View from the Wilder Ridge Overlook
Okay, she’s not really a sergeant, but she *is* a member of the Wilder Ranch State Park Horse Patrol. (Does anyone besides me remember “Sgt Preston, RCMP”? I thought it had the same ring to it. Anyhow.)
“Horse Patrol” is a volunteer organization that has branches at several California state parks; in our general area, there are Horse Patrols at Wilder Ranch, Henry Cowell, and Henry Coe State Parks. The Regional Parks, like Ft. Ord, have a similar organization: BETA (Bicycle Equestrian Trail Association).
The role of the Horse Patrol is to “. . . participate in safety patrols that augment regular state park ranger patrols . . . “ What this means in real life is that we ride the trails, checking on the state of the park: answering questions, noting trail damage, logging sightings of mega-fauna such as bobcats and deer, and being available to the rangers via radio, to go to a specific site, if necessary, and check things out. We have to patrol in groups of at least two, and, since the idea is to be accessible and visible, we just walk.
Georgia and PJ
To get on with the story, PJ, a friend who also has a young horse and is also a docent at Wilder Ranch, mentioned that she had just gotten certified for Horse Patrol, so I looked into it, too. It sounded like just the thing for Sunny: getting exposed to lots of different things and people, and doing it calmly, so I sent off a note to Georgia, the Person in Charge at Wilder Ranch, to get started.
To get certified, you have to go on four check-out rides with Georgia. You have to (a) complete all the rides safely (Georgia tells tales of potential volunteers who didn’t!) and (b) your horse has to meet certain behavior criteria. Georgia sent me a copy of the standards before we went out. It included such things as stands quietly when being tacked up and mounted, deals calmly with other horses, is a good ambassador to park visitors, pace can be rated, etc. I sent a note back to her saying that Sunny could do most of the things most of the time but none of the things all of the time. Georgia said that was probably normal for a horse, so we set up our first check-out ride.
Our first ride pretty much set the pattern for the rides to follow. The Patrol usually consisted of PJ and her gelding Wiley, Georgia and her mare Scarlett, and Sunny and me. When on patrol, we park our trailers in the visitor’s lot at the Wilder Ranch State Park complex – a paved parking lot where all the visitors park. That’s the first hurdle. Sunny was, and is, to this very day, wary of that lot. First, since it’s paved, it’s slippery. Second, you never know what or who’s going to get out of a car – there are frequently groups of 20 or more people, lots of cyclists, and a zillion kids, many of whom have never seen a horse, except on TV.
The Parking Lot - All Patrols Start Here
After everyone gets ready, you walk down the road to the Wilder Ranch Ranch Complex. As some of the docents say, “We’re no Williamsburg, but we’re on our way.” The Ranch Complex consists of the following buildings:
- A home built in the 1870s(?)
- A Victorian home built in 1897/8
- A dairy barn built in the late 1800’s
- A blacksmith shop and machine shop, all run by water power
- A granary
- A chicken coop with about 40 chickens
- A barn with 5 goats and a some sheep in outdoor paddocks
- A adobe building, probably from the mid-1800’s
- A rodeo arena from the 1920’s which currently contains draft horses
And the volunteers are all in period dress, which features long dresses for the women and hats for both men and women (when I am acting as a docent, I wear coveralls – my persona is as a dairy worker).
Anyhow, when there are volunteers available, all the buildings are open – and there are blacksmiths whacking on things at the forge, people in the machine shop using the water-powered, belt-driven tools, and people in the houses, cooking on the wood stoves, making quilts, carding wool, etc. And that’s just what the volunteers are doing; the park visitors are watching the activities or eating the just-baked cookies, or participating in making corn meal or learning how to milk a cow, or just scampering on to the next thing. In other words, from a horse’s point of view, anything could happen at any time.
If you happen to be a horse walking through this, in addition to the things mentioned above, parents and children will run up to you and want to pet you. Frequently, the parents will want to lift their kids up in their arms so they can touch the horse’s face or mane. Sheesh! It’s good, but scary. One of the requirements to pass the certification is that you can ride through the Ranch Complex. I did it twice, to prove that Sunny was capable, and since then I’ve hand-walked her. I think it’s safer and it makes us more approachable. Also, you have to walk your bike through the complex, so it seems only fair that we’d walk our horses, too.
Coming through the Hwy 1 Underpass. Note the tunnel mouth in the background and the family off to the right
So, you mount up in the parking lot and ride down to the Ranch Complex, and right through the middle of it. Then you go through a tunnel *under* Highway 1, and out past the arena with the draft horses in it. Whew! At that point, you’re finally at the trail head, and according to Sunny, things are easy after that.
View from the Wilder Ridge Overlook
There isn’t a set route that we have to patrol, it’s purely “dealer’s choice”. Our rides with Georgia always featured a stop at the Wilder Ridge Trail Overlook – you can see why. As we ride, we keep track of any deer, bobcats, coyotes, wild boar, etc that we see. And the horses usually see these things first. I’ve learned to pay attention when Sunny’s head goes up – her nose is frequently pointing as something “countable”. We also count the hikers and bikers we pass. When the budgets are drawn up for each state park, weight is given for park usage and how much habitat it protects, so our documentation serves a purpose.
Dealing with Bikes
On the training rides, Sunny had to lead, follow, and be in the middle. The only issue for Sunny was hikers with backpacks – they looked darned scary. Oh yeah, and bikers trying to look invisible by getting off their bikes and squatting down behind them. It’s sort of funny: the people who are trying hardest to do the right thing are frequently the scariest to the horses because they try to be *really* quiet – so, Sunny at least, thinks they’re laying in wait for her and there’s no way she’s getting close enough for that! When this happens, we start waving and yelling “Hello there!”, hoping to get some response from them that will allow the horses to figure out what they are.
Also, we had to show that we could negotiate normal trail obstacles. Like logs across them.
Checking the Singletrack
The other necessary skill is getting off the trail for hikers and bikers and baby strollers to pass. Sunny hasn’t had a problem with this so far, but I’m not sure if she’s going to be as imperturbable after all the trailside grass is dried up.
After you’ve done your trail ride, you have to return to the trailer via the same route, that is, through the complex – but it’s way easier after the horses have been out for a couple of hours.
We got certified about a month ago. The only problems Sunny had during the process were due to her pull-backs. Her first blivet was when I hooked her to the bike rack while I went to the bathroom. Fortunately, I just wrapped my reins around the rack, I didn’t tie. Anyhow, according to PJ and Georgia, she did great until I flung open the door, whereupon she pulled back dramatically. Of course, she stopped nearly instantly when she was free, but it was scary. Also, it’s had a lasting effect: many of the bathrooms at local parks (Ft Ord, Sunol) are built on the same pattern – and now Sunny gives them a *very* wide berth.
And on her last check out ride, I had her attached to the trailer on a Blocker tie. As I set the buckle on her girth, she went straight up. When she came down, she went back and slipped on the asphalt and fell. I grabbed her line as she went by, she did two bucking revolutions around me and stopped. I pulled the saddle and pad, checked for burrs, etc., didn’t find any, put everything back on, and rode out. No problems. I think Georgia passed us because we were able to recover.
Since then, we’ve done three patrols, I think, all of them uneventful. And, yes, I *do* wear the uniform that you see Georgia and PJ wearing – as a child of the sixties, I’m a little uncomfortable with it, but there it is. There are some male patrollers, but most of the Patrol are like me: middle aged to late middle-aged women. My personal opinion is that we keep things quiet by spreading grandmotherly zen around from horseback. On the other hand, at Henry Cowell, horse patrols were stepped up last year because there were a couple of incidents of theft – so we *are* called out to meet specific needs.
Anyhow, it’s a great privilege to be able to ride in one of the most gorgeous places in the world *and* be able to feel like you’re doing some good. If you have some time, investigate joining the horse patrol.
wanna ride?