Monday, November 8, 2010 - A Second Ride Day at Three Rivers Wilderness

Once again saddled and booted the horses for another ride. No sooner had we passed the trailhead when my horse froze, with ears pricked and eyes alert. He even "trumpeted," a strange occurrence I hadn't heard him do in a very, very long time. For the uninitiated, it a quick intake of breath followed by a sharp exhale that comes from the bottom of the horse's diaphragm, almost as if he's using his whole body as a sounding board. It's usually performed as a scare tactic, I think, like a dragon giving a warning before the next flaming exhale comes out. Anyway, we finally moved on but the trumpeting continued every few hundred yards. He was obviously agitated about something, especially after we turned up a new trail, the Dry Canyon Trail. It was pretty unnerving, but we kept going. The woods felt very claustrophonic, and we kept our eyes open for wildlife, thinking maybe it was the smell of bears or mountain lions that was upsetting the horses. As we climbed up and up, the rocks got worse on the trail, and it kept getting very close, and the horses just stayed nervous, until we just couldn't enjoy ourselves anymore and headed back. It felt strangely haunted here, as though bad things had happened and there were evil spirits, or at least unsettled spirits, still hanging around. Though we had expected to stay until Thursday, with another ride on Wednesday, we decided that it just wouldn't be enjoyable, so I spent the afternoon finding another place closer to Albuquerque where we could go and hopefully get another ride day in, in an atmosphere that was better than here. Once I found a place, we decided we would leave in the morning, and went to bed happy with that decision.