Trail Riding a Bond

 In chemistry a covalent bond is a bond in which two atoms share electrons, the strongest human bond is friendship. Friendship is the sharing of memories, experiences, even deep secrets. I am extremely lucky, I have friends who deal with me the quirky, moody, self-centered child. I have never had a closer bond with any fellow horseback rider than Margrith, she is a sparky, adrenaline addicted, opinionated firework who lights up my day, she is also caring, and protective and radiates a powerful determination. I have only know her for two years now, but it feels like I have know her for a lifetime.
  However, before I meet Margrith I shared a peculiar friendship with Sarah, the beautiful, confident rider that I had gone to camp with. She and I started horse back riding together with Penelopy and Twilight, but not in the arena. We became explores and set out with our horses on trail rides.
   It was like riding into a fairy tale. The roads were dusty and worn with travel, but there were hills of grass and sage brush, valleys choked with tall crocked trees bent in conversation with each other. There was a steep sandy track that took us up a dry angular crag, onto the side of a baron mountain. From its fortress we could see everything.
   The trails were philosophical, and led us through many paths of life. On day while wandering we stumbled upon a marsh in the heart of a valley, a lily pad infested pool surrounded by bare wired and Autumn leaves fermenting in the heat. The pool had swollen over the fence and dripped into a small stream. Twilight and Penelopy snorted in alarm at the small ribbon of water, I finally convinced Twilight to tip-toe her way across the three inch wide brook, but Penelopy decided she would have to jump the three inch wide brook with a three foot wide leap. I watched as she caught Sarah by surprised as they flew over the stream clearing it and the surrounding mud with easy. Sarah and I stared at each other frightened looks reflected off one another and then burst into laughter, and jokes. We found an old abandoned camp site with a cow pen rusted and bent, forgotten in this small pocket in the mountains. It was ghostly, there was no sound, no other creatures but our caravan of four. We left the site wrapped in the sacred silents. A few days later we found a winding path that took us past elaborate houses with manicured bushes, and trees grown upside down. A farm with cattle that were covered in thick layers of curly brown fur, and a mansion that's drive way was lined with perfect blue spruce trees. To the west was the rich, to the east that abandoned cattle pen, two different forks in the road.
   Beauty was not always part of our trail rides, in fact every trail ride began with a horror story and a hassle. In order to go on a trail ride we had to go through the entire length of the mountain pasture, which meant fighting off Carita's stamped ambushes, and Mateo's persistent insistence that he accompany his mother on our trail riding adventures.
  The horror was the cattle farm right across the way. Its entrance was lined with cracked cow bones, from the sickly cattle the owners left to slowly starve and die. Two rusted trucks, lurked around the corner filled with harsh metal griding spikes in their beds, rusted with age or blood. When the wind blew it prowled through the skeletal structure of the truck allowing them to rasp and rattle. Chains hung from the fence line dyed with harsh copper streaks. Neither Sarah nor I could fathom the use of the chains. The cattle were mad creatures. They were penned up together in layers of their own feces, several had large oozing abscesses on their legs, or wounds turned black by infection. Hate had made them stark raving made. They would charge the fence when we rode by, I once saw a bull leap into the air in his eagerness to thrust his horns into our horses. We were scared of that place, scared of the death that seeped into every pore of the ground, and air and abandoned machines and creatures. It was a relief to get into the open air and ride into the flawless land.
   Horses are the best therapy I have ever known, while riding Sarah and I would share secrets of our past, ones I am not willing to disclose. We cried together and confided everything with one another, our fears, our passionate hates, our irrational hopes.
   We were a miss matched pair. She was popular, gorgeous, and had a boyfriend, who she rode with on occasion. I was an awkward, nerd, who only wistfully looked at the boys I liked and never had the gut to talk to.
   Our conversation were not always serious, sometimes we would play. Two high school teenagers suddenly became a fair princess on her shire mare, escaping from a betrothed marriage, and a gypsy outcast or thief ranging the hills on her black gypsy pony. We would meet at the top of a hill, circle each other at a trot, throwing questions and answers at each other about our make believe pasts. It was great fun. She was the romantic and I was the sullen prickly stranger.
   I remember the first day Twilight and I cantered together. Sarah and I were coming home through a thicket of trees, following a faint deer path, suddenly Twilight broke into a wild trot charging straight under one of the tree's low hanging branches, she fit under them perfectly, I did not. The branches dug into my back, and I felt the sharp pain of needle sharp wood piercing skin.  I pulled Twilight up and sat up from my crouched position. Sarah rode up behind me. "Your bleeding!" she said. I reached my hand to feel my back, and when I looked at my fingers there was a long streak of dark scarlet blood trickling down them. I did not say anything. We'd better go back.
  Sarah and I rode Penelope and Twilight at a fast trot back up the hill. Twilight went faster and faster, then suddenly the jarring two beat step changed into a jerky three beat step and then began to smooth out. Penelope jumped up onto the ridge next to us and began to canter as well. We looked over at each other, this moment was surreal, dreamlike in quality, we could not believe what was happening. Once we reached the crest of the hill Twilight returned to her trot as if nothing had happened. Sarah and I high-fived each other and we road back to the barn in high spirits, completely forgetting that I had bloody scratches etched into my back. The day had been perfect.