,,,on a Snowy Evening

…on a Snowy Evening

Another snowflake lands in my eye. I put my head back down and step up my gait to a trot. I’ve made this trip so many times, I’m confident of my surefootedness, even as my hooves disappear in the fresh snowfall.

But Bob has other plans. 

“Woah there, Coleridge,” he says with a pull on the reins. To my annoyance, he brings me to a complete stop. No explanation and no movement from his seat on the wagon behind me. More snowflakes, big as pillow down, land in my eyes. I knicker in frustration.

Frankly, stopping brings relief to my joints. These New England winters bother me more every year. I keep the complaints to a minimum, knowing what happened to Wordsworth when his knees went. But with more than half of this journey still ahead of us, I want to get on with it.

I hear Bob strike a match behind me and figure he’s helping himself to a pipe. Not an easy feat with that wind sweeping around us. But a soft glow of light on the virgin snow beside me tells me he lit the oil lamp instead. 

Which can mean only one thing. We will be here awhile admiring the scenery. Or rather, Bob will relish this snowy evening, while I shiver in the wind, my knees growing stiffer by the minute.

I turn back to look at him and—sure enough—he’s raised the lantern over his head, his eyes angled to the sky. The rapture on his face practically gives off its own light as fat snowflakes land in his hair and beard. The whole world is silent except for the delicate strokes of winter’s paintbrush. I admit, it’s almost as pretty as an open barn door at the end of a long day.

 Almost.

But if I don’t break Bob’s reverie soon, I’ll be too sore to get us anywhere. The plan is to reach Derry tonight. Another ten miles, meaning four hours in these conditions. I know Bob didn’t pack anything to make camp with, and not much food, either.

“Something wrong, boss?” I ask with all the innocence of the snowflakes swirling up my nostrils. “Why’d we stop?”

Bob’s bliss for the blizzard continues. Or he’s pretending not to hear me. His lips move as if he’s praying. Oh, he’d better pray.

I stamp my front hoof in the snow, making my harness bells jangle. “Bob!” 

He jerks out of his snow dream with a painful tug at the reins. “Wh-what is it, Coleridge?” he stammers, a little off balance as the wagon lurches backward a few inches.

I try and fail to control my impatience. “You know we have miles to go still. What are we doing here, besides freezing?”

But his mind catches on his favorite question, as it often does when he's gone off on one of his reveries. On the wind, I hear him ask and answer himself in repeated whispers. How would Coleridge do it? Miles to go, miles to go. How would Coleridge phrase it?

If I don’t take control of the situation, we’ll be lucky to reach Derry by morning. Not only are my joints talking to me, but my stomach is starting to sag with hunger. I lower my head and heave forward, the ground more slippery than even a few minutes ago. Bob barely notices, and we ride in blissful silence about a quarter mile.

 All at once, I feel him moving around. I venture a glance backward, and see him holding the lantern at arm’s length, peering hard at the forest edge, not twenty feet off to our right.

 “Is that Morton’s land?” he asks. 

“Morton?” I let out a long, plosive breath. “We passed Mort’s land hours ago. We’re up Old Man Blackstone’s way.” His face wrinkles in puzzlement.

“I’m sure I’ve hunted here with Morton,” he insists.

Now I’m the one pretending not to hear him. But the man will not let it go.

“Yes, yes, I’m quite sure these are Morton’s woods. If we cut through here, we’d be—”

“Frozen by morning,” I cut in, and this time I bring the wagon to a stop. “We have this conversation every winter, Bob. This is Blackstone’s land. Remember?” His lips twitch a little as he digs for the memory. “Last fall? We stood here on this same road? And for hours you stared into those woods, wondering which path would be best?”

The man’s eyes brim with tears from the wind. “Two roads…in a yellow wood,” he muses aloud.

“Yeah. And you remember where those roads went?” He gives me a blank look. “Nowhere! Made no difference which one we took. All afternoon into evening, round and round in that forest, ending up right back where we started. And that’s why…,” I pause for maximum emphasis, “…we’re not cutting through any more woods.”

I shake the snow that has gathered on my mane during my tirade and wonder if I will ever get to a warm place to sleep tonight or taste oats again. But Bob hasn’t finished yet.

“We could cut across that field,” he says, pointing to the wide, flat expanse of snow to our left. I do something I haven’t done in years. I rear up on my back feet, flailing my front legs in the snowy air. My knees cry out in pain. Bob cowers back in his seat, dropping the reins at his sides.

“That’s the lake!” I shout back at him with a high-pitched whinny. “Barely frozen over for the last month! Can’t you smell it?” I am so tempted to turn us right around and make a long gallop for home—to hell with sore knees and a sagging belly and the dark night and the snow.

But Bob’s back to his winter euphoria. Looking up again at the inky, snow-filled sky. “Sure is lovely,” he says. “Wouldn’t mind stopping awhile to watch it.” He catches a snowflake on his open palm. “I wonder how Coleridge would phrase it.”

I raise my snow-tufted tail, and in the most pungent way I can muster, I show him exactly how Coleridge would phrase it.

"Jee-hosaphat, Coleridge!" he exclaims. "Not in the middle of this beautiful scene!"

"Sorry, Bob, but you promised we'd get there tonight. You know you like to keep your promises."

We ride for hours without speaking, the wind easy and the snow softly falling around us.