisible floods, part four
So the MS has crested, I think, but it's not obvious. The Loosahatchie and Wolf are still going up.
I went to the feed store today, and as always I checked the views of the river from the highway. The spot where the horses were almost swimming two weeks ago? Yeah, they'd be swimming now. There are some signs on the dirt road, something to do with the pipeline running under the road - they're orange, maybe 7' tall, spaced every quarter mile or so, with mile markers on top. I couldn't see any of them. There's at least 7' of water on top of our little dirt road a half mile from the river!
On my way to the barn is a flooded driveway near the Wolf. The driveway runs down a little hill then back up another hill, and it's been flooded in the low spot for a couple weeks now. A 6' chain link fence runs alongside the driveway. Sunday I noticed that the water was halfway up the fence. Today, there can't be more than 18" of chain link still sticking up out of the water. It's just amazing.
I went to the feed store today, and as always I checked the views of the river from the highway. The spot where the horses were almost swimming two weeks ago? Yeah, they'd be swimming now. There are some signs on the dirt road, something to do with the pipeline running under the road - they're orange, maybe 7' tall, spaced every quarter mile or so, with mile markers on top. I couldn't see any of them. There's at least 7' of water on top of our little dirt road a half mile from the river!
On my way to the barn is a flooded driveway near the Wolf. The driveway runs down a little hill then back up another hill, and it's been flooded in the low spot for a couple weeks now. A 6' chain link fence runs alongside the driveway. Sunday I noticed that the water was halfway up the fence. Today, there can't be more than 18" of chain link still sticking up out of the water. It's just amazing.
Sunday, March 30, 2008
The invisible floods, part three - this weekend
I've been calling them "invisible floods" because most Memphians haven't even noticed that it's flooding. This isn't like the floods in Arkansas that are destroying homes and crops. Our local flooding is really quiet and unobtrusive.
I've been watching the rivers all week as I drive around town. Mostly, I watch the Wolf River creeping out of its banks along my drive home. It's drowned a field, creeping along it day by day until the water's lapping at the embankment at Whitney Ave, over half a mile from the river itself. One of the driveways to the sewage treatment plant is completely underwater and blocked off. The little dirt access road leading down to the Wolf River, by the bridge, is completely underwater. It's really trippy to drive by, notice that the water's moved in another 5', and then realize the sheer volume of water that it takes to make that happen.
As far as I've been able to figure out, the tributaries (Wolf and Loosahatchie) are flooding because the Mississippi is too high. There's so much water pressure, and the MS is so high, that the little rivers can't properly drain, so they're backing up and spilling their banks. The rivers are supposed to crest next weekend, so we've got at least another week of rising water!
But it's not raining, nobody's home is flooded, and no roads are flooded, so 99% of the city doesn't even realize it's flooding. So weird.
James and I saddled up our trusty horses (Champ and Handyman) and went out yesterday. We got to the usual point where we head off Millington into the trails and... stopped. The water was within 100' of the road. It was flooded over a mile from the river. Last week, it was a quarter mile further away from the road. Even for us, the barn's resident King and Queen of Stupid Riding, there was just no way we were going to take the horses through that.
So we explored up old Old Millington. Sometimes I call the road Millington Rd, because that's what the maps and street signs call it, and sometimes I refer to it as Old Millington, because that's what people call it. Before Hwy 51 was built, decades ago, Millington Rd took you to Millington. When the state built the fancy 4-lane highway, they closed down Millington Rd - that's why it curves so sharply and "turns into" Overton Crossing. If you ride back in that area, it's pretty obvious that there used to be a road. It's a huge embankment, rising probably 50' in the air in places, running vaguely NE. We go over it on one trail, then curve around the end of the embankment, where the river bridge would've started, in the woods on a different section of trail. Here's the satellite map - the really straight line running straight NE is the railroad embankment, and the curvier line going ENE is the old road bed.
I've explored different sections of the road, but we hadn't started at the beginning before. There really wasn't anywhere else to ride yesterday, so we tried it out. We had to get off and break away some muscadine vines to get started, but once we got on the road it was pretty smooth going. And pretty neat - the road bed was probably 10' above the surrounding forest, and there was water on either side as far as we could see. We only rode maybe 1/3 of a mile, half a mile at the most, before we came to a smaller bridge-that-was-no-more. The road just stopped, with some concrete piers on either side of a 20' gap. Right as we came out of the woods, back onto the paved road, it started raining.
I hung out at the barn the rest of the afternoon but didn't ride again. I took pity on the horses and put them up - they were standing at the gate practicing their "I'm wet and pitiful" looks. Poppy ate all of his grain then immediately laid down for a nap. There is nothing as big and cute as a curled-up sleepy Percheron. Champ glared out the window, acting like he hadn't been demanding to come inside. The girls quietly munched hay and looked out their windows.
One of the barn cats had kittens - first ones of the year. She's a black cat, two years old, who had kittens once late last summer. She didn't know what to do with the first batch - she had them under my wheelbarrow, then decided to move them but got confused halfway and left them in the sun... where they died. It was so sad, even though they were the epitome of unwanted kittens. I was there the whole time that day. I saw the kittens under the wheelbarrow, still wet from being born, and I thought "that's a really terrible place to have your kittens, little momma cat." I didn't want to freak her out by moving them, so I just stayed away from the back of the barn for a couple of hours. When I went back there again - they were dead in the sun. :(
Anyway, nobody ever got around to having her spayed. She's figured it out this time, and she had three little kittens in a safe spot somewhere. Yesterday she moved them into the Poseys' feed room, where James found them. James has an irrational phobia about very small kittens. They give him the heebiejeebies when they're tiny. These little fluffballs had just opened their eyes and he couldn't bear to touch them, even though he needed to put some hay right where they were, so he came and got me. I made them a nest box in a milk crate, lined with hay and an old sweater, and put the box off to the side in the same feed room. Momma cat stayed with me the whole time I had them, but she didn't seem to mind me touching them. I showed her where the kittens were and left them alone. One black, one tiger-grey, and one grey and white.
There's a new boarder at the barn who works for Animal Control, so hopefully she'll get all the female cats spayed this year. It's so cuuuute to see tiny little kittens... but so sad, when you know they'll just catch FeLV and live out their sick short lives at a barn. :(
I've been watching the rivers all week as I drive around town. Mostly, I watch the Wolf River creeping out of its banks along my drive home. It's drowned a field, creeping along it day by day until the water's lapping at the embankment at Whitney Ave, over half a mile from the river itself. One of the driveways to the sewage treatment plant is completely underwater and blocked off. The little dirt access road leading down to the Wolf River, by the bridge, is completely underwater. It's really trippy to drive by, notice that the water's moved in another 5', and then realize the sheer volume of water that it takes to make that happen.
As far as I've been able to figure out, the tributaries (Wolf and Loosahatchie) are flooding because the Mississippi is too high. There's so much water pressure, and the MS is so high, that the little rivers can't properly drain, so they're backing up and spilling their banks. The rivers are supposed to crest next weekend, so we've got at least another week of rising water!
But it's not raining, nobody's home is flooded, and no roads are flooded, so 99% of the city doesn't even realize it's flooding. So weird.
James and I saddled up our trusty horses (Champ and Handyman) and went out yesterday. We got to the usual point where we head off Millington into the trails and... stopped. The water was within 100' of the road. It was flooded over a mile from the river. Last week, it was a quarter mile further away from the road. Even for us, the barn's resident King and Queen of Stupid Riding, there was just no way we were going to take the horses through that.
So we explored up old Old Millington. Sometimes I call the road Millington Rd, because that's what the maps and street signs call it, and sometimes I refer to it as Old Millington, because that's what people call it. Before Hwy 51 was built, decades ago, Millington Rd took you to Millington. When the state built the fancy 4-lane highway, they closed down Millington Rd - that's why it curves so sharply and "turns into" Overton Crossing. If you ride back in that area, it's pretty obvious that there used to be a road. It's a huge embankment, rising probably 50' in the air in places, running vaguely NE. We go over it on one trail, then curve around the end of the embankment, where the river bridge would've started, in the woods on a different section of trail. Here's the satellite map - the really straight line running straight NE is the railroad embankment, and the curvier line going ENE is the old road bed.
I've explored different sections of the road, but we hadn't started at the beginning before. There really wasn't anywhere else to ride yesterday, so we tried it out. We had to get off and break away some muscadine vines to get started, but once we got on the road it was pretty smooth going. And pretty neat - the road bed was probably 10' above the surrounding forest, and there was water on either side as far as we could see. We only rode maybe 1/3 of a mile, half a mile at the most, before we came to a smaller bridge-that-was-no-more. The road just stopped, with some concrete piers on either side of a 20' gap. Right as we came out of the woods, back onto the paved road, it started raining.
I hung out at the barn the rest of the afternoon but didn't ride again. I took pity on the horses and put them up - they were standing at the gate practicing their "I'm wet and pitiful" looks. Poppy ate all of his grain then immediately laid down for a nap. There is nothing as big and cute as a curled-up sleepy Percheron. Champ glared out the window, acting like he hadn't been demanding to come inside. The girls quietly munched hay and looked out their windows.
One of the barn cats had kittens - first ones of the year. She's a black cat, two years old, who had kittens once late last summer. She didn't know what to do with the first batch - she had them under my wheelbarrow, then decided to move them but got confused halfway and left them in the sun... where they died. It was so sad, even though they were the epitome of unwanted kittens. I was there the whole time that day. I saw the kittens under the wheelbarrow, still wet from being born, and I thought "that's a really terrible place to have your kittens, little momma cat." I didn't want to freak her out by moving them, so I just stayed away from the back of the barn for a couple of hours. When I went back there again - they were dead in the sun. :(
Anyway, nobody ever got around to having her spayed. She's figured it out this time, and she had three little kittens in a safe spot somewhere. Yesterday she moved them into the Poseys' feed room, where James found them. James has an irrational phobia about very small kittens. They give him the heebiejeebies when they're tiny. These little fluffballs had just opened their eyes and he couldn't bear to touch them, even though he needed to put some hay right where they were, so he came and got me. I made them a nest box in a milk crate, lined with hay and an old sweater, and put the box off to the side in the same feed room. Momma cat stayed with me the whole time I had them, but she didn't seem to mind me touching them. I showed her where the kittens were and left them alone. One black, one tiger-grey, and one grey and white.
There's a new boarder at the barn who works for Animal Control, so hopefully she'll get all the female cats spayed this year. It's so cuuuute to see tiny little kittens... but so sad, when you know they'll just catch FeLV and live out their sick short lives at a barn. :(
The invisible floods, part two - Sunday
But Sunday was definitely memorable! Sunday we went back out with Champ and Handyman. The whole weekend was warm, but Sunday was really nice - high in the 70s. On our way to the trails, we noticed that the usually-locked gate was still unlocked! Back down the trails, all the way down the field to the river, and back south along the river. Once we got to the river, Champ snapped out of his "oh god my feet are getting wet" funk and decided he was Taking Us Home. Obviously the humans are not to be trusted to get us home, or something. We trotted and gaited through the puddles to the river, and I barely had a chance to ooooh over the height of the river (bank-high when it's usually 20' below the banks!) before Champ sailed past Handyman, took a hard left, and headed for home. He'd finally figured out where he was or something. We went ripping through the forest trail.
Going down forested trails at top speed is really one of my favorite scary things to do, and I don't get to do it that often. Champ is the only horse I trust to be surefooted and responsive enough, and I won't scare whomever I'm riding with. That means that if I'm out with Chrissy, or some random "take me trail riding!" person, I can't go fast. But if I'm riding Champ with James - we can tear ass as fast as we want. That day, it meant "no trotting in the water, no cantering unless you can get three full strides before we have to slow down again."
We dashed through the forest part of the trail and popped out of the woods at the railroad bridge. A train was slowly pulling away over the bridge, and we got to wave to the engineers in the engine at the end before we were off at a canter down the straight path through along the tracks. Champ and I are never going to get this jumping thing figured out - we came up on this fallen log that we usually jump, I leaned way forward for him to jump it, and the bastard just cantered over it. We made it about halfway down the length of the trail before we ran into some serious flooding.
I was pretty sure Champ would slow down and give me the "WTF?" ears when he saw all that water on top of his trail, but he surprised me and kept going. We plunged off into the water without a moment's hesitation. I let him keep going because he wasn't panicked and I knew where the trail was and that it's a safe trail. The worst potholes are only a few inches deep.
We saw a TON of those ant balls you normally only see on National Geographic. Imagine a British guy explaining that "when the colony is threatened by flooding, the ants cling to each other and float away in a giant ball." They looked like normal tiny black ants, not vicious evil army ants or fire ants, but I kept Champ well away from them anyway. Running into a clump of pissed off fire ants would be a nightmare that would really get us hurt.
Champ learned a new trick in that water. The water was deep. Really deep. Champ's 15.2 or 15.3, and the water was all the way up to the soles of my (rubber) boots. This kind of water is annoying to my horse because it makes him go slow when he wants to go fast, so he learned to bounce through the water. You know how when a Lab is heading off full speed into a pond to retrieve a tennis ball, he runs to the edge, leaps off into the water, bounces like Tigger through the shallows til he can't touch bottom anymore, then swims to the ball? Yeah, Champ learned to bounce like Tigger. It was hysterically funny and hard as shit to ride - if I didn't stay two-point, the force of the leaps would send my ass like 6" above the saddle. I had to control my giggling and actually grab his mane to stay put.
We made it to within 50 feet of the only bridge on that section of the trail when we gave up and turned around. We couldn't see the bridge at all through the water, and the creek it usually spanned had vertical 6'+ sides. Riding a horse off the edge of that would have been Very Bad. James and I are admittedly stupid, but we're not quite that stupid.
So back we went. Champ was really pissed - he was perfectly willing to keep going and maybe miss the bridge and have to swim. I used the Logical Reasoning Executive Veto and back up the trail we went. We slogged back to the end of the water and there was a puppy. A small young yellow dog, a little smaller than Cersei. (Cersei stayed at the barn for all of these rides; asking her to swim miles and miles is not fair.) James was in the lead at this point and for some reason he decided the best way to potentially catch the puppy would be to chase the puppy, so off we all went. James and Handyman took off after the puppy and of course Champ wasn't going to let some other horse run faster than him so we took off too. We ran the entire quarter mile of mostly dry trail. The puppy took a right, swam across a stream, and disappeared over the old roadbed. Can't say I blame the poor little guy. I felt bad for chasing him - I'm sure we looked like monsters from another planet to him! I'm hoping maybe I can find him again and tame him. James would take him home I know!
Anyway, we were back at the river by the railroad bridge. We could go right and work our way back out the same way we came in, or we could go left, down the trail on the other side of the RR, turn towards the highway, and then take a left and get out onto Millington via the usually-locked gate. Getting the horses through all the water on the trail to the left would usually be a challenge - but today they didn't seem to mind the water at all. We went left.
Champ had gotten over his sulk and was ready to go again, so we tore ass through the forest again. We popped out of the woods at the end of the pipeline road. This is normally a place where we can let the horses gallop for miles - fast, straight, and dry. Today it was just straight. The floodwater started about 50' from where we came out of the woods. The horses plunged right in, and off we went.
We saw two buffalo fish, easily 18" long, fighting or fucking in the shallows at the edge of the trail. If we'd had nets, we could've caught them.
The little bridge we needed to cross on that side of the tracks was fortunately above water. It was the only piece of land, aside from the RR embankment, for miles around that was above water. (It's one of those built-up bridges, where the road builders made a dirt mountain on either side of the creek then built a bridge off of the dirt mountain.) On the other side of the bridge, the water started to get really deep. It had been maybe two feet deep most of the way so far, with the deepest water coming up to the soles of my boots. Once we crossed the bridge, it got a lot deeper. The water came up over my feet, with splashes of water soaking me up to mid-thigh. We made the turn to head out to the unlocked gate, and the water came up over the tops of my boots.
I just need to say this again - the water came to mid-calf on me as I rode my 15.3 horse a mile from the river. I don't know how much water it takes to float a horse, but I'm pretty sure if it had been a few inches deeper, Champ would've been swimming. He was really buoyant as it was. Also, I will never believe my horse again when he tries to convince me he's scared of the water.
We made it out of the water safe and sound. We had to stop twice on the way back for people in cars to talk to us - the first guy just wanted us to please call the MPD if we saw a gold-beige Ford Explorer with both door locks punched in, and the second guy was a boarder at the barn just saying hey. James and Handyman almost got smacked by a pickup. We saw the truck coming, and Champ and I stayed in the opposite lane near the edge while James and Handyman moved off into the grass on the other side of the road. Except Handyman saw an invisible monster and leapt sideways directly into the path of the truck. James was cussin and yankin and kicking, and the truck slammed on his brakes, and we all waved at each other with a huge sense of relief. Handyman's supposed to be a runnin' QH but I suspect he's half-Arab - he's spooky and he has a really pretty little Arab head.
We avoided any further brushes with death that day.
Going down forested trails at top speed is really one of my favorite scary things to do, and I don't get to do it that often. Champ is the only horse I trust to be surefooted and responsive enough, and I won't scare whomever I'm riding with. That means that if I'm out with Chrissy, or some random "take me trail riding!" person, I can't go fast. But if I'm riding Champ with James - we can tear ass as fast as we want. That day, it meant "no trotting in the water, no cantering unless you can get three full strides before we have to slow down again."
We dashed through the forest part of the trail and popped out of the woods at the railroad bridge. A train was slowly pulling away over the bridge, and we got to wave to the engineers in the engine at the end before we were off at a canter down the straight path through along the tracks. Champ and I are never going to get this jumping thing figured out - we came up on this fallen log that we usually jump, I leaned way forward for him to jump it, and the bastard just cantered over it. We made it about halfway down the length of the trail before we ran into some serious flooding.
I was pretty sure Champ would slow down and give me the "WTF?" ears when he saw all that water on top of his trail, but he surprised me and kept going. We plunged off into the water without a moment's hesitation. I let him keep going because he wasn't panicked and I knew where the trail was and that it's a safe trail. The worst potholes are only a few inches deep.
We saw a TON of those ant balls you normally only see on National Geographic. Imagine a British guy explaining that "when the colony is threatened by flooding, the ants cling to each other and float away in a giant ball." They looked like normal tiny black ants, not vicious evil army ants or fire ants, but I kept Champ well away from them anyway. Running into a clump of pissed off fire ants would be a nightmare that would really get us hurt.
Champ learned a new trick in that water. The water was deep. Really deep. Champ's 15.2 or 15.3, and the water was all the way up to the soles of my (rubber) boots. This kind of water is annoying to my horse because it makes him go slow when he wants to go fast, so he learned to bounce through the water. You know how when a Lab is heading off full speed into a pond to retrieve a tennis ball, he runs to the edge, leaps off into the water, bounces like Tigger through the shallows til he can't touch bottom anymore, then swims to the ball? Yeah, Champ learned to bounce like Tigger. It was hysterically funny and hard as shit to ride - if I didn't stay two-point, the force of the leaps would send my ass like 6" above the saddle. I had to control my giggling and actually grab his mane to stay put.
We made it to within 50 feet of the only bridge on that section of the trail when we gave up and turned around. We couldn't see the bridge at all through the water, and the creek it usually spanned had vertical 6'+ sides. Riding a horse off the edge of that would have been Very Bad. James and I are admittedly stupid, but we're not quite that stupid.
So back we went. Champ was really pissed - he was perfectly willing to keep going and maybe miss the bridge and have to swim. I used the Logical Reasoning Executive Veto and back up the trail we went. We slogged back to the end of the water and there was a puppy. A small young yellow dog, a little smaller than Cersei. (Cersei stayed at the barn for all of these rides; asking her to swim miles and miles is not fair.) James was in the lead at this point and for some reason he decided the best way to potentially catch the puppy would be to chase the puppy, so off we all went. James and Handyman took off after the puppy and of course Champ wasn't going to let some other horse run faster than him so we took off too. We ran the entire quarter mile of mostly dry trail. The puppy took a right, swam across a stream, and disappeared over the old roadbed. Can't say I blame the poor little guy. I felt bad for chasing him - I'm sure we looked like monsters from another planet to him! I'm hoping maybe I can find him again and tame him. James would take him home I know!
Anyway, we were back at the river by the railroad bridge. We could go right and work our way back out the same way we came in, or we could go left, down the trail on the other side of the RR, turn towards the highway, and then take a left and get out onto Millington via the usually-locked gate. Getting the horses through all the water on the trail to the left would usually be a challenge - but today they didn't seem to mind the water at all. We went left.
Champ had gotten over his sulk and was ready to go again, so we tore ass through the forest again. We popped out of the woods at the end of the pipeline road. This is normally a place where we can let the horses gallop for miles - fast, straight, and dry. Today it was just straight. The floodwater started about 50' from where we came out of the woods. The horses plunged right in, and off we went.
We saw two buffalo fish, easily 18" long, fighting or fucking in the shallows at the edge of the trail. If we'd had nets, we could've caught them.
The little bridge we needed to cross on that side of the tracks was fortunately above water. It was the only piece of land, aside from the RR embankment, for miles around that was above water. (It's one of those built-up bridges, where the road builders made a dirt mountain on either side of the creek then built a bridge off of the dirt mountain.) On the other side of the bridge, the water started to get really deep. It had been maybe two feet deep most of the way so far, with the deepest water coming up to the soles of my boots. Once we crossed the bridge, it got a lot deeper. The water came up over my feet, with splashes of water soaking me up to mid-thigh. We made the turn to head out to the unlocked gate, and the water came up over the tops of my boots.
I just need to say this again - the water came to mid-calf on me as I rode my 15.3 horse a mile from the river. I don't know how much water it takes to float a horse, but I'm pretty sure if it had been a few inches deeper, Champ would've been swimming. He was really buoyant as it was. Also, I will never believe my horse again when he tries to convince me he's scared of the water.
We made it out of the water safe and sound. We had to stop twice on the way back for people in cars to talk to us - the first guy just wanted us to please call the MPD if we saw a gold-beige Ford Explorer with both door locks punched in, and the second guy was a boarder at the barn just saying hey. James and Handyman almost got smacked by a pickup. We saw the truck coming, and Champ and I stayed in the opposite lane near the edge while James and Handyman moved off into the grass on the other side of the road. Except Handyman saw an invisible monster and leapt sideways directly into the path of the truck. James was cussin and yankin and kicking, and the truck slammed on his brakes, and we all waved at each other with a huge sense of relief. Handyman's supposed to be a runnin' QH but I suspect he's half-Arab - he's spooky and he has a really pretty little Arab head.
We avoided any further brushes with death that day.
The invisible floods - part one, Friday and Saturday
It's been a long time since I updated, but I had a hell of a week last week...
Anyway, last weekend I rode like mad. On Friday, Stephen had to go to Arkansas for that silly artist lady, so I had the day off work. I wanted to take Quinn - of course she was a beast about standing still. I asked James to help and he spent about 15 minutes working with her (doing the exact same thing I'd been doing!) and somehow she learned that we want her to stand still for the clumsy human to climb on. That man's a horse whisperer. Robert Redford has nothing on him. Anyway, after he got her to stand, I was able to get her to stand and climb on and off we went! We just rode around the bean field. The path by the little lake is entirely too flooded, and I was scared to ride her across the highway on a Friday afternoon. Then we went back and swapped horses.
I took Champ and James took Handyman, and we crossed the highway and rode down Millington Road. There's a little gravel road that leads, in a roundabout way, from Millington back to the trails, but it's usually blocked off by a gate at Millington. (And they're serious about it too - it's a gate with a fence on either side, not just the usual "gate with some posts on either side to stop 4-wheelers") The gate was open! We rode past it, to our usual turn-in, and went exploring. The water was higher than the week before, but still quite passable in the big fields. We ended up on some little trail-loops that we don't usually go down because they don't go very far.
Last Saturday I took Quinn out. She stood for me to get on! Pretty well! I did get off and back on once at the beginning of the ride, and about five times after we got back. Anyway, it was Saturday morning and not much traffic on the highway, so we headed across the street. Quinn did not bolt or back into traffic, and we did not die, which was a huge relief. The gate I mentioned before was still open! We went past it to our usual entrance.
The usual entrance is at a sharp bend in the road. I think it's where Millington stops and Overton Crossing begins. There's a pretty obvious old road bed running north - back when Millington Road would take you to Millington - but the paved road turns 90 degrees and heads back east. The 4-wheelers also use the old road bed to access the trails, so somebody sank a bunch of those steel-and-concrete posts to stop them. Posts stop 4-wheelers, but they only slow down horses. We have to dismount and lead the horses through the gap (it's just wide enough for a horse, not a horse plus a pair of legs) but we can still get through.
I'm usually pretty observant, but I didn't notice the fresh 4-wheeler tracks. James did, and he was the one who realized that there had to be another way in or out. Turns out an intrepid four wheeler guy had carved a new path through the dormant kudzu about 50 feet to the north of the usual path. Yay, no more dismounting!
Anyway, the 4-wheeler guy didn't get very far. The water was halfway up the first field. We had a nice slow long ride anyway, slogging through water that didn't get much deeper than 2 feet. Honestly, I can't remember exactly where we went, because it's been a week and it must not have been that memorable. Unlike Sunday!
Anyway, last weekend I rode like mad. On Friday, Stephen had to go to Arkansas for that silly artist lady, so I had the day off work. I wanted to take Quinn - of course she was a beast about standing still. I asked James to help and he spent about 15 minutes working with her (doing the exact same thing I'd been doing!) and somehow she learned that we want her to stand still for the clumsy human to climb on. That man's a horse whisperer. Robert Redford has nothing on him. Anyway, after he got her to stand, I was able to get her to stand and climb on and off we went! We just rode around the bean field. The path by the little lake is entirely too flooded, and I was scared to ride her across the highway on a Friday afternoon. Then we went back and swapped horses.
I took Champ and James took Handyman, and we crossed the highway and rode down Millington Road. There's a little gravel road that leads, in a roundabout way, from Millington back to the trails, but it's usually blocked off by a gate at Millington. (And they're serious about it too - it's a gate with a fence on either side, not just the usual "gate with some posts on either side to stop 4-wheelers") The gate was open! We rode past it, to our usual turn-in, and went exploring. The water was higher than the week before, but still quite passable in the big fields. We ended up on some little trail-loops that we don't usually go down because they don't go very far.
Last Saturday I took Quinn out. She stood for me to get on! Pretty well! I did get off and back on once at the beginning of the ride, and about five times after we got back. Anyway, it was Saturday morning and not much traffic on the highway, so we headed across the street. Quinn did not bolt or back into traffic, and we did not die, which was a huge relief. The gate I mentioned before was still open! We went past it to our usual entrance.
The usual entrance is at a sharp bend in the road. I think it's where Millington stops and Overton Crossing begins. There's a pretty obvious old road bed running north - back when Millington Road would take you to Millington - but the paved road turns 90 degrees and heads back east. The 4-wheelers also use the old road bed to access the trails, so somebody sank a bunch of those steel-and-concrete posts to stop them. Posts stop 4-wheelers, but they only slow down horses. We have to dismount and lead the horses through the gap (it's just wide enough for a horse, not a horse plus a pair of legs) but we can still get through.
I'm usually pretty observant, but I didn't notice the fresh 4-wheeler tracks. James did, and he was the one who realized that there had to be another way in or out. Turns out an intrepid four wheeler guy had carved a new path through the dormant kudzu about 50 feet to the north of the usual path. Yay, no more dismounting!
Anyway, the 4-wheeler guy didn't get very far. The water was halfway up the first field. We had a nice slow long ride anyway, slogging through water that didn't get much deeper than 2 feet. Honestly, I can't remember exactly where we went, because it's been a week and it must not have been that memorable. Unlike Sunday!
Saturday, March 15, 2008
What a blissful spring day!
Finally, I had one of those days that makes it all worthwhile. James and I rode all day!
We started with Champ and Handyman, so I could take Cersei. I won't take a chance on her getting squished, so I hop off and leash her and walk her across every road we cross. Champ is always good (well, as good as Champ ever is) about letting me get off and back on, so he's my Cersei-buddy. We've gotten a lot of rain lately and most of the trails are underwater, so we had to take an unusual route to get to the river. As it turned out, it was the only route.
We usually go up OK Robertson to the football field, then through the soybean field and north along Thomas to that green thing (it's a seasonal lake), then under the highway and due east on that dirt road (which has an anhydrous ammonia pipeline under it, eek), then north on the pipeline road to the river. Well, the green lake is flooded and the pipeline road is under water, so that was right out. We went across the soybean field, walked the beasties across Thomas, rode up Millington, led everybody through a very small gap in a fence, and we were finally on the "trail."
There's a little stream with a bridge over it. The bank is usually about 6' high - but the stream was brim-full. Wow. Then as we rode up the field, the trail got soggier and soggier til the horses were knee-deep. We finally made it to the river - the banks there are usually 15-20' above the water, and the river was full to the brim too. We stopped and just stared at it for a while, watching the huge logs ripping downstream and the whirlpools at the banks.
The trail in the forest wasn't too bad, and the horses were pretty cool about going under the train bridge - even though there was a train on it. Then we headed back down the pipeline road to go home our usual way, but the water just got deeper and deeper. Cersei was swimming, poor girl, and the horses were up to their chests. We stopped and watched catfish (!) swimming on the road(!!!) and decided there was just no way to get under the bridge. The horses could swim, and they were willing to swim because they knew they were headed home, but there's too many branches and pieces of rebar and junk that none of us would be able to see.
So we turned around and went halfway back, then tried to cut under the RR tracks at a different point that would've saved about 2 miles. No dice - I tried to ride alongside where the trail usually is, but we got to a point where the bottom dropped off deeper than Champ could feel and he refused to step off the edge. I asked him and tried to coax him, because I knew it was only a few feet of really deep water, but he was NOT having it and I wasn't going to force him to do something that dangerous. So back north to the river, back under the train tracks, then south along the tracks. There's another little bridge we had to cross, and this one was mostly underwater. We could see it, and the horses were blase about all this stupid water, so it wasn't a problem.
Champ gaited or walked almost the whole way. He actually picked his feet up and stepped pretty where it wasn't muddy (on the blacktop and gravel parts), all on his own. I let him canter back across the bean field on the way home, but that wasn't a great idea. Of course he wanted to RUN LIKE THE WIND because he's really a racehorse (:rolleyes:), and I was trying to keep him pulled back to a canter, keep from dropping the lead rope / dog leash draped across my lap, keep an elbow on my pistol so it didn't fall out of the holster and kill us all, check to make sure my wallet wasn't going to escape my back pocket, and watch out for the puppy. Nothing terrible happened, but it wasn't as blissful as our runs usually are!
When we got back, I put Cersei in the truck to nap and got Quinn. She was a wild monster when I first got on, as usual, but then she... settled down. She alternated walking and gaiting, she steered, she stopped. She listened to me. It was very weird, even though it's what I've been waiting for for months. James was riding Rascal, and we did a much easier ride. I didn't really trust Quinn to cross the highway without freaking out and getting us smeared by a semi, so we just did three laps in the soybean field, then a big circle around the football arena, then down the median on Watkins to the next barn down the street. She kept listening. She kept doing what I asked. It was amazing!
When we got back, I thought I'd really push my luck and try to trim her. Yep, got her trimmed. Well, kind of - she didn't need anything except some excess toe knocked off. I got about 1/4 or 1/2" taken off her front toes and called her done.
The paddock was a minefield of mud, so I put everybody up tonight. I brushed the mud off of everybody and really went to town on Champ and Silky getting some of the loose hair off. Tomorrow I'll ride Quinn again and maybe get on the Appy for a while.
We started with Champ and Handyman, so I could take Cersei. I won't take a chance on her getting squished, so I hop off and leash her and walk her across every road we cross. Champ is always good (well, as good as Champ ever is) about letting me get off and back on, so he's my Cersei-buddy. We've gotten a lot of rain lately and most of the trails are underwater, so we had to take an unusual route to get to the river. As it turned out, it was the only route.
We usually go up OK Robertson to the football field, then through the soybean field and north along Thomas to that green thing (it's a seasonal lake), then under the highway and due east on that dirt road (which has an anhydrous ammonia pipeline under it, eek), then north on the pipeline road to the river. Well, the green lake is flooded and the pipeline road is under water, so that was right out. We went across the soybean field, walked the beasties across Thomas, rode up Millington, led everybody through a very small gap in a fence, and we were finally on the "trail."
There's a little stream with a bridge over it. The bank is usually about 6' high - but the stream was brim-full. Wow. Then as we rode up the field, the trail got soggier and soggier til the horses were knee-deep. We finally made it to the river - the banks there are usually 15-20' above the water, and the river was full to the brim too. We stopped and just stared at it for a while, watching the huge logs ripping downstream and the whirlpools at the banks.
The trail in the forest wasn't too bad, and the horses were pretty cool about going under the train bridge - even though there was a train on it. Then we headed back down the pipeline road to go home our usual way, but the water just got deeper and deeper. Cersei was swimming, poor girl, and the horses were up to their chests. We stopped and watched catfish (!) swimming on the road(!!!) and decided there was just no way to get under the bridge. The horses could swim, and they were willing to swim because they knew they were headed home, but there's too many branches and pieces of rebar and junk that none of us would be able to see.
So we turned around and went halfway back, then tried to cut under the RR tracks at a different point that would've saved about 2 miles. No dice - I tried to ride alongside where the trail usually is, but we got to a point where the bottom dropped off deeper than Champ could feel and he refused to step off the edge. I asked him and tried to coax him, because I knew it was only a few feet of really deep water, but he was NOT having it and I wasn't going to force him to do something that dangerous. So back north to the river, back under the train tracks, then south along the tracks. There's another little bridge we had to cross, and this one was mostly underwater. We could see it, and the horses were blase about all this stupid water, so it wasn't a problem.
Champ gaited or walked almost the whole way. He actually picked his feet up and stepped pretty where it wasn't muddy (on the blacktop and gravel parts), all on his own. I let him canter back across the bean field on the way home, but that wasn't a great idea. Of course he wanted to RUN LIKE THE WIND because he's really a racehorse (:rolleyes:), and I was trying to keep him pulled back to a canter, keep from dropping the lead rope / dog leash draped across my lap, keep an elbow on my pistol so it didn't fall out of the holster and kill us all, check to make sure my wallet wasn't going to escape my back pocket, and watch out for the puppy. Nothing terrible happened, but it wasn't as blissful as our runs usually are!
When we got back, I put Cersei in the truck to nap and got Quinn. She was a wild monster when I first got on, as usual, but then she... settled down. She alternated walking and gaiting, she steered, she stopped. She listened to me. It was very weird, even though it's what I've been waiting for for months. James was riding Rascal, and we did a much easier ride. I didn't really trust Quinn to cross the highway without freaking out and getting us smeared by a semi, so we just did three laps in the soybean field, then a big circle around the football arena, then down the median on Watkins to the next barn down the street. She kept listening. She kept doing what I asked. It was amazing!
When we got back, I thought I'd really push my luck and try to trim her. Yep, got her trimmed. Well, kind of - she didn't need anything except some excess toe knocked off. I got about 1/4 or 1/2" taken off her front toes and called her done.
The paddock was a minefield of mud, so I put everybody up tonight. I brushed the mud off of everybody and really went to town on Champ and Silky getting some of the loose hair off. Tomorrow I'll ride Quinn again and maybe get on the Appy for a while.
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