When Hearts Race
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21 / Sport and Trail Magazine
You’re riding through the woods where the latest rainstorm has brought all the forest’s colors to life. The soft wind plays its music while your saddle creaks along with it, and your horse blows out a contented slobber snort. Your note-to-self, “ Ain’t nobody messin’ with this,” puts you front and center into the best reality TV show goin’.
Finding quietude in the woods is not something new. Robert Frost was on to something when he wrote, “Whose woods these are I think I know...My little horse must think it queer to watch them fill up with snow." Frost reached out with a penned finger and plucked a heart string so many feel but never say.
Is it coincidence that our body sits so closely to our horse's heart? That a horse and rider can effortlessly feel like they're one body? That the horse’s gait is measured in beats. That a silent trail ride can feel like total communion. What’s the bottom line on riding? Every heart secretly longs for that stride in the middle of the great wide open—powerful in strength to ride, and powerless to imagine the heart doing anything other than swelling with contentment.
By Jeff Wilson