This ride ended up being over 4 hours long. When Treena asked me if I wanted to make a loop around the mountain and come back on a different route, I ignorantly said "Sure!" My body started protesting not 2 miles past the rest stop in that last picture. I was barely able to sit the saddle by the time we rolled back into the ranch. Way way too long for a first ride. But I learned a lot, am glad to have had some time with Ace, who will hopefully be my riding buddy from here on out, and got an incredible workout of my abdominal muscles. I felt like I'd been In flagrante delicto for 4 hours, or bellydancing, or in a Pilates class. Sore in places I didn't know I had places.
The first picture struck me as a potential snapshot of the future. When gas is say $25 a gallon. There is an image in an Edward Abbey book of a blue-eyed Bedouin woman with a papoose board on her back, looking out over the waterfall that used to be Hoover Dam. That is what this reminded me of. Tea is riding Leroy, a 4-year-old stallion (still had his minerals) who was getting a "socializing" lesson by Treena by riding with two geldings. He'd been with only her for months in these hills, and she needed to know how he'd handle being on the trail with other male horses. He did just fine -- she was uncanny in her ability to catch when he was about to get aggressive and would hollar or whomp him before he even got a chance to do anything.
Second picture is a trail shot of Treena and Stud Farmhand up ahead of me as we went through a small cluster of Brush Bunnies. There were cows spread throughout our ride. Cows, sagebrush, some Ponderosa Pine, it was very Western-ey if I say so myself. Taking pictures from the back of a moving horse turned out to be incredibly difficult. I'm glad I got anything at all I could use, and managed it without damaging my camera.
The last shot is a break we took about 1/2 way through the ride. That is Stud Farmhand with Sunny the quarterhorse in the back, and Ace the big Tennessee Walker up front. The horses were starting to feel the workout, we'd been uphill the whole time, working trails through thick Hawthorne and Sagebrush.
Enjoy your pain-free tuckus,
Bp
11 comments:
"The outside of a horse is good for the inside of a man." Winston Chruchill siad that.
"The outside of a horse is bad for the backside of a man." BPaul said that.
"The outside of a friend is good for the spirit of a man." I said that.
(in the interest of full disclosure, the quota "the outside of a horse..." has been around since Abe shot the goat. It is variously attributed to Churchill, Teddy Roosevelt, Mark Twain, Ronald Reagan (!) and various others.)
I guarantee that Ronald Regan only read those lines, he didn't create them.
Nice to see your backsides,...er...together again?
Hey now, you kids
BTW, BP, Sonny read this post and has two issues, one minor and the other major. First, he says you spelled his name wrong. Second, he wants to it to be very clear that he is a Tennessee Walking Horse, not a quarter horse. If you think your tuckus was sore after a day on a Walker, next time I'll keep the Caddy for myself and we'll borrow a jeep -- in the form af a quaterhorse -- and you'll know the meaning of sore!
OK wait, so Ace is what kind of horse and Sonny is what kind of horse?
Both are Tennessee Walkers, and damn proud of it.
Where the hell did I get it in my head that Sonny was a Quarter. Maybe you said he looked small like a quarterhorse next to Ace?
Well, I stand... er sit corrected.
Tennessee Walkers, I'm impressed. My sister has horses, including minis. I wish I was sore from riding today.
what ranch is this? it looks beautiful
It's actually some BLM land in Kittitas country. Definitely beautiful, especially the little draws full of Ponderosa and seasonal creeks.
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