All things

It’s nearly 7:00 PM and still light out, which makes the big-flake slow snowfall outside feel much like a Saturday midday, during which I might actually be found sitting in my chair by the upstairs balcony window writing by the light of day, instead of a Tuesday evening on the very last calendar day of winter (this obviously means nothing to Mother Nature, nor should it.)

Regardless, it’s already mid-March in the middle of one of the busiest semesters I can remember. We’ve already hosted eight or ten horse shows this semester (I honestly can’t remember–it might be more than that) and attended two others with six others left to attend as well as three more to host, not counting the open shows. I hope it’s fair to say that I’m burnt out, tired in a way that’s hard to describe, looking forward to more open days and free weekends. To be fair, I would also be feeling much better about things if it were no longer snowing and it were possible to ride outside every now and then, warm enough to sit on my porch swing for a few moments and breathe some fresh air.

Despite my general grumpiness about the amount of freeze-dried semester still ahead (though this weekend’s coming show trip to California is a good incentive to keep plodding ahead) there’s a lot of season left to go–my collegiate team has two big shows ahead and the high school team’s season has only just started; they will compete through to the Nationals at the end of June.

Some criticism reached my ears today that some of my riders on both teams felt I was not being positive enough, not giving enough empowering feedback and focusing too much on the negative. At first, I was frustrated, taken aback, disgusted that just when I was starting to feel like I was really getting somewhere with these students that all along they had been crying themselves to sleep feeling like they had lost my love. After being asked by a solid third of my team riders (on both teams) to get more critical, a little harsher, a little more demanding to help them be stronger, more confident riders beneath the eye of a judge, this latest complaint set me back into a circle.

Then I started remembering other complaints: I’m too serious. I’m too lighthearted. I try to structure things too much. I goof off too much.

I had a teacher my freshman year who turned out to be not so great of a person, but I learned plenty from her–one maxim will remain with me, whether I spend time as an instructor, trainer, coach, or anything in between. “You can’t be all things to all people.”

At any time, one of my students is bound to not like the way I am doing things. At the same time, I will have a few rare students who will see me as their “one trainer,” that teacher or person that sticks with you, the one who teaches you the most you’ve ever learned and showed you the most. It’s simply an unfortunate fact of teaching, coaching or training–you will never please all of your students or clients, and I’m either going to have to learn to be okay with that and strive to keep improving or quit and move on to something where I won’t be judged all the time by students, superiors or peers. Rough? Maybe a little. Such is life.

For now, though, I’m going to let myself stew a little and feel sorry for myself, whether it’s going to help me in the long term or not. A little self-indulgent self-pity goes a long way.

Spending time with the kids

I’m afraid to call too much attention to the fact that I have a pretty awesome arena schedule this semester in case the arena fairy takes notice and makes sure it will never happen again.

I teach every morning at 8 AM; Mondays and Wednesdays I have another class at 1:00; Tuesdays and Thursdays I have practice from 4-6. That’s all. Fridays are, as always, a giant cluster, but the first four days of the week are surprisingly quiet–a class first thing in the morning to wake me up, get me thinking, kickstart my motivation for the day and generally make me cheerful (unless, of course, they’re riding like garbage…heaven help them then.)

So far I’ve found lots of time in the day to chase horses, do some riding, continue working on my social media empire (if you haven’t already, like us on Facebook at facebook.com/alfreduniversityequestriancenter–yes, this is a completely shameless plug. Go check out what I’ve been working on this semester because if I do say so myself it’s totally awesome.) Today, now that the ice rink outside the hay barn had finally thawed out, I was able to bring one Great Diversion, aka Withers, aka Tres, out of hibernation and into the main barn for a brief session on the lunge line.

Tres was x-rayed when the latest round of vets came through for injections and diagnostics, and his withers look amazing. Three of the “basic” fractures look beautiful and healing; the least of the displacements seems to have somehow replaced itself and the bone is stitching back together. The most insane-looking vertebrae will probably never put itself back together again but as long as the bone chip stays in place we’re doing okay. Tres was cleared for light and controlled exercise from the ground.

So onto the lunge line we went, a chain over his nose as I recalled his last moments of ground work in this arena (Rebecca and I trying to rip his blankets off as he reared and struck and spun over our heads) He has a disconcerting habit of dawdling along at the most useless speed of walk imaginable and then turning to face off–not much fun for a horse with a history of rearing on the ground–or slowly angling himself until the butt end was facing me. Foolishly unarmed with no lunge whip in sight I flapped the useless end of the lunge line at him and danced around him in circles until I got him ambling along in a rough circle. I asked him to trot and he reluctantly moved out, slowly accelerating until he gave me a beautiful circle of true trot, neck arched low as he stretched out his spine all on his own.

Then he promptly exploded, which I had been expecting all along–mercifully he chose to go forward rather than spin at me, and I diffused him quickly and sent him forward again. With one more eruption he settled down into a trot for a few more minutes, worked the other direction, and called it a day. Success. I will publicly thank Hoss and Tammy again for taking care of him for his months of layup; while leading his ground manners, knock wood, have improved astoundingly. Everywhere else (like the crossties) he’s still the same old Tres–but I least I know that progress is possible again.

I rode Playgirl in Western IV as my demo horse–fortunately, she’s very good at the exercise I wanted to show the students, opening and closing doors. On the well-broke western horses, one can manipulate them completely off the leg without touching their faces at all simply by knowing when to close a leg and when to open. In a combination of opening and closing legs I can send a horse forward, backward, turn in either direction or stop and spin. Playgirl is pretty catty to this game and made a good show of bebopping around the arena while I demonstrated what I could accomplish with just my leg. She’s also very good at jumping forward out of her tracks when I ask her to, showing how you can make a horse light to the leg rather than having to kick them forward all the time.

For everything else she was not so great–at the end, I loped her around a little bit while the students watched and I narrated the progress she’s made in two years as well as the plateau we seem to have reached. Compared to the cross-firing head-flinging wildebeast she was when she got off the trailer from Texas or whatever, she’s come pretty far. But I was distressed to find that she still can’t seem to follow her own body around, that she can’t get off my leg when I want her to, that she still demonstrates resistance all over her body when I ask her to go forward. More work is needed, clearly.

Progression

There are days that I really simply don’t feel like riding–like Friday, in which the amount of paperwork I felt I needed to do was outweighing the need to ride all of my western horses who were just going to be wild after a weekend waiting for a hunt seat show to wrap up anyway. The horses seem to understand when they don’t get worked, but coworkers and peers and supervisors never seem to be quite as forgiving when things are not turned in or completed.

Regardless, I wrapped up enough little things on my to-do list to merit getting into the barn again. I rode a set of five, keeping in the back of my mind that I would also be jumping a horse in a clinic later that evening.

I began my day with Spider, an old Appaloosa mare on trial. She had arrived at Alfred late the previous evening thanks to a long day of shipping with my friend Chilly from the ranch, driving first from Alfred to State College, then to Quakertown, then back to Alfred again. Spider was unsure in the arena and will definitely take a lot more riding. In a less-than-optimistic mood, I turned her over to the farrier for front shoes.

My next mount was R-Star, a reining mare with a reluctant and sassy streak which was not evident in this ride. Having some light maintenance done recently on her stifles, she rode out fairly nicely–she’s a talented, well-broke mare but has never really been one of my favorites; she’s not comfortable to ride nor does she seem to have much of a personality of any kind. I spent a few moments playing with her steering and brakes off just my leg and weight, weaving in and out of jump standards and other assorted hunt seat detritus in the arena. I put her up after a brief ride and dragged on to the next horse.

My next steed was Batman, a very talented reining gelding who is surprisingly light on his feet for being slightly bigger than the “average” reiner. At this point, the course for the hunt seat show had been set in the arena and he cast all sorts of hairy eyeballs at the various fences, pickets, poles and flowerboxes and I amused myself for a few minutes by playing “shoot the gap” and riding him between pieces of fences. He mellowed out a lot as we went, a small portion of the amount of mellowing-out he’s done since arriving at Alfred last spring. He’s still got a bit of a twist in his poll to the left which makes me suspect minor chiropractic issues.

The students had cleared out of the barn by now so I took advantage of the quiet arena to lunge Barbie, one of Harry’s horses, an extraordinarily petite palomino reining mare. She bolted about like a wild thing on the lunge line for a solid fifteen minutes, which is quite a long time for that kind of sustained activity. Essentially my following ride was a cool-down for her and I simply jogged and loped a bit until she had stopped blowing so hard.

Running out of time before the start of the clinic, I popped my last horse on the lunge line, old sweet Roan, old enough to be ageless yet still remarkably spry. He moved better than I had ever seen him on the line and blew off just enough steam that I felt comfortable simply slipping on his bridle and sliding on bareback for a brief hack. I was surprised as he jogged slowly around the arena that he was sounder and easier to sit to unsaddled than saddled (suggestive not only of closer connection but a poor-fitting saddle, perhaps) and even loped around easily on both leads–he’s notorious for having a terrible right lead. These are the perks of being in your mid- to upper-twenties and still reining once a week. Feeling much happier and accomplished with my day, I returned Roan to his stall and prepared myself for the jumping clinic.

The clinic was lots of fun with Pat Bostwick from Ohio, one of Nancy’s connections and friends. I rode Wow, who has been featured in this blog from time to time as a hunt-seat-trying-to-be-western horse who apparently also has a passion and knack for jumping. I had an excellent evening jumping Wow around the low course, including one tricky section with a rollback off the wall into a bending line. Hard to describe, hard to ride, but fun when we nailed it.

Six horses in as many hours. Such is life.

Projects

Now that winter break is coming to an end and I had a brief respite from being at the barn every day, I’ve rekindled the desire to ride and work to train on some of the school horses. Ironically, my refired passion to ride always seems to come at times that I’m forced to be busy elsewhere; moments like this are where my job as horse trainer and my job as a university student-affairs employee derail each other in a spectacular manner. Tomorrow, even though I have lots of things I want to work on at the barn–riding Sweet Emma, working with Tres who is back at the school barn, improving Paulie’s topline condition–I will be spending six hours in student affairs training. Snooze. (Realistically I’m sure there’s plenty to learn, but for once I want to be riding six or seven horses in a day. Let me out.)

Unfortunately, the last horse in the barn I feel like riding is Playgirl. Becca once made the observation that we tend to be hardest on our own horses and the most critical; Harry, in contrast, has accused me of being “stable-blind” to Tres’ many faults, discrediting my belief that he’s a much better school horse than Playgirl will ever be. I think I’m right there. I’m sure he’s more right in his belief that she’s a better horse with more athleticism and potential. But she’s not great school horse material, and that frustration prevents me from really enjoying what I do with her. Riding in the cowhorse is entertaining but it hasn’t grabbed me the way I thought it would; it’s incredibly expensive and a lot of hurry-up-and-wait to ride for five minutes.

In researching western dressage for my soon-to-be-published HorseNation column, and in conjunction with the week I spent training with Lynn Palm in Ocala, Florida, I’m scraping up my last bit of devotion I can find to working with Playgirl and hoping that taking everything back to basics–short rides, focusing on transitions and changing directions and keeping myself balanced rather than worrying about what her body is doing–might be enough to save her and save me and save our partnership. Unfortunately, I can anticipate that I’ll be highly critical of her as well. The best thing to do would be to pretend she isn’t mine, just a project horse that’s come in on trial, trying to convince myself that she’s not a reflection of me, just another horse.

At the end of the day, the one activity I always wish I had more time for is knitting. I like the idea of starting knitting projects, but I also love the idea of finishing them, of binding off, stitching in the yarn ends, admiring the finished product and giving it away or wearing it myself. I like having neat and tidy endings, knowing that something is complete, that it will not require further maintenance or redoing all over again tomorrow. Knitting, while a characteristically old-lady pasttime, gives me a sense of order, a series of small events with a clear beginning and end, a conclusion and a distinct point of achievement at the end, the kind of satisfaction I cannot get at the end of the day by riding in endless circles in the arena.

The further adventures of Sweet Erma

Readers of HorseNation can see a brief and tidy version of the Sweet Emma story so far in today’s column (credit to the amazing editor Wylie for coming up with a pretty excellent title.)

Nancy absolutely hates when I call her Erma, which naturally encourages me to say it more often. I am going to attribute this charming nickname to Josh the maintenance man from the Bitterroot, who called our wrangler from England not Emma, as was her given name, but Erma. It stuck. So has this version of Erma.

She’s a sweet girl, a little bit different from working around horses; she’s much more aloof and suspicious but also more steady at the same time. Honestly, as of yet, she really doesn’t seem to have developed much of a personality. I’m sure time will tell; I have faith that she’s not a soulless creature at heart. The old adage “stubborn as a mule” did come into play today when Erm and I had a dispute about going into the wash stall. She decided she did not want to, and we did not. I’m coming to realize that when mules don’t want to do something, they simply don’t do it. There was no prancing about, jigging from foot to foot, backing down the aisle or rearing up–she simply locked her legs and stood there. I decided to pick battles I thought I could win and changed tactics.

I did not change tack, however–last time, one of our standard western saddles with a grippy cutter pad and a no-slip chamois cloth had gotten me through well enough, so I threw that on again and headed out to the ring. Her ears are too long to allow me to slip the bridle over her head; I need to unbuckle it every time and buckle it back on. #longearproblems.

Today, however, the saddle did not want to play. After getting over the sensation of “good lord her back is so humped she’s gonna buck me off and I’m gonna die–oh no wait, that’s just the way she’s shaped” I played around with my power steering; she actually does know how to neckrein and will move off of leg gently. Unfortunately her shape (or lack thereof) makes me ride in a perpetual chair seat; combine this with the fact that she’s a petite 14 hands and I look like a moron every time we’re riding with my feet nearly before her chest.

Add to this the fact that my saddle nearly jettisoned completely and it was not the most graceful ride I’ve ever had. Despite a tight cinch (really! I swear! Anyone who has seen me fence a cow with daylight in my cinch is not believing me at this time) and two kinds of grip pads the saddle still decided to make for Emma’s ears and leave. I adjusted it once, and the second time decided to call it a day. The more I ride, the more I assume I will get used to the idea of feeling constantly like I’m falling forward. Once we get a better-fitting saddle, it’ll be time to see what kind of lope I might have (I’m guessing not a very good one.)

We then forged full-steam ahead with the half-baked plan to turn Erma out with the red pasture boys, a ne’er-do-well band including Rebecca’s warmblood Duckie, a very mean and obese warmblood Gustav, the debatable mentally-challenged Paint horse Scotch and Nemo the Haflinger boarder. As I imagined would happen, Emma and I trudged out in the mud and pouring rain to the pasture and all four thundered wetly to the gate to force themselves right into my face, curious as to what sweet little Emma was doing there…or maybe just what she was. I’m not sure.

I spent the next ten minutes in the rain standing there at the gate watching the interactions. Emma long-trotted gloriously through the sucking mud to the bottom of the pasture, trailing geldings behind her like drunken frat brothers. They got all tangled together at the base of the hill, Emma’s hind legs kicking out in all directions sending the boys scattering. Emma then pricked those long ears forward and trotted back up the hill again, eyes and ears to the front, focused on some imaginary goal, Gustav and Duckie stride-for-stride right behind her and Scotch and Nemo right behind them like some sort of deranged five-in-hand from hell that I personally would never want to be driving. I had to laugh.

And then I had to wade back out there and rescue Emma, wishing I had worn my muck boots, splashing about in puddles of sucking mud while Beth tried to shout directions from the gate. Eventually Beth snagged her through the fenceline and we made a quick escape–barely–with the shark-horses closing in from all sides.

Herd introduction: fail.

Our next attempt will be to set up a parallel pasture next to Buttermilk, and eventually introduce the two into the same paddock. I like this idea–I feel like I am collecting a number of very strange animals down the lane below the shop, from my driving team to my single hitch horse to a mule, who hopefully will join her potential neighbors as another driving horse…well, mule. She’s the perfect candidate to join my gallery of misfit toys.

Saddle time

Today was one of those days in which, after getting some work done, I actually just got to ride around.

I’ve spent two years hacking around the hunt seat horses on occasion, warming them up for horse shows, funning around when there’s not much else to do, and this summer serving as a test rider for the judging clinic at the residential camp. Now, I’m finally learning enough to be riding the horses over fences.

There is a lot more thinking involved with these horses. I’ve observed a lot more active role played by the English riding teachers here as their students are riding and I can’t decide if it’s because their horses need more management than my own, if there is a tendency to “micromanage” in the best sense of the word, or if it’s just a style difference in teaching. I feel like all three of these things may be true–regardless, with the number of things I was told in just five minutes of riding a few days ago I felt as though I was never going to get this right.

Now, however, after today’s rides, I think things are falling into place. I rode a lovely mare called Clare over fences, who taught me to ride the horse rather than the fence, to keep pushing straight all the way to the jump, to give her support from my hands. Next I rode Murphy over the same course, a zippy Appendix who reminded me how important it was to ride not just the horse to the fence but the horse away from the fence, to keep things back under control, to sit in the corners.

In my flatwork, I hacked a variety of horses from a Quarter horse to a warmblood to a draft cross. I overheard one excellent word of advice from Nancy to one of our crossover riders: “You wouldn’t sit back like a western rider if you were on the way to a jump, would you?” With this concept in mind, I headed into my last ride of the day imagining that I was cantering up to a fence, and Nancy complimented my riding.

All that’s left now is luck of the draw.

After the show

After the marathon of show day, arriving just before the sun rises (or in today’s case, the clouds get a little lighter) all the way until after the sun sets, the chaos and sprint of the horse show is gone from the barn, the arena hollow and empty, cavernlike with the lights shut off, the aisles empty and quiet except for the sound of horses rustling through hay. I walk the aisles and check on my horses, telling them a silent thanks for their service today, endless trips around and around the arena for the sake of my students.

My hours are spent in the end of the arena, getting my riders ready to show, watching their performances, sharing their joy, commiserating with their disappointment. My job is to encourage them to be better horsemen, not simply winners; it’s remarkable how often being one does not always mean being the other. Most of my physical, mental and emotional energy is wrapped up in these 32 riders.

At the end of the day, there is no slow and steady letdown; there is simply a rush of other activities: the students take care of the horses, put up the tack, wrap legs, clean the facility and pack up their possessions. I walk on tender feet through the barn to supervise, answer questions, identify tack, direct the hay-barn horses back to their chilly stalls in the unheated back barn, gather my paperwork and drag myself back upstairs to get my desk organized again, the students hurrying around me to pack up their bags and sweep under my feet. We have stacks of champion ribbons that I quietly return to the storage box to be given away next show–we don’t need more of them hanging around.

Everyone leaves, first in a slow trickle, then in a big rush, the last few ambling out the door laden with garment bags and hat cans. The air is scented with hairpray and there is a fine sheen of glitter everywhere on the floor and tables. I am exhausted and yet I cannot leave, too tired to get up and drive home, to leave the place in which so much of my energy is invested.

This has become my life, these long days, scratchy-throated from coaching for eight hours, feet sore from standing on hard-packed earth, braindead from analyzing so many rides, trying to come up with the way to bring the most out of 32 individuals while treating them all as a team. So many of them do not understand this idea of team, the idea that their actions need to be what is best for everyone instead of themselves, that I must share my time with many others, that I cannot live to serve them alone. Maybe they never will see this.

My role is not to be their friend or even their trainer. I am their coach, sometimes their general, sometimes their disciplinarian. Ultimately, above all else, I am their biggest fan, a truth they do not always know, something hard for them to believe when I tell them something they do not want to hear or when they feel their particular gifts are not appreciated. Maybe most of them will never know this either. They will see in me what they want to see, continue on their way, picking and choosing the lessons they want to learn, oblivious forever that they are me and I am them, they are all I know. I do not ask to be appreciated for these things; I simply want to see them succeed.

You swore and said we are not
We are not shining stars
This I know, I never said we are
Though I’ve never been through hell like that
I’ve closed enough windows to know you can never look back.

If you’re lost and alone
Or you’re sinking like a stone
Carry on
May your past be the sound
Of your feet upon the ground
Carry on, carry on

Multipurpose

Carrying on with the “lookit how much I can get done at the walk” theme from Tuesday, I saddled up Benson and Cowgirl today and rode them (one at a time) outdoors in the lovely Indian-summer warmth.

I had Eileen, my “social media intern” minion take a few photos of Benson in his bodywraps, but naturally left the school camera at work and failed to upload them. Someday you will all be able to see what it is that I’m talking about. I only rode him briefly, mostly letting him walk, moving his sections around, allowing him to absorb some sunshine and not have to go in endless circles. We meandered around the parking lot for ten minutes on a drape rein.

Cowgirl was a different story; she started work willingly as long as I didn’t ask her to do anything except long trot wherever she felt like going. Add any leg to try to straighten her body out and she would shoot forward. Generally, her reactions to leg made Playgirl look like a quiet and fairly dull-sided animal. After a series of pitched battles we finally reached a compromise–I could put leg on her and hold her in the walk and let her get used to the idea of me putting leg on her, but not much more than hat. Clearly she’s going to be a project if I want to have any hopes of developing her lack of topline and completely-vanished hindquarters. She looks like garbage and I’m actually not very pleased at all to have her in my barn in her current state.

 

The students were thrilled to practice outside since everyone, I’m sure, had been lusting after some warm fresh air all day long. The horses seemed quite happy to be at work outside as well and everyone looked pretty mellow and relaxed. Nancy had a formal dressage arena set up within the outdoor, which we worked around for the first forty minutes until inspiration struck. For the last third of practice, I turned the riders loose to simply practice as I called a few riders one at a time into the dressage arena so I could work with them one-on-one. I wish I had had this idea at the beginning of practice–but so it goes. Two of the three riders I worked with in the smaller area definitely got a lot out of their time with me; I could have used another ten or fifteen minutes with the third but so be it. I wish I had time to work one-on-one in a controlled area like that with every single rider but that’s not the way group practice works–regardless, I’ll have to file that particular tool away to use again in the future.

Working Fing

Finding myself with a spare hour this afternoon, I decided to ride Fing. (The evolution of her nickname: Playgirl became Plaything, which somehow became Playfing, and then eventually just Fing.)

Taking the time to simply ride and think about what I was doing, I started out, predictably, with Craig Johnson’s ABC exercise, first disengaging the hip, then leg-yielding, then engaging the hip. Hindsight, of course, being twenty-twenty,  I wish I had known these exercises two years ago when first starting work with the Fing. Also retrospectively, I also believe that everything happened exactly as it was supposed to, and I can do this kind of foundation work with her now because she understands things like steering and going slowly and carrying herself somewhat.

Regardless–at first, before asking her to really get to work and pushing her beyond the comfort zone of what she could fake her way through, she seemed fairly malleable, moving laterally fairly easily. When adding more leg, however, she tends to try to cut and run, assuming that I am asking her to move forward. She’s a sensitive soul with a quick reaction time–maybe all cutters are the same way, I don’t really know. For a long time, I simply walked, waiting patiently with my leg engaged, waiting for her to stop throwing her head over the bit and skittering sideways and simply allow me to push her hip where I wanted it to go. We made some progress, and I realized that I could do 80% of this training without ever having to jog or lope. I did both of these things anyway just to make sure all of that was still working and found her lighter and more maneuverable than ever. This concept can be applied to the other school horses, and I could get lots of training work done without making the horses move beyond a walk.

 

I drove around behind the barn this evening in the dark foggy rain to throw another sack of Tres’s grain into the back of my car before hauling it to Tammy’s. Getting one last noseful of damp, faintly woodsmoke-scented clean, cool air, I got back into the car and shut the door, Sage wriggling from the passenger-side floor as the lights slowly faded away. Driving around the back corner of the barn, splashing through mud puddles in my car with little regard for getting it dirty, I inhaled another noseful of air–this one warm, dry, smelling strongly of dog and dust. The seat behind me was piled with boots and show pads; I had a sack of grain weighing down the back along with a box of random halter parts and polo wraps. The smell and condition of the inside of the car had ceased to be the car of a college grad; it was full of black and white border collie hair and arena dirt among other things. I officially have the car (and smell) of a horseperson. I had no idea how much I coveted that aroma until now.

Weekend

My weekend included two opposite ends of the equestrian spectrum:

Saturday: IHSA horse show

From 10 AM until 3:30 PM (actually, not a very long time when you think about it) my life became the mounting paddock at the end of the arena as we kicked off the intercollegiate season. While I am always either having an anxiety attack over whoever is in the arena or feeling lightheaded from a lack of food and rest or trying to keep Harry from having a complete breakdown in the ingate, retrospectively I always imagine that there is very little that’s more fun than running a successful horse show–especially when my team wins both shows.

This is legitimately the best team I’ve ever coached–and my IEA team from last year was pretty kickass. I’m excited to see where this season is going to go.

Sunday: Ridgewalk

In a complete contrast to the hurry-up-and-wait and stress of the horse show, Rebecca and I served as trail sweepers for the Ridgewalk, a big local hike in Wellsville, NY. We first worked this event last year and repeated the experience again sweeping the six-mile trail. We are supposed to make sure that hikers are not lost, injured or tired–so far, in two years of participating, we haven’t had any of these issues. I carry a walkie-talkie and listen to the gossip from the rest of the trail as the various aid stations and hike coordinators communicate back and forth. (“The Dresser Rand station is out of water!” I remember hissing to Becca conspiratorially. “Scandalous!”)

Our horses–Scotch and Playgirl–were wonderful again, despite Playgirl’s heat-cycle flirtations with Scotch and both of the horses thinking about losing their noodles in the oil drilling site (blamelessly, I should add, the whole place is terrifying.) My favorite line over the walkie-talkie was when the nine-mile sweepers put out a call to the hike coordinators asking where the bypass was for the oil drill.

“There isn’t one,” I piped in over the station. “We just rode right through it. There are some scary parts but we just kept moving and we got through it ok.”

“Well, ok!” came the reply from that other rider, a woman we would never actually ever meet. “If you made it, so can we!”

“Good luck!” I called back over the walkie-talkie, meaning it to the other rider, somewhere out there in the woods, our paths never intended to cross.

Generally, Becca and I simply enjoy the ride, taking advantage of a lovely wide blazed trail through some of the most beautiful country in the area in the fall colors. It was, once again, a lovely day.