A Winter Sleigh Ride

A Winter Sleigh Ride                                                                     Julie Williams

Our neighbor received an appointment as a judge in Washington D. C., and so the horses were sold, one by one. That is how we came to own their golden buckskin mare, Gypsy--molten gold little Morgan cross mare with black points and four white stockings and a neat little blaze.  

Gypsy despised being ridden but loved harness driving and so, in 1971, my grandmother bought a lovely antique sleigh with silvered eagle heads and metal scroll work and burgundy velvet upholstery. From the attic she brought her great grandfather’s box of sleigh bells and sent them to the local shoemaker to be reset on new leather. Then Grandma wrote her other daughter and asked them to come for Christmas, promising them an old-fashioned sleigh ride.

Snow came down hard that December, filling meadows. The cold settled in. Snowplows scraped clear to the blacktop. But along Lake Indepence, where the paved road ended, a perfect snowpack remained. Relatives arrived. 

On Christmas weekend my cousin and I rode the horses five mile to the lake where the families were waiting with the sleigh on a trailer. When we arrived, we harnessed the mare and hooked her to the sleigh. Gypsy tossed her head and pricked her ears and trotted down the road to the rhythm of the bells. At the end of the road all passengers jumped out, picked up the sleigh and turned it around and I held the mare’s bridle while she pivoted.  Everyone climbed back in. The mare trotted back down the road snorting billows of steam in the crisp air. There were so many grandchildren, everyone had to take turns, a car following behind. We laughed and sang "Oh what fun it is to sing in a one-horse open sleigh!"

The word Christmas brings back memories of this sleigh ride and frequent solitary horseback rides along frozen trails.  I loved riding bareback through winter’s silence. Whitetail deer browsed the lowlands and the Great Horned Owl sliced through brittle air on silent wings as a setting sun cast long purple shadows into the darkening woods.