Sweden Ride -- Day Two -- Wind Can't Spoil a Perfect Day
I’ve travelled the world riding horses – lots of different environments and climates, lots of breeds, lots of disciplines. They all seem to have one thing in common -- wind gets them rowdy.
I won’t say Day 2 dawned windy, because the day and the wind started well before dawn. Nonetheless, when we stepped out of our stuga (Swedish for cabin or hut), we were met with the kind of wind that sounds like the ocean and makes opening even the stoutest of stuga doors a challenge. It grew stronger during breakfast, and we got in the van to head the farm with some trepidation.
We arrived at the stables to find the dozen Icelandic ponies running laps around the paddock. Bundles of fluff, they charged past us with displays of bucking that made the resident collie insane at the utter impossibility of herding them all into some type of order. Eventually bribed with grain, haltered, and tied for saddling, they settled into appropriate professionalism. Still, we suspected the ride – 5 hours in duration – might be spirited.
At home, I might not have gone out riding on a day like this. But this isn’t home; this is Northern Sweden. And, perhaps the wind was making the temps in the 20s feel a bit more like the teens; relatively speaking, it was still balmy and we were going to ride two hours through the taiga and have a damn picnic by Green Lake, like the program said.
Bundled in the outfitter’s excellent quilted jumpsuits with layers of gloves and cowls up under our helmets, we set out – six shaggy ponies with their oversized riders probably looking like something out of a Tolkien story. Overhead the pines whipped and moaned, but astride our little equine radiators, we were largely protected and only reminded of the ferocity of the wind when we crossed a ridge or skirted a frozen lake crisscrossed with moose tracks.
A recent warm spell meant the top of the snow had melted slightly and then refrozen. The lead horse crunched through a glaze of ice, but behind him the others deftly stepped into his tracks, leaving only a single set of small hoofprints. When we’d get to a stretch where the snow had been tamped down by the pass of other horses or a snowmobile, we would tolt or canter and the line of six little horses would look and sound much like a miniature train chuffing through the snowy forest.
Rolling hills of narrow trunked pines gave way to frozen lakes edged by stretches of dense birch thicket. Climbing, we reached a three-sided hut with a fire ring and ample split wood. We tied out the ponies and sprinkled the snow at their feet with grain then built a fire. Flo soon had hot mushroom soup dispensed in clever wooden mugs and was making grilled cheese sandwiches among the embers. After an hour we were back in the saddle and headed toward home as the sun set and the first stars appeared.
Windy and brief though it was, a perfect day.