A Vermont Sleigh Ride | Dashing Through the Snow

Dashing through the snow? Check.

In a one horse open sleigh? You betcha.

O’re the fields we go? Yep.

Laughing all the way? Ah, not really.

It was more like speechless awe. Our Vermont sleigh ride had us riding on rails instead of radials, with chilly air rushing into our faces, amazed to experience cross country travel through the winter world without a windshield.

Linda Ward, who has been giving sleigh rides for 14 years, held the reins of her Belgian, Ivy, while her party of two snuggled into the hundred year old sleigh robes behind her.

Then we were dashing past the lyrics of “Jingle Bells” and plunging into the real life lyrics of “Over the river and through the woods”…and we should have felt as silly for all this old timey fun, but we didn’t.

We were smitten. There are so may ways cross a winter landscape—skis, snowshoes, snowmobile, Subaru—but is there anything more intimate than this—horse and driver and cuddling cargo?  And to ride so quietly in a vehicle that glides, the runners hissing on snow, occasionally scrunching on ice, pulled by the hay fueled heart of our noiseless engine?

Our great great grandparents would no doubt find our thrall amusing. Our new year’s joy ride was their bus and grocery getter.

Yet for the duration of our jaunt, their scenery, what they would have seen, was our scenery, too: the arched over birches, the burly mountain backdrop, the sugar woods and the snow smothered field.

Oh what fun? Heck yeah.

Julia Shipley

Contributing editor Julia Shipley’s stories celebrate New Englanders’ enduring connection to place. Her long-form lyric essay, “Adam’s Mark,” was selected as one of The Boston Globe's Best New England Books of 2014.

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