Sleigh Ride of Almost, most Postively unless intervened death

That's what I'm talking about. A sleigh-ride of prescribed, intense, fire-breathing, animal-hoofing, panic-risen, but stopped death.

You know those moments when you are having a near-death experience and then all of the sudden you are rescued and you realize how close you were to death?

Yeah, I didn't either...until two years ago this month.

So, it's like this. I was minding my own business, going out with my family to have a little fun in the mountains. We went up to my dad's best friend's place in Alta, Wyoming. It was just after Christmas and we wanted to have a little fun.

I would like someone to define "fun" before I hit them in the head with a snowball. That's what I would have done if I wasn't on the back of a sleigh that was out of control with sprinting horses.

But before we get to that, let me tell you how it started. Matthew and I started on the snowmobiles. Matthew had never driven one and I hadn't since I was eight. When I sat behind Matthew while he drove, I thought I knew what sheer fear was. What the heck? You have that kind of spunk in you husband? He did. He scared the living daylights out of me. But we lived. When we got back to the front of the house, my dad's friend asked if we'd like to go on one last sleigh-ride before he put the sleigh away.

I should have known right then. I should have known just the way he said the word "last" that we were in for an adventure that would prick the hairs right off of our skin and feed them to the billowy snowy wind. So I said "Matthew, it'd be fun to go with Nathan this last time."
Matthew said, "Ok" and we got on the sleigh. We moved around, trying to find a comfortable position. My siblings were putting their kids on the sleigh. People were still deciding who was going to go. And then the horses started running like the devil was on their tail.

We didn't know what happened. I remember I was sitting facing the back and I watched my two-year old nephew roll off the sleigh and onto the ground where he continued rolling a few times. I heard people start to yell. I saw my mom try to grab the reins and stop the horses. They weren't having that.

The last thing I remember before we turned the corner was Mark, Heather's husband, yelling at us to jump off.

To clarify the picture, no one was driving the horses. We were now careening down a snowy road with horses that were sprinting their guts out. (They were really fast. Maybe should have been race horses.) We were sitting on a few haybales in the middle of the sleigh with only blankets to hold onto.

I thought "Hmm, what am I going to hold onto?" (I still couldn't see anyone else on the sleigh, I could just hear the thundering of horses' hooves and I could see the back of the road). I felt like I was going to fall off. The force was so strong. Then I thought I needed to jump off because I was on the sleigh with out of control horses! Then I thought, or a thought came to me, that I would get very seriously injured if I jumped off. I was thinking I should jump off again and the thought came again. So I talked back...in my mind. How was I supposed to stay on? The force was going to throw me off any second.

I didn't have to think about it much longer because then Matthew yelled: "Grab the kids!" That was the first time he'd said anything. And that's the very first time I felt panic. I had forgotten, because of my position on the sleigh, that there were kids on the sleigh. I especially felt panic because Nathan my two-year old was on there. And my niece who was 4, and my nephew who was 3. And just me and Matthew for adults.

I couldn't turn around to grab the kids. The force was too strong, but I realized I had to stop the sleigh because no one else was helping us. I flung myself to the floorboards and amazingly, didn't fall off. I crawled up the boards on the bottom of the sleigh, one by one (the force was hard to pull up against!) and pulled myself to the front of the sleigh. I stood up, holding onto the front boards of the sleigh and looked back. Whew, Matthew was in the perfect position. He turned his body and had his arms around all three kids and was pushing them forward to counteract the force. I realized quickly that there was nothing better I could do for the kids so I turned my attention to stopping the sleigh. I looked forward, could see the reins on the ground, the horses sprinting indefinitely forward, and not a clue of what to do.

If I was a swearing person, this would have been a good time to swear. Even if I wasn't a swearing person, this would still have been a good time to swear. But I didn't.

I yelled all kinds of things at the horses, mostly like "Whoa! or Whoa! or Whoa!" Nothing worked. Apparently I am not as effective as Tom Clancy, or Sulley from Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman, or hundreds of other people who yell Whoa! at horses and they stop. In fact, my yelling seemed to have the opposite effect.

There was a point when I thought of jumping onto the horses, but the board on the sleigh was flat and went up to my neck. There was no way in my snow gear that I could climb that flat tall board and jump successfully onto the horses. The thought crossed my mind, but also the word "no" did too. I didn't attempt. I knew very clearly it wouldn't work.

So I just stood there and realized we were at the mercy of whatever happened. There was nothing else we or I could do.

Then out of the corner of my eye and across a field far away I saw a snow-mobile speeding, cutting through a field, trying to catch us. I have never seen a snow-mobile go that fast. It was kind of cool. I held onto the wood and watched.

It was my dad's best friend. He got in front of the horses and blinked his lights, trying to slow them down. They ignored his gesture. He looked surprised, he pulled away before they ran him over and pulled in front of them again, blinking his lights. They still ignored his gesture, and so he pulled to the side of the sleigh. The next part happened so quickly that I don't even know how it happened.

My dad's friend somehow jumped from the snow-mobile onto speeding horses and crashed us into the side snowbank without hurting himself. We crashed. The sleigh tipped a bit, the kids started to tumble out, Matthew caught the kids (saving them again) and we were all fine. I mean all FINE. The snow had actually cushioned our crash well. Weird isn't even the word I can describe. We could have been killed or seriously injured! I have never felt so real, so close to what could have happened, yet it didn't. The kids started crying (I think they were crying during it, or part of during it, but couldn't hear them over the thundering of hooves). A few people on snow-mobiles rode up to take the crying children back to their worried, EXTREMELY worried parents who still didn't know if we were okay or not.

As for the damage: the snow-mobile was tipped over and the windshield broken. Some of the horses' hooves were bleeding, but my dad's friend said they could take us back. So Matthew and I and Nathan rode back on the sleigh back to the house.

My dad's best friend was unusually quiet. He looked pretty shaken up. I tried to joke. No seriously, I did. I can't remember what I said, but I remember no one laughing. My dad's best friend said that in thirty years of giving sleigh rides, his horses have NEVER acted like that. We still don't know why they started sprinting. There was no letting down of reins, no loud noise, nothing we can exactly pinpoint. My dad's best friend had left the reins about a minute or two before they sprinted, but we aren't sure if he tried to hand them to someone or not. There is not clarity on what happened.

But I am alive. And no one got hurt. It was a miracle. I still can't even believe how if things had turned out any differently, someone, or multiple people could have been seriously injured of hurt. The position of everyone on the sleigh, those who fell off at the beginning (my sister also fell off at the beginning) and my other sister was about to hook up her son in an intertube and was literally seconds away from hooking it to the sleigh, could have been disastrous.

My dad's best friend said he doesn't know how he jumped from the snow-mobile and stopped the sleigh. And he IS like Tom Clancy. He's a pretty cool mountain man in our minds. His wife even called him and asked if she needed to bring the car to the accident--she thought something worse had happened.

Oh, but I forgot to tell you. During the ride, I remember Nathan saying one thing: WHEEEEEEE!!!!

And this is a true story.
(there are also personal implications to this story I won't get into because that is way more boring. But I will tell you what: do not pray for things you shouldn't. I learned that lesson from the sleigh ride. Enough said about that!)