Connie and I are usually out doing horse chores early every morning. Here in ND our horses stay in a smaller paddock and are dry fed twice daily. Because they’re not in a pasture we also have to pick all the manure out of the paddock daily. Connie is back in MT this week so I’ve been handling chores myself. As I was filling the wheelbarrow one morning, I was thinking of how many times I’ve been out on a mountain trail and ran into hikers. Most often the phrase I hear is “oh your doing it the easy way”.
Ya right, if they only knew. Non-horse people have no clue what it takes to have a dependable horse that can navigate mountain trails with some semblance of safety. 1st there’s the many hours of desensitizing, training and riding. The mountain horse is going to spook just like any horse, but the good ones don’t bolt from the spook. They learn to be confident with their rider, and this comes from spending a lot of time with them. The good mountain horse needs to remain calm when a grouse flies up from under his feet, or when a moose or worse a bear is standing in the trail, or when the trail winds through a slide area that is overgrown with alders and you have to push through the 10′ tall overgrowth, or when the hiker you meet has a huge blue backpack and she turns her back on you (the horse has no idea what this big scary blob is and you’re asking it to calmly walk by). Then there’s all the issues that every horse owner deals with. 1000’s of dollars on routine vet visits, tack, trailers, farriers, and boarding. Yep this is the easy way.
I routinely research routes and new places to go in the mountains. Frequently I finding myself reading the adventures of hikers who have been through an area. One of the comments I read is how they get disgusted with the horse people they run into. Their comments vary from stepping in road apples to those lazy people that have to ride their horses to get back here. Really LAZY? If you only knew. Most horse owners are not professional cowboys. They have regular jobs just like everybody else. They choose to use their free time to care and work with horses. They are anything but lazy. Many donate time and effort to assist with transporting equipment into the backcountry for trail crews. This is the very reason many of the trails these hikers use are open for travel.
So when you meet that horse on a trail back in the wilderness, know that the rider on top probably has a very strong love of the country, the freedom, and his/her favorite partner with 4 legs. It’s not necessarily the “easy way”.
