i said to the horse, "surprise and delight me," and he did

[kirkcudbright]

Lovely ride this afternoon. My horse is a natural explorer, nay bush-whacker. Sometimes I give him his head just to see where he takes me. (Usually it's somewhere in the direction of home and dinner, but there are many ways to get there, and many possible side-turnings.) After 14 years, I still haven't fully explored the 3000 acres of the Harold Parker State Forest, but I've done a lot more in the last couple of years of solo trail riding than I'd ever done on group rides, let alone on foot.

Today I let him take me down a path I'd never been on, and I doubt he'd ever been on either. It didn't go at all where I thought it was going to, but that's okay - we were going out for a ride, and so we did. Anyway, it wasn't more spectacular than any other part of the forest, but it was new on me, and I saw it with new eyes. And when we finally came out to a trail I knew, it was like stepping through a door I'd never noticed before, and might have sworn wasn't even there.

Comments

[deguspice.livejournal.com]

That sounds like fun. One day I'd like to spend a bit of time wandering around it. The closest I've ever been to the park is to looking into buying a house that bordered it.

Do you bring a GPS with you on rides like that? It might be interesting to see how the horse's instincts compares to the "ideal" route.

[kirkcudbright.livejournal.com]

My Garmin Legend doesn't deal well with heavy tree cover. I'd like to go over the forest with a more sensitive GPS, because a lot of the trails just aren't on the official forest map.

BTW, you can get the map for free from the forest headquarters, so I usually carry a couple copies when I ride, because I've had occasion to give them out to hapless strangers, to better explain to them how to get back to their car.