Exploration

This morning Mahogany and I took our first trail ride since she arrived here. She has always had a strong preference for the company of other horses, but it was never a huge issue until this morning when I tried to ride her away from her new pasture mates. I had an honest-to-goodness fight on my hands. I finally opted to dismount and lead her off to the trailhead and out of sight of the herd and stables. This basically just relocated the fight instead of ending it, but at least it was just the two of us there with no human or equine witnesses to the struggle. Having a battle of wills with your horse in front of curious onlookers is like dealing with a tantruming toddler in a grocery store…it’s just awkward no matter how you handle it.

So anyway, I led her through the back gate and remounted, and the battle resumed, and I eventually won. And once I got her onto the river trail and she was basically locked onto the path, we had a really lovely ride. The flipside of Mahogany’s willfulness is her bold fearlessness, which makes her a wonderful exploring companion.

At a couple of places along the trail we found cows sheltering in the brush.

(For the curious: I always try to include bits of horse in the photos I take from horseback. That’s how I tell my trail ride pics apart from my hiking pics.)

When we looped back into the pasture, Mahogany set up for another fight. She wanted to run straight to her buddies, and I wanted to remind her who was steering by making her walk around the perimeter of the pasture. That ended up being more of a heated argument than an actual battle, and then she remembered that I’m even more stubborn than she is and did her laps without any more fuss. But I can see that this will be our first training project here: Mahogany needs to learn to leave the herd behind whenever I ask her to, without a struggle.

Luke and Elizabeth and I have fallen into a pattern of exploring at least one new thing every weekend, and today we investigated the Colleyville Library. We found it nestled in a village with a remarkably Southern California vibe. The whole setting reminded us of a cross between the Mission Inn area of Riverside and Disneyland’s Main Street USA.

While the Hurst Library is still our reigning favorite, the Colleyville Library is far and away the prettiest one we’ve seen in the Metroplex so far.

One of these days I’m going to just drive around and take pictures of all of my favorite buildings in the Mid-Cities area, and post them. There is some crazy beautiful architecture here.

I freaking love this place.