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FW: [RC] You have no clue....and neither do (or can) I - Mike SherrellTo a great extent just riding a horse is an attempt to go back in time, to recreate an experience from an earlier day. The day of the horse as a means of transportation is long, long gone. A lot of the enjoyment I get personally comes from being on a horse and imagining myself riding through some other scene. I don't think there's anything wrong with living partly in our imagination; for example reading is the act of recreating images in your imagination based on the symbols on the page or screen. I very much enjoy imagining riding in pre-automobile days or the Model T era; this isn't too hard if you find places to ride that are agricultural and have very little pavement. Sometimes if I find enough grassland I can imagine myself a pre-literate sky-worshipping central Asian nomad on a month-long trek across the steppes. I've enjoyably visualized myself as a Janjaweed observing a family of blacks (at a picnic table in a park in the East Bay) that I could seize, and as a pillaging Templar coming upon a peasant cottage in a central European forest clearing (it was really an abandoned shack in the middle of an apple orchard). Your border ride sounds like a great example of this. I'd love to do something like it. The thing is, the closer your surroundings are to the situation you're trying to imagine, the better, and so the less intrusions by pavement, jets overhead, etc., the better. If I had enough time and money I'd have the horses in the Ukraine and in India because I think in those two places the experience would be about as close as possible to ... something I want ... a cross between fantasy and new, unexpected experiences, I guess. Regards, Mike Sherrell Grizzly Analytical 707 887 2919; fax 707 887 9834 www.grizzlyanalytical.com -----Original Message----- From: ridecamp-owner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ridecamp-owner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of k s swigart Sent: Thursday, June 28, 2007 10:56 PM To: Ridecamp Subject: [RC] You have no clue....and neither do (or can) I Jamie Ward said: we would lose what I love about going to nature going out their and not seeing any signs of man.being able to know what it felt like to live 200 years ago before all our technology. There is no way that anybody in America today could have any clue as to what it felt like to live 200 years ago. There is nothing that anybody can do, even going for a ride in the woods away from all the signs of civilizatin (which, BTW is older than 200 years), which can erase the knowledge that modern technology is but a stone's throw away. Just knowing it exists is enough to make it so you cannot escape its effects on your "feelings." Doing the NM Renegade Ride back in 1999 along the Mexican Border where for much of the ride we rode from cavalry water stop to cavalry water stop (along with windmills pulling the water out of the ground into tanks), gave me an inkling (i.e. a small trace) of what it might have been like to have traversed that country 150 years ago, but it was just an inkling. What doing it really made me realize, however, is just how little I could ever begin to understand what it might have been like to have traversed that country 150 years ago. Even though many of the trails were the same and many of the water troughs and windmills were too, the extent of the desolation and solitude simply no longer exist. I knew that there was food and water for my horse at preplanned places, people waiting for me to show up at them, paved roads, and a horse trailer to "rescue" me with very little effort, modern science, modern medicine and modern technology available with easy accessiblity if I decided I didn't want to "play" at being a renegade anymore. And if you know that it is just a game, the feelings can never be the same as if it were the real thing. kat Orange County, Calif. :) =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Ridecamp is a service of Endurance Net, http://www.endurance.net. Information, Policy, Disclaimer: http://www.endurance.net/Ridecamp Subscribe/Unsubscribe http://www.endurance.net/ridecamp/logon.asp Ride Long and Ride Safe!! =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Ridecamp is a service of Endurance Net, http://www.endurance.net. Information, Policy, Disclaimer: http://www.endurance.net/Ridecamp Subscribe/Unsubscribe http://www.endurance.net/ridecamp/logon.asp Ride Long and Ride Safe!! =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
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