"My Cup Runneth Over" Ride (7/29/19)

Yesterday's ride was so amazing, I'm not sure I can put it into words.

The day started off with playing "horsey dress-up", but I can't tell that story ... yet. Next week, once we've got the all clear from the folks at GISH, I'll post more stories and the corresponding pictures. Suffice it to say that our day started off with a ton of laughter.

We planned to trailer the horses in to Wild Basin for a short ride up to Copeland Falls for another top secret story that I can't tell you about ... yet. I should have been more nervous about the trip than I was. Two things kept my nerves in check: 1) despite walking half of our "ride" last week, I was completely relaxed when I did ride and I realized I finally trusted Skeeter to take care of me; 2) the excitement of our top secret mission had me focused on that instead of wondering what could go wrong.

Skeeter and I have a somewhat ... contentious ... relationship when it comes to trailers. However, when it was time to load her up, she followed me right on in like she'd been doing it her whole life. I hadn't actually expected her to load up so quickly or easily, so once we were in the trailer I didn't really have a plan. I'm too short to tie her in the trailer, but I didn't want to just leave her loose while I closed the gate, either. She quickly figured out I had no plan and asked to back out. Read that again: she asked to back out. She did not panic and bolt out. She asked.

Well, one of us had to make a decision, so when she asked, I agreed and she backed nicely out of the trailer. Mom came out of the lodge just in time to see us come out of the trailer and gave me an important piece of information that would have been helpful: she and Bill always work together to load Skeeter. Skeets loads in nicely, but then tries to follow the Bill out when he steps back to close the gate, so he threads the lead rope through the window bars to Mom, who ties her up while Bill closes the gate. Since they do most of Skeeter's hauling for me, I hadn't realized they had a whole routine.

Even with that little hiccup, I was feeling pretty good about our upcoming ride. The haul to the trail head was short - only two miles - but it marked the first time Skeets has been trailered to a new trail, one that she'd never seen before. Even if our top secret mission was a bust, we could call the day a win.

It's been years since I've ridden at Wild Basin and I was looking forward to it - I have great memories of riding those trails when we ran the Wild Basin Livery in 2004.

I thought we might have a problem when it was time to put her boots on, but while she wasn't perfect, her fight was only half-hearted. A ranger stopped by to chat us up and once the focus was off of her, she offered up her hoof. We're not dumb, if she's offering, we're taking it. 3 seconds later, she had her second boot on and we were ready to go.

Horse parking is more than a mile away from people parking, so we had to ride in to the actual trail head. Mom and Bill got mounted up easily, but Skeeter and I still have discussions about mounting. She thinks I should be able to do it from the ground anywhere, but my wee legs don't work that way so we always have to find a rock or something to give me a couple of extra inches to reach the stirrup.

Mare face says, "learn to mount from the ground!"

She circled the rock a few times and my frustration got a hold of me for half a second - just long enough for me to practically leap from the rock to her back. I hooked the toe of my left foot in the stirrup as she moved past and threw myself up. Thank goodness for all of Queen Estes' running mount training.

As soon as I was up, we were on our way. Skeeter took the lead for the first half mile or so, walking out confidently, as though we'd been doing this forever. She had one big spook in place; she had been watching a fisherman in chest waders walk along the trail when a car popped up on the road next to us. She shook off her spook and continued on.

After a bit, she decided that she didn't want to lead anymore, so Bill and Alloy hopped out front until we got to the actual trail head. The horse trail to the trail head is better maintained than I remembered, despite its lack of use, so once Bill and Alloy were in the lead, I just sat back and enjoyed.

There is one stretch of trail that always reminds me of Lord of the Rings - the trail is fairly steep, but has steps carved into it, and the trees just tower over us. The only thing missing is fog rolling in. It's one of my favorite stretches of trail.

Pictures just don't do this stretch justice.

The stairs were new to Skeeter and she did pretty well with them.

But there was one ... had she not been riding Alloy's cute little butt so closely, she would have seen that it was a taller than usual step, and not as deep, so she really needed to place her feet well. The LotR stretch of trail is a long, somewhat steep uphill, and she still gets tired on long uphill climbs, so she was rushing up on Alloy. He saw the weird step and hopped up it like a mountain goat. Little Miss My Head Is Buried In Alloy's Butt did not see the weird step until it was almost too late. She got her front feet up, but found the step wasn't deep enough for her to get her back feet on the step as well. There wasn't anything I could do to help, so I just had to sit and let her figure it out, which she did. I'm not quite sure what she did, but it felt like she just hopped all four feet at the same time, then we moved on.

Though it's a very well maintained trail, there are parts that are rocky and tricky and she navigated them all like a pro. Well, except for the weird stair. In order to get to the people trail head, we had to cross a couple of different types of bridges: concrete road bridges and wooden pallet-type bridges. It made me thankful that we have a pallet "bridge" that we use at home for training.

The bridge at the people trail head was different from any she'd seen before and she didn't really want to cross it, but then neither did Alloy or Washoe (and Washoe's done this trail many, many times before). It's a narrow wooden pedestrian bridge with railing on each side. Having people clustered up on each end of the bridge added to the degree of difficulty, but we knew if we could get one horse to cross, the others would follow right along.

I volunteered to lead Skeeter across. Our ride had been so freaking amazing that I didn't want to ruin it by fighting with her over a bridge. I dismounted, grabbed a rein and walked across without an issue. Washoe and Alloy followed along when they realized the bridge trolls weren't going to eat them.

I looked for a place to mount up, and found a rock that would suffice, but Skeeter was not interested in standing while Washoe and Alloy were milling around, so I decided to just walk to the hitch rail. It was only 3/10ths of a mile and I was feeling good. Picking my battles - I'm getting better at it.

Skeets had been so light when I was leading her across the bridge, and was so tuned into me, I thought I'd give liberty work a try. I threw the rein over her neck and walked on. I expected, with so much activity from the hikers and all of the lush green grass growing up on both sides of the trail, plus Washoe and Alloy behind us, that she'd only be "with me" a few steps before I'd have to take her lead rope and physically lead her along the trail.

Once again, she surprised me. She stayed at my shoulder completely at liberty the entire walk up to the hitch rail. There were just a couple of times when I touched the rein to re-direct her, and once I had to lead her across a trickle of water, but otherwise I left her completely alone. She stayed hooked on and with me the entire time.

My new favorite picture of the two of us.

I know I'm completely anthropomorphizing this, but I swear she does better when she feels like we're equal partners instead of me telling her what to do. She stayed with me because she wanted to, not because I was making her. (Though I could have, and would have, made her stay if necessary.)

We made it to the hitch rail and completed our top secret mission. All three horses were amazing throughout our top secret mission and a half hour or so later, we all mounted up for the ride out.

If the horses were great on the way in, they were dang near perfect on the way out. I kept exclaiming to Mom and Bill, "I have a TRAIL horse. And honest-to-God trail horse!". It's one thing to ride across the street in Roosevelt National Forest, but that's basically our back yard. Skeeter's been on those trails quite often - sometimes successfully, sometimes not - but the Wild Basin trail we rode was completely brand new to her and she loved it.

I kind of hate to think of it as a training test, but it was. I expected to have to lead her to our destination by necessity, not by choice. Instead she far surpassed any expectation I had of her. In retrospect, coming off of her three weeks ago did wonders for my confidence as weird as that seems. The fact that she stopped dead when I fell instead of panicking and stepping on me, or going over the edge of the trail again helped me get over any trust issues I had with her. Though I'd been told that she was taking care of me, I didn't quite believe it until then.

And just because the ride was beautiful, here are some gratuitous pictures:

Some Of My Favorite Views

Since I started this blog in August of last year, I've been talking about the areas I regularly ride in.  One of the things that I never left the livery without was my camera and extra batteries.  Today, I was going through some of my pictures, looking for a new header picture and found a whole slew of pictures that I thought I'd share.  I'm lucky to live in what I'm pretty sure is the most beautiful place in Colorado.  I hope you enjoy them.

Along Wild Basin Trail

Part of the Wild Basin Trail feels like an Enchanted Forest

Burn area on the way to Thunder Lake

Before a storm at Thunder Lake

View on the way to Finch Lake

Runoff at Indian Peaks

Ride 'Em Cowboy!

During the Summer of Rain, when my parents were running a local livery, there was a lot of training that had to go on with our horses.  We'd leased ranch horses, who were impeccably trained as ranch horses, but had some holes in their training for livery horses.  One of the holes was mounting blocks.  They'd never seen one.  They had no idea what the heck a human would want them for.  After all, their owners could mount them on the fly, they never needed a stairway to nowhere, which is exactly what our mounting block looked like.

Guests sometimes needed a little help up onto the horse, so we had, literally, a stairway to nowhere.  It was a platform about stirrup-height, three feet square, with stairs up one side.  Each of the horses had snorted at the mounting block when they saw it, so we knew that they'd need some training.  The training began with just leading them by it until they no longer snorted at it.  Then we left them tied to the rail next to it.  Eventually, they just didn't care about it.  Great, step one taken care of, now on to step two; people on the platform.

They didn't really like that so much, as it puts the human in predator position.  As prey animals, the horses understandably were nervous having predators (humans are the ultimate predator) poised in an attack position.  Again, we lead them back and forth near the platform and let them stand tied.  So far, so good.  After a while, they didn't even notice my kids scrambling up and down the stairs, sitting on it, swinging their legs, even jumping off of it.  Great!  Time to move to the next step, having someone step from the platform to their backs.

By the time we got to this point, it was just my son, Digger, and me at the livery.  One of us had to lead the horses to the mounting block and one of us had to step on.  Digger was twelve years old at the time; I opted to let him be the one to mount up, so that I could control the horse. 

You know what they say about best laid plans.

The first couple of horses were astounding.  They walked right up to the mounting block with Digger standing there and stood patiently while he slung a leg over and mounted up.  I walked them around the pen and back to the mounting block so that he could step off.  They acted as though they'd been doing it their whole lives.  Not a problem at all.  We were getting pretty cocky, Digger and I.  We were horse trainers extraordinaires, just ask us.  We'd started a project and were having great luck with it.  Mom and Bill were going to be so thrilled to see the progress we'd made with the horses!

And then we got to Peanut.  Or P-knucklehead as I began to call him.  Peanut lead up to the mounting block calmly, didn't even twitch his ear.  He let Digger swing a leg over and get settled.  And then the rodeo started.  Peanut acted like we'd just opened the gate to the bucking chute.  He started with a little crow hop away from the mounting block, followed with a snort and a little half-rear.  When that didn't work, he charged forward a few steps, throwing a buck or two in for good luck.  I played out a little lead rope, so that I wouldn't have those flying hooves so close to me, but I was going to be damned if I let go while my son was still aboard.  Digger seated himself deep in the saddle, with both hands on the saddle horn, since I hadn't bothered to bridle up any of the horses.  He rode like his butt had been Super-glued to the saddle.  His face initially went white, but as he realized that he was riding out P-knucklehead, a grin broke through.

Peanut's temper tantrum only lasted a few seconds and a handful of bucks, but it made an impression.  His tantrum ended as quickly as it started and he walked nicely around the pen.  Digger opted to dismount the traditional way, rather than go back to the mounting block, and I can't blame him.  We tied Peanut to the rail to let him think about it while we worked with the other horses.

We had to come back to him, though with a bit of trepidation.  I wasn't thrilled about putting Digger back up on him, but I couldn't have Digger on the end of the lead if Peanut thought to have another tantrum.  I lead Peanut back to the mounting block, Digger took a deep breath and swung his leg across.  Peanut didn't twitch, he just walked away from the block as though nothing had ever happened.  Knucklehead.

I thought that Digger's wild ride would maybe shake his confidence and decrease his desire to ride, but it had just the opposite effect.  Being able to ride out the temper tantrum gave him a boost of confidence - probably too much - but at least he wasn't afraid to get back on.

A Forest Blessing

More often than you might think, parents will drop their kids off for rides and go off and do their own thing. At first, I was surprised, because there’s no way on earth I would deliver my child to a perfect stranger, put her on an animal that could potentially kill her, and leave for four hours or so. And then I realized, the parents aren’t horse people and they are just trying to make their child happy without the discomfort or pain of climbing on a horse themselves. Once I realized that, I grew to look forward to being a “babysitter” to a horse-loving tween or teen – at least we had something in common and didn’t have to spend the entire ride listening to the parent complain.

I took a young horse-lover on a six-hour ride to Thunder Lake in the Wild Basin area. The beginning of the ride is usually rather congested with hikers, since the two-leggeds and the four-leggeds have to share the same trail the whole way up and back. At least once per trip into the Park, I would hear a hiker complain about the “messes” horses leave on the trail. Got news for the complaining two-leggeds: horse manure is completely biodegradable and natural, unlike the granola bar wrapper you just left alongside the trail.

Usually, the human pack thins out at Ouzel Falls and from then on to Thunder Lake is smooth sailing; the only humans you run into are serious outdoorsmen, who look longingly at the horses as we pass. That day, my young guest and I pretty much had the trail to ourselves without a human in sight. We rode along, enjoying the perfect weather and amazing views, talking quietly about horses and her experiences with them. We hadn’t seen anyone else in well over an hour and had fallen silent, just being. That kind of riding is Zen-like; you feel not only one with the horse, but with the peaceful world around you.

I was completely centered and lost in the views; I knew my young guest was feeling the same way, but I glanced back to check on her anyway as we rounded a boulder that protruded into the path of the ledge-running trail. I smiled at the look of contentment on her face and turned back around. Before our very eyes, a woodland faerie appeared in the shape of a middle aged woman wearing a dark blue rain poncho. We were both stricken by the sight – not a moment before, the woman wasn’t there. She just appeared on the trail. It was so quiet, we would have heard her come up through the trees and I know that she wasn’t on the trail before I turned back to check on my guest, and by the look on her face, my guest hadn’t seen her on the trail either.

We watched her in awe-struck silence as we walked toward each other; serenity surrounded her like a palpable aura. She walked at a peaceful, unhurried pace, looking for all the world like the faerie she had to be; I imagined that the rain poncho hid her wings and that she chose to walk to make us more comfortable. After all, it wasn’t raining – the sun was out in all its glory – there was no need for a rain poncho. She made no noise as we approached each other; her footfalls were silent and the quiet rustle of her poncho blended melodically with the whispers through the trees. I found myself unable to speak, nodding at her bemused expression as we passed her. We rode past her silently, a bit shaken at her unexpected appearance, still unable to speak. The horses never batted an eye at the rain poncho and allowed her to slowly, delicately, run her right hand along their sides as she passed.

We rode on another few feet before we turned in our saddles to watch her progress along the trail. When we looked behind us, she wasn’t there. My logical brain tried to tell me that she had just turned behind the boulder and was out of our line of sight, my sense, though, was that she was gone. It was as if the faerie had appeared, bestowed her blessing upon us to enter her forest, and disappeared, assured that we would bring no harm.

We rode on, unsettled, for another few minutes, each of us lost in our thoughts about our unexpected surprise. And then of course, the flood gates opened and we couldn’t stop talking about what we had seen, albeit in hushed, reverent tones. We both decided that we had, indeed, been blessed with the presence of a woodland faerie – there was no other explanation.

That was the only time I have ever run into her, but I think of her every time I ride through that stretch of trail and hope that I still carry her blessing.