Misty Meadows

                                             Misty Meadows






Every summer for at least 10 summers, I have been in attendance at the same summer camp. I keep attending for 2 reasons, 1 for the horses(it's a riding camp), and 2 for the friends I make. This year is the year I really enjoyed. My councelours (Simba, Mello and Sunny) were really sweet though I've known Simba for 4 years running. Mello was a lot of fun and she helped me correct some of the things I've always done wrong with riding. Sunny was also really fun though she accidently said her real name(counselours aren't supposed to tell us they're real names but Sunny is really bad at referring to herself in 3rd person so I knew her real name) At barn, thanks to my summers of experience, I knew the drill and waited to get my horse. I got paired with this lovely paint named Jackson who is the tallest horse in the barn. I was told I ride well on him, but he responded really well. Then on a practice ride for the hour long trail ride we would take, I was put on Poseidon. Before we headed out, Poseidon was being grumpy, so I was soothing him and talking to Mello. I said, "You need to let the horse know your in charge." and Mello said with a smile, "This is why I respect you as a rider, you know how to be firm without being cruel, especially on stubborn horses." I smiled but then got mounted on Poseidon and my nerves kicked in. I'm not a nervous rider, but bad weather was setting in and I've already had an experience where I got bolted and wasn't too keen to do it again. Mello looked at me in concern, "You ok?" I nodded and said, "Yeah, just not really keen to ride in the bad weather." Mello nodded. During the practice, Poseidon was ticked off about something and kept moving his nose towards my calf like he wanted to "kiss" my leg (In girlscout camp, the term kissing means you got bitten. they use the term kiss so as to not scare the younger girls) Rascal, who had been there when my horse bolted the first time, took one look at my face and said with a gentle smile, "Tova coming back to you?" I nodded mutely and after they found out Poseidon was bothered by a ring on his saddle, they let me trot him to catch up to my group. After barn we went to music where our group would be performing the cup song with cups. Simba and Melody were patient with me as I learned it, having never done it before. When the day of the big trail ride arrived, we saddled up, me on a chestnut named Sunny. There were  tractor people on the trail, so we pulled the horses to the side to let them graze, but the people weren't going anywhere anytime soon. We ended up heading back and on the way back, my friend had to trot to keep up so I purposefully trotted for fun. Back in the arena, my friend who was on a dark horse named Elvis said, Whoa Pelvis!" by accident. I laughed so hard, and we ended up taking the people mover instead of the horses. At the campfire that night, we roasted hotdogs and talked about fun stuff. During a night hike, Simba suggested we searched for gems, and Mello like me knew what it was so we hung back. After the other girls found out the gems were really spider eyes, that was quite interesting. I love that camp and will probably go back