Sometimes life gets so busy that it’s easy to forget to take time for simple pleasures.  Ever since I’ve been a young man in my 20′s I have enjoyed using my horses in harness pulling wagons or buggies.  There is a certain peacefulness and satisfaction driving a horse-drawn buggy down a quiet country lane even at a time in history when it’s no longer considered a viable means of functional mobility.

The other night Nancy and I were eating dinner on the back porch with our son Brook when two un-muffled dirt bikes went screaming down our country road disrupting the peace and solitude of the evening.  Thankfully this doesn’t happen too often here, but the harsh noise felt out of place, obnoxious and audibly abusive in the context of an otherwise perfect summer evening.

The experience motivated me to get our buggy horse out of retirement and take a short cruse in a more aesthetically acceptable way down the country lane.  After hitching old Dusty to a spring cart I trotted past our rural neighbor’s farms and houses in an attempt to counteract and maybe even heal the nerve damage inflicted by modern technological advancement.

Horses and buggies have a way of being an antidote to the rattled nerves of many country dwellers.  However, because of the effort it takes to train a horse to safely pull; not to mention the hassle of having to harness and hitch it every time you decide to go anywhere may seem like more of a pain than the efforts worth.  For me, driving horses has always provided a special pleasure and a feeling of tranquility, especially on cool summer evenings.

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