If you are lucky, sometime during your stay at Equitour's Bitterroot Ranch in Dubois, Wyoming, you will experience the Roller Coaster ride. What is the Roller Coaster? You may hear ranch owners Mel and Bayard Fox refer to it in casual conversation, but until you ride it, you will never truly understand.
We came to the Roller Coaster on Thursday afternoon, after a long ride through prickly pear, dusty sage, arid badlands and, finally, fields of blue-flowering alfalfa. When we reached the bottom of the undulating, blue-grey bentonite hills, Mel, our guide for the afternoon, turned to us.
"Just trust your horse and let him go," she said, "Don't try to hold back."
With these words of advice, she turned her small bay Arab and was off. We followed behind her, hands forward in the streaming manes of our eager mounts.
The horses bounded forward and up a series of steep inclines. First a small hill and then a sharp turn left to where the ground was tilted towards us (here we caught our breaths, surprised) and then a final leap up a sharp hill (this felt like flying) and it was over. The horses fluttered their nostrils, pleased with themselves, and with the effort that, for just a moment, transformed them and their riders into something more than mere creatures of the earth, that allowed them to sample, even if briefly, the oneness with motion and speed and strength that has drawn humans to horses since the earliest eras of civilization.
"I want to do that again." I said.
Mel smiled. "It's never as thrilling as the first time."
Although I didn't want to believe her, I sensed she was right. After all, what the Roller Coaster does to a rider has already happened to me. Something has shifted inside, some slight holding back has been eliminated, some barrier to enjoyment dropped. From this moment, riding at the Bitterroot is different, has moved into another freer phase, feels more like it did when I was a child. Although I hardly could have believed it could happen, I have a new perspective on riding.
Changes in perspective are, in fact, what Equitour and other purveyors of equestrian vacations specialize in. Equitour itself is among the largest equestrian tour companies in the world, offering horse back riding vacations in North and South America as well as in Europe, the British Isles, Africa and Australia. Bitterroot, Equitour's home base, is the last ranch in a valley bordering the Shoshone National Forest. What is perhaps most impressive about the ranch is the variety of terrain that it offers. On one ride, we traversed desert badlands, traveling through fields of sage and prickly pear, spotting occasional pieces of skeleton by the side of the trail – the leg bones of an elk, the skull of an antelope, small piles of coyote dung, which is white from eating bones and flecked with bits of undigested fur. Another ride took us over a pine-covered mountain, past rocky gorges and into the East Fork River Valley, where we drove Indian cows out of the lush pasture, across the river, back through a broken fence and onto the reservation. Our final picnic ride took us up under the shadows of towering Castle Rock, across green fields with mountain views all around. Wildflowers dotted the landscape – phlox and primrose, lupine and cinquefoil, Indian paintbrush and columbine - and we passed through areas filled with their scents. On the way home, a storm rolled in out of the mountains, and we rode just ahead of the dark clouds, still in sunlight, but occasionally catching a few drops of rain or a sprinkling of hail on our jackets.
Although Bitterroot is technically a dude ranch, it is a place that caters to real riders rather than to the run-of-the-mill city slicker type. There are certainly horses and rides for novices, but Bitterroot is best enjoyed by horsemen who want a vacation that offers them a chance to see the wild scenery, ride different horses, and taste the freedom of the vast, unspoiled expanses. The ranch can accommodate 32 people, with a string of over one hundred well-cared for horses, many of them purebred Arabians, some bred and raised on the farm. Riders from around the country and the world (Bitterroot's first customers, almost a quarter of a century ago, were Frenchmen) come for the chance not just to see the west, but to experience it from the back of a fast horse. And the horses do go fast: a ride with Bayard or Mel can alternate walking through rocky areas to sprinting across meadows, wind whipping through the horses' manes, dirt flying from under agile hooves. If there is one thing you learn, it is to trust your horse. Accustomed to the terrain, bred and trained to be sure-footed, the horses gallop easily over the landscape. There is no need to hold back.
Perhaps the greatest gift that Bitterroot can offer is a change of perspective. In an increasingly urbanized world, many of us find our riding experiences to be perplexingly confined to rings, indoor arenas, and, if we are lucky, a few trails. Wyoming, however, is different. Here one can ride for miles without encountering roads, boundaries or evidence of civilization. It is riding as riding used to be, allowing us to come closer to nature, and closer to the nature of the horse, which is, after all, an animal made for open space. Bayard and Mel Fox consider their ranch to be a good starting place for those pondering a more exotic vacation from their catalog – a ride to Africa where one can gallop with wild herds of zebra, for instance – but Bitterroot is also a riding vacation destination in its own right. Traveling anywhere, whether to Wyoming or Kenya, requires an open mind and a willingness to experience new things. Bitterroot, like more far-flung vacations, can allow riders from all disciplines the chance to feel riding differently, imparting a newer, freer attitude, recreating that sense of the joy of movement that many of us have lost in our more serious equestrian pursuits. That subtle shift could happen to you anywhere, at fossil-dotted Bone Lake, or as you ride along the edge of a steep gorge, or while pushing cattle through the woods to better pastures. Or perhaps it will happen at the Roller Coaster hill, when you feel the passionate release of energy as your mount rockets you forward and up to a new understanding of equine power, and a new unity with the strength and speed of the horse.
Pam Gleason
