Kansas droughts, Maine rains

It’s been a busy spring! I spent some time out west, in Kansas, last month and was reminded what it was like

Not in Maine, Toto...

to ride section roads and pastures – no pastures with rocks erupting, or tree stumps (okay, some badger and prairie dog holes!), just long, straight, flat distance. What a nice change from the obstacle courses we ride in our Maine terrain. But then, here we have plenty of hills for conditioning… I guess there are trade-offs wherever we ride.

Sunday morning I discovered a little pole bending competition at the county fairgrounds. There is a universal camaraderie of riders and their families at  events like this, as familiar as the little jumping and dressage shows here in New England. I found myself wishing a bit of the gung-ho enthusiasm of the pole benders would rub off on our New England riders, and conversely, a bit of our safety-consciousness and pre-show training could be passed on to the pole-bending crowd. There can be valuable cross-pollination when 4-H and Pony Club riders join forces! It’s great whenever we can change venues and see how the “other side” does it.

So, back in Maine, we’re experiencing all the precipitation that skipped us, and the vast center of the continent, last winter. Our soggy May was capped by eight inches of rain over the last weekend alone. And we haven’t even seen our first hurricane rains! We in the east keep willing some of our rain to those further west — share the wealth! And maybe let us get a hay crop in…

And in the bookstore, I have a stack of inviting new books to review. Some have already been posted in the store on the New Arrivals  page, but there are more to come! What a happy chore I have now that I’m back!

Tags: Travels