Another essay. This is a narrative one though. I hope it's a bit more interesting. PNEK MEKS

The Pony Story: The Sixth Edition

The cold bit at my face as I heard the sound of four rifles load and take aim. My eyes went wide with surprise and confusion as the breath got caught in my throat. I couldn’t think for the few minutes until someone hollered my name, though it seemed eons away. Their voice was a muffled command of, “Shoot!” I just stared and heard the words slip from my mouth, “Look dad, a pony!” A thought entered my mind as within the next few seconds I felt myself being dragged, “How did I get into this mess?”

Rewind to 3 months prior, August 1999. The summer before entering 7th grade, and I was spending a weekend; not hanging out, not cruising the mall, not swimming, but sitting in a rather hot class room with my father, learning all the rules and regulations of hunting safety. Not exactly where I wanted to be, but my dad had said it was mandatory. My father’s rule was that both I and my sister would spend one year learning how to hunt. He would teach us the exact rules, proper handling of the gun, and how to take, tag, and clean a kill. Like most of my parents’ teachings, they wanted us to experience everything once, so as not to have any biases about it.

So, I passed my Hunter’s Safety Course, bought my hunting license and tags, and began the extremely boring sport of hunting.

My first few experiences were small game and squirrel. Both of which are somewhat a challenge, as you must tramp through the woods with your shotgun, wearing a bright orange vest with your hunting tags hooked on your back between your shoulders, trying to spot a tiny grey squirrel in the thick woods of brown and black. I was successful in the demise and harvest of a single squirrel, whose tail I still have to this day.

Unfortunately, it couldn’t stay simple, as now I had to take my chances at trying to bag a deer. Deer hunting is boring. I don’t care how exciting those hunting shows on TV try to make it. You can’t shoot a deer in a half hour. Not only that, but they never show you the extremely long period of time in which you had to wait for the deer to show up.

That November day was hell to me. I was awoken at 3am in the morning, stumbled to try and dress my self in heavy camouflage and an orange hat. By 4am I was situated under a pine tree, looking out into the darkness of the cold snow dusted woods. Now that I was awake, I was excited. My father often told us about many of his hunting trips when he went deer hunting. I always wanted to see his kill when he brought it home, the beautiful doe, and the bucks that he got with their dazzling antlers. I always wondered what it was like.

After about 2 hours of seeing absolutely nothing, I was beginning to get bored. My father was leaned back against the pine, passed out and I was starting to doubt that he had told me the truth about some of those adventures. So I sat there, drawing in the dirt, building villages out of moss, snow, and sticks, counting the number of squirrels that ran by, and trying to think of anything to pass the time. Around 11am my father woke up and asked if I had seen anything. I shook my head no, and he took a glance at his watch.

Deeming it about time for lunch, we gathered everything up and were going to head towards my uncle, who, along with his two friends, we’re also in the area hunting with us. My father told me that we would “drive” the deer and maybe he would get a shot. I shrugged and agreed, what else was I going to do? The plan was simple enough as I was to walk along the edge of the rive bank, and my father about 3 yards in from me, and we were to walk straight back.

This would have been simple, if the river bank hadn’t dropped off in front of me, causing me to fall into a ditch, and receive a lovely lump on the back of my head where the tip of my rifle clunked me. I sat for a minute, dazed, rubbing the sore spot on my head looking up at the gloomy trees above me. Slowly I began to pull my self back out on the other side. As I stood up, panic engulfed me as I searched for any sign of my father’s orange hat in the sea of browns, blacks and whites that intermingled in the dead November forest scene. As some logic hit me that he was possibly just ahead, I broke into a run along the river bank, realizing this would be a bad idea too late, and tumbled into a second ditch.

I was frantic now, trying to scramble up the other side, too steep for a 12-year-old to scale with a heavy rifle on her back. I stopped after about the 5th time, and turned, dragging myself out on the side I had fallen in. As I stood up on the level ground again, everything began to assault my mind. I stood there trying to think of what to do. All logic and sensible ideas left me as I started walking away from the river’s edge in a straight line screaming my lungs out for my father and uncle.

I had found myself on a clear path within a few minutes, still shouting, until I jumped at the sound of my uncle’s voice.

“What are you hollerin’ about?”

I remember being so happy to see him, that at first I didn’t realize he had come from the opposite direction my father and I had been heading. I told him how I had fallen in the ditches and gotten lost and that I was so glad he had found me. He looked at me a minute and then laughed. I had tear stains running down my face, having just been scared out of my mind, and he was laughing at me. He then told me that I couldn’t get lost. This path circled around back to the cars, and besides, had I kept walking along the river bank, I would of hit the highway eventually and there was a Burger King about a mile down it.

Well, I turned all shades of red hearing this. Then he took the lead and we tramped along the path to find my father. First we found his one friend, then the other, and finally, after a lot of whistles, we found my dad.

I was pretty sure I was in for it now, as I shook a bit, feeling an ache in my shoulder from carrying the heavy gun. Strangely, I didn’t get any of the blame. My uncle and his two friends began to argue with my father over some rule that probably pertained to me. I stood their quietly until I heard the sounds of quarreling stop, and 4 rifles load.

Looking up I saw the creature they were aiming at. She had a beautiful white coat, splashed and speckled with blotches of the normal dull brown that was common of her kind, her body turned to the side, and head cocked watching us in curiosity. The pie-ball doe stood no more then 6 feet in front of me, and as my father and the rest realized it wasn’t a buck, I heard his ecstatic raspy voice call my name and give that command. “Shoot!” I was mesmerized, for I had never known a deer to look the way this one did, and almost didn’t even hear myself blurt out that ridiculous sentence. “Look, dad, a pony!”

I then remember being yanked into the woods in pursuit as the doe took off. My last memory of that beautiful creature was the strange perception that she had laughed at me.