A few weeks ago my best friends and I had a breathtakingly beautiful ride up and down the lower portion of the Deschutes River. There was a half hour stretch of my personal Haven, riding along with no hands on the reins, taking in the huge views of river of and sky.

Those moments are hard to come back from, once tasted. For most of us it’s an incredible amount of work to reach those moments, even if most of the effort is fun and rewarding in of themselves. Work has been a rollercoaster lately, even more than usual in this past year of bumpy, unexpected, muddy roads and it’s sucked most of my energy. I’m not quite depressed, I just don’t have as much oomph to work out and seize the day as I usually do. These past few weeks, given the choice between cuddling and watching a movie with my boys and going for a hike…the couch has been winning out. I’ve been beating myself up about this but honestly, Tarma doesn’t resent the pause and I can tell I was due for one.

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I’ve been taking the easy road with Tarma since then, only getting in one other ride, at Silver Falls State Park. Tarma did fabulously, she finally met my trainer and some other friends I haven’t seen for awhile and they all congratulated me on such a great find. She joined a big group of strange horses and took turns leading and following without issue, though we did have to discuss spacing and not plunging downhills on the forehand, normal green horse things.

I think Tarma has approved of the inadvertent break, being rather more willing and engaged with the smaller things we’re working on, tackling spray bottles and ground tying and the endless brushing out of her beautiful mane and tail. We’ve got some adventures coming up, and my new trailer might be here a month or so earlier than expected and boy howdy, am I counting the days for both our sakes!