Deam Wilderness

I was on the phone with my eldest Son while he was reading my blog Perfect Horses and Kids. He was having a wonderful time talking to me on the phone while being online at lightening fast speeds, he was telling me how fast he could pull up a page, then saying things like, "I have high speed internet and you don't.", he is just warped and cruel like that.

Anyway he was laughing as he read my blog about hauling horses in the bed of a pick-up truck, and he said that I should blog about how we used to make our kids ride under the horse instead of on top. I will tell that story in a future blog.

The area that we rode in was a national forest and back then there were no restrictions on where you could ride, you could make a trail wherever you wanted to. That area is now called the Deam Wilderness and the horseman's camp is called Blackwell.

We made most of the horse trails with motorcycles when I was a kid. My Dad and Uncles would haul motorcycles in and ride through the woods. They were logging there back then and they left big piles of sawdust and wood shavings everywhere, those were just perfect for playing with motorcycles on.

Can you even imagine a national forest that you could just use like it was yours? My Dad and Uncles drove their nice family cars and trucks back into the forest on logging roads and I remember getting hung up with those big old cars that were heavier than tanks. No one had 4-wheel drives back then.

We would sometimes get stuck on the frame of the car in a rut that was deep enough to hide a ferris wheel in. My Uncle would just jack it up and run the car off of the jack. You couldn't tear those old solid cars up.

My family would sometimes haul horses into the Deam Wilderness area and drive back a log road and just camp by the first pond we came to. We would spend a couple of weeks of vacation time swimming, riding, fishing and frog gigging. No one ever bothered us there, unless it was family coming to visit.

We didn't have to worry about hikers or DNR people walking in on us because nature, natural resources and conservation weren't popular back then. The only people that wanted to get out in that area were people like us and there weren't many people like us, we were way ahead of our time.

So while my eldest Son may rub in his high speed internet connection to me, I can always make him green with envy by talking about driving back to those ponds and spending a couple of weeks of seclusion in the summer. Not having to stay on the beaten path but being able to wonder where ever you wanted to go. That is something that he will never be able to do, well, at least not legally.

Ramble

I don't have anything in particular that I am going to blog about this morning, so I will just ramble. This morning was just beautiful, I was away from home most of the day yesterday, which is unusual for me but it always makes me enjoy home more after being away. Today is warm after a very cold night last night, I had to cover my rosebush to protect it from the frost of last night. Here it is, the end of April and I have to cover a rosebush, that is Indiana weather for you.

Speaking of Indiana weather, on Monday evening while we were feeding, it started to sleet. Then the sleet changed to snow mixed with rain, but the sun was shining and I took this picture of the rainbow that presented itself.

Now while cold temps, sleet, snow, rain, sunshine and a rainbow all at the same time at the end of April is not all that unusual for Indiana, that Unidentified Flying Object in the picture is. The important question here is, what exactly is that in the right hand corner? This is definitely a UFO, if I ever saw one. I don't know what it is, I even digitally enhanced it for your viewing pleasure.

Not to fear though as warm weather has returned to Indiana and my Son can now go camping and enjoy his short vacation. I told him that he was the one to blame for last summer's drought because he didn't do any camping. All he has to do is mention the word camp and the sky will darken and rain will start pouring. This Spring was just a little different for him, he took off work and the temperature immediately dropped to almost freezing for two nights.

Now back to this morning, as I said, it was just lovely. The birds were singing and the temperatures have returned to a more Springlike feel. When I went out to take care of my menagerie, I just needed a sweatshirt and the rooster was standing on one of the gates crowing, a perfect picture that took me back to my childhood.

Did I ever mention on here how weird it is to have a dozen or so chickens following your ever step? Their feet make this strange clicking sound as they trot to keep up with you. I try to feed them as quickly as possible to avoid their wrath.

While I was typing this I heard the Chickens start yelling and throwing a fit. I ran outside and there was another fox in the stud pen. He just looked at me and I had to stomp my foot and holler at him to make him run. He ran into the mare and foal lot where one of the mares chased him into the woods. He stopped on the other side of the fence and looked at me, so I ran in the house and got my rifle but he was gone when I got back. Unfortunately he will be back, I will have to start regular patrols again.