The Posse plus Brown Church Road

Saturday: Brown Church Road

Brown Church Road is another access point with trailer parking for the Patuxent River State Park. In theory you can travel all along this river park, in actuality you can cross roads, end up in swamps with impassable sections or generally not be able to move forward. I’d like to see these negatives corrected.

Brown Church Road is a dead end road between Mt Airy and Damascus. Easily overlooked with a handful of new and old houses and farmettes, a couple employment centers, ending in the park as the road deteriorates.

Brown Church Road is also the place where recently a young girl was found decomposing in a shallow grave by hunters. This is not a well-traveled road, and everybody is watchful but friendly, waving as we drive by.

We park in the parking area, tack up and head down the roadway, which gets thinner and thinner as we travel. There is little ‘head room’ and we pull out our clippers. The boys pick their way into the woods and immediately come across the River, but it looks more like a ‘crick’ at this point. We cross the ‘crick’ and follow the trail up a slight hill and we are now at the trail’s crossroads.

We opt to go left, and it is well-maintained and easy to follow. Horses have been on this stretch just this morning, having gotten three inches of rain just the evening before, it is easy to see their hoof impressions and fresh manure. We continue on, coming to more crossroads, choosing to go this way or that as we feel. It is a beautiful day in the woods.

As in all our trail explorations, we can see that no one carries clippers, choosing to go around a downed limb than get off their horse and remove it or clip it. We end up doing maintenance on some of these downed trees. We’re clipping as we move along.

We come to a clearing, which turns out to be quite large and planted with saplings in their plastic jackets with netting positioned over the ends, preventing deer from defoliating the tree before it has a chance to grow. This open area also has jumps and fences. We figure we’re on private property and move on after eating some excellent red and white clover.

We canter through the open area and get back into the woods, retracing our steps, then turning left again.

We love this park, and look forward to coming back again soon. So close to our house, on our same park, it is like being home! We eventually make it out of the woods, the last section of trail is straight up and down the hillside and it must have been a horrific waterway the evening before. A gully-washer, surely, so many trees down we end up bush-whacking through the woods, zigzagging around downed trees, holes and rocks. KC is stellar, really listening to me.

We emerge onto a bean field and soon enter a clearing and the roadway. A marker stone is placed on the site of the Brown Church. Our trailer is parked on the other side of the small woods. We made it!

We saw evidence of other riders but saw not a single soul while we were out. So quiet out this way, off the beaten path. Obviously easy to dump a dead girl, without the slightest hint of being spied. The wrong person knows this place is secluded.

We get back in plenty of time to load the car with the garage/shed debris and junk from the patio and make a dump run. Later on after dark we start a bonfire and we burn 2x4s and brush until almost midnight. The moon is waxing. It's beautiful out here.

Sunday, Sunday:

We had planned for a 10 am ride out, getting there around 9:30 ready to go except for tacking up. Don’t you love plans? Agendas? Clear-cut direction? Sometimes doesn’t work out as planned.

I got up early, 6:35. That’s early for a Sunday, right? Fed and watered everybody, then pulled KC out to the aisle to clean him up, trim and braid. I wanted him to look like a fine example of a backyard pampered pony, not the product of a crazy person that has too little time for anything.

He LOVES getting straightened up for a ‘show.’ He was yawning, and ‘down-dog’ stretch, too, while we listened to the radio with everybody in on this quiet Sunday.

I also put several flakes of hay in the nets for the small trailer. Moved tack from one trailer to the other, buckets, fly spray, all that jazz. Previously I had stated that living with the boys would make us more likely to be on time for a ride because we didn’t have to catch them in the field (they now always come to the gate) or know if they are dirty or have all their shoes on, if they’ve been fed and like that. I need to add a disclaimer for self-sabotage.

Tom joined me in the barn, cleaned up Skip and we left everybody in, with the fans running. I didn’t want to clean him twice. Showered, dressed, made breakfast, filled my saddle bags with horse treats and an apple. We needed to stop on the way at the local KwickyMart for bottled water. He filled the little cooler with freezer-packs and a few bottles of beer. It was now 9:23.

He went out the door with the cooler, I went out the door with my saddle bag. Neither of us went out the door with keys to the house or truck. He thought he had keys, couldn’t find them. There were no house keys in the truck because they hadn’t made their way back since we locked ourselves out a couple weekends ago.

All of our doorways are keyed alike. We have five doorways. Each lock set came with 2 keys. We each have one, I gave one key to my Aunt and there are two on a small ring that usually resides in the truck, which has a keypad. Where are the rest of those keys?

Long story short: I texted everybody we were supposed to be meeting up with that we couldn’t make the ride. Surveying the windows revealed that none were unlocked, the shed was unlocked. He tried prying a basement window with a chisel and the glass cracked. He finished the window pane off with the sledge hammer from the unlocked shed. He slid through the opening that we had wrapped with a moving mat, diving into the basement feet first. With the circular saw he cut a piece of plywood to fit the window, screwed that into place. It was now after 10. The boys were still in the trailer, munching hay.

I received texts back informing us that they were going to ride, but would circle back to meet us. We stopped for bottled water and bought diesel, too, being cheaper than high-test gasoline: $3.65.

We got there around 11:00 a.m. Everybody was there, waiting for us. We do have some great friends, really.

We quickly tacked up and headed down the drive. It was certainly heating up, but felt like air conditioning in the woods. Saw lots of deer, little ones, too, and a fox. We seemed to mostly have the park to ourselves. A train came by, too, blowing its horn, rattling and squeaking, no one paid attention at all. While crossing the river Skip lost a shoe.

The destination was our favorite biker bar, The Woodstock Inn, which has hitching posts out front. I brought my thin rope halter and the long, skinny lead rope in my saddle bag. The boys love going there because it means at least an hour of standing around doing nothing. They like doing nothing. They put up with the bikes coming in and out, the occasion train coming through, because they can stand there and do nothing.

There were a few good stretches for cantering back to the trailers. They were rested, dried out and going in the right direction. Asking them to hurry was no big deal. Willing and able. Staying in the shade on the winding woods trail, keeping my knees in on the slim parts, we made good time getting back, around 4:30. And not one single hint from him about wanting to buck. My little man is growing up!

Now we have to deal with getting a replacement window for the basement and buying at least two magnetic key-minders and figuring out where the rest of our keys are. We can’t be getting locked out of our house, we live too far out there for this foolishness.