Sleigh ride

I don’t know anyone in the Cove who travels in winter by horse and sleigh, but at one time this was the only way to get around. If a family needed supplies from town or perhaps had some product to sell (potatoes, carrots, hay, straw, oats), they harnessed one or two horses to a sleigh (homemade box on runners) and headed across the fields to the nearest frozen river and from thence to town following a trail of small bushes frozen into the ice to indicate safe passage.

In town the horses could relax and dine on hay and oats in a livery stable while the country folk went about their business, until the whole trip was repeated in reverse with the goal of getting home before dark.

Our recent community sleigh ride at Potts’s Sleigh Rides in Bonshaw was a taste of those days, except that we were being pulled through the woods—full moon rising, long blue shadows, two huge Percherons tossing their heads—just for the fun of it. We sat shoulder to shoulder on the box sleigh, warm rugs over our legs, quiet at first, almost whispering, until the little ones up front timidly started singing “Jingle Bells” and we all joined in. Then we fell silent again, lost in the beauty of forest and sky.

Afterwards we drank hot chocolate in the chalet and laughed and congratulated ourselves and agreed that we must do this again next year.

The Potts family has been giving Islanders this magical experience for over fifty years. Sometimes a lack of snow cuts the season short but this year is perfect. Thank you Noel, Elaine, Andrew, drivers and assistants. 

We country folk try to make the most of winter. Snowmobile tracks across snow-covered potato fields turn into cross-country ski trails, and frozen ponds at the bottom of rolling hills come alive with future Olympic hockey stars. Women’s Institutes hold their monthly meetings in living rooms, and “To God be the Glory” and other old hymns come pouring out of small rural churches almost every Sunday. 

We’re busy, but we also take time to stop and regroup. Learn new things. Take classes. Read. A friend loaned me The Backyard Bird Chronicles by Amy Tan. Tan is more than a novelist, she’s an amazing artist, and this book is full of her detailed pencil drawings of birds, plus all sorts of things I didn’t know. For example: hummingbirds have extra-long tongues! They don’t suck nectar through their long beaks (like a straw which is what I somehow imagined), no, they dart their barbed tongues into flowers 15 to 20 times a second to extract the liquid. Why did I not know that birds have tongues?

You really can learn something every day. 

What did I learn on the sleigh ride? I learned that so-and-so had a hip replacement; that a neighbour boy has grown up and become a chiropractor; that cardinals like to eat raisins; and, well, lots of other things. 

Go on a sleigh ride! Breathe in that rich steamy horsey smell. Snuggle up against a loved one. Exchange dreams. You’ll learn stuff, and it will refresh your winter soul.