I am in a motel room undressing to get into bed to sleep for a couple of hours before I have to leave for the airport to catch a flight. I have decided to keep on my wool socks but take off my pants when suddenly the bathroom door opens and a man comes out and walks across my room towards the outside door. My black watch, which had been sitting on an arm chair near the door, is gone and I suspect that the man took it, but then I see it on the floor by the chair. The man is, however, carrying my sunglasses case so I tell him that it is mine and he gives it to me before going outside. I then inspect my knapsack and camera case which are on the floor at the foot of the bed. My camera, binoculars and some papers, perhaps a bird book, are stuffed into the top flap of the pack and a handful of envelopes with photo prints in them are bulging out of the camera case.
The woman who owns the motel is outside my room and tells me that she will be away for most of the day, returning later in the afternoon. When I hear that, I tell her that I will be leaving before she gets back so I need to settle up with her for the room. She comes in and I ask her how much I owe for the room. She tells me $225, which seems very high to me so I ask her again and she says $20. I opened my wallet, which is full of bills, and pick out a 20 but when I hand it to her I realize that there are two $20 bills stuck together and I take one of them back.
I notice Darchelle's sister Alicia about to climb into my bed, thinking that it is hers, but when I explain that it is my bed she sits down facing me on the edge of the other bed while I, still wearing pants I think, start to get into my bed.
Suddenly we are outside the motel room and I am about to take a pony ride. The pony takes off and runs up to the crest of a hill where it rears up like a big black horse before dashing over the top of the hill and down the other side. Holding the yellow rope which is serving as the bridle I run after the pony but when I reach the top of the hill the bridle-rope pulls me high up into the air as if off a ski jump. I expect a painful landing as I drop down towards the pony but have no problem with it.
As the pony climbs up an embankment onto a road I noticed that the end of the yellow nylon bridle-rope is about to slip out of the ring on the pony's collar. Lunging for it I succeed in grabbing it and retie the rope to the ring using a bowloin knot. A stocky man dressed in brown comes down the embankment and compliments me for using a bowloin. I think he may be the husband of the woman at the motel but I'm not sure. In any case I am pleased at his compliment but the rope frays as I cinch down the knot, which nonetheless holds.
The man sics the pony on a squirrel across the street and the pony starts to go for it but stops short of pulling me, as if recognizing my concern about being yanked along behind it. The pony takes off again though, racing ahead of me across a road and through an open woodland carpeted with green grass. As before, the rope extends to be as long as it needs to be for me to keep up. I catch up to the pony when it stops at a dead raccoon lying on a gray feed sack at the foot of the tree. We continue a short distance to the top of a brown dirt bank where four or five children, some of them dressed in pink I think, are playing. The pony descends the bank and I slide down behind it on my side, leaning on one elbow. Stopping under a big tree, the pony wonders what that bird is. Hearing drumming, I tell the pony that it is a Pileated Woodpecker. The woodpecker flies overhead and lands in the top of the tree above us. I would like to point it out to the pony but I know that the pony will not be able to spot it.