The Long Riders

The morning after the funeral I realized that I needed a big project to plan so that that planning could provide a distraction from the pain of simply being awake. My first mention of my project did not go well. The first rider that I told about my plans for a 100 mile ride promptly told me that she would not commit to it.

Since then, many of my riders and parents have been firmly committed to this project. We conditioned horses throughout the spring and summer. Initially I had planned to spread the 100 miles out over three days but as my riders and their horses became conditioned, I realized that that would not be a challenge. I decided to do 50 miles on Saturday and 50 on Sunday. We chose the last weekend in September for the challenge.

My pastures are surrounded by miles of woods and swamp. Trails, some new, some hundreds of years old lace through the woods. In order to prevent errors from estimating the distances I acquired a GPS.

Saturday we did fifty miles. It has been a very wet week around here and Saturday night we had another deluge. On Sunday morning we rode in light rain and the horses plodded through mud and muck for long sections of the trails. After eight of us completed 25 miles on Sunday I ended the ride. The horses all could have easily done 25 more miles but the rain and wet saddles exacerbated saddle sores and began to threaten what I hoped would be a positive memory for my little riders.

Saturday we started out with 16 riders. Eight of them knew from the beginning that they would not be out for the Sunday ride as a result primarily of church commitments.

Seventy five miles, one purely domestic horse, many 1/2 Chincoteagues,a Shackleford, four or five Corollas with the rest being BLM mustangs. The youngest rider was nine years old and the oldest rider was older than I am.

Sunday afternoon I think some of my riders mistook my exhaustion for disappointment and kept trying to cheer me up because we only did 75 miles instead of the one hundred that I had planned for. I was not disappointed.

Kids, formerly wild horses, several stallions, riders that a very short while ago were complete novices--75 miles.

But who am I too brag? I am sure that any educated horseman from the established horse world would have done a much better job with this project! After all, Milburn Drysdale was so much smarter than Jed Clampett.