GrandRapids-West Mi Homes Blog

I apologize for the long post--but it is an easy read.  I truly tried to shorten it up-but I just couldn't figure out what to cut.

~~~~~~~~ How a trail ride parallels Life~~~~~~

We are home from our vacation. The "we" would be me, my husband Ed, our dog Hailee and our two horses, Joey and Scout. Last Saturday we set out for Shawnee National Forest with our riding buddies, Jim & Karen and Deb and their three horses.

This was my first vacation since I started real estate five years ago, that I actually did relax. Usually, I would sit and worry that I was letting someone down or I wasn’t there for them but now I have an incredible assistant at home who was my eyes and ears. Other than texting occasionally, I all out enjoyed my vacation.

In fact, while visiting a local tack store (that’s what us horse people do when it rains on vacation-we go to tack stores) I found a decal that speaks the very essence of my belief in life. “Life is a journey, enjoy the ride.” It really got me to thinking about how much this week was a lot like life.

If you have ever ridden a horse in the Shawnee National Forest you know that it is some of the most beautiful riding to be found. At the same time, it can be a little treacherous and isn’t for the novice rider.  What we encountered out on the trail had many parallels to life.

There are some average hills and then some really big hills. Don’t we all have those times in life when we are climbing a mountain? Then there were times where we had to navigate some really rough rocky terrain. There were times we wondered if we should go back. Do you ever wish in life you could have a redo? But if you persisted with patience and let your horse pick his way, things ended up pretty good. Did you ever notice that if we would let The Almighty guide us through the rough times, we would be much better off instead of thinking we know the correct steps to take?

Another obstacle we had to get through was the mud. Just like life, all the paths were not muddy but when they were, they could suck you in and bring your  horse to its knees.  We could have chosen not to go riding because there were muck holes.  What we did was to go out anyway, work our way through the “sticky” parts and enjoy the rest of the incredibly, gorgeous beauty of the forest? What we saw were rock formations and waterfalls and babbling brooks straight off a Hallmark card.  Do you allow life to suck you in so you can't see the many beautiful facets of it?

In addition to navigating all the rocks, mud and briers, we also had to figure out where we were?  There were miles and miles of trails out there. Where are you in life—what are your expectations?  Have you designed a map? If you don’t know what you want or where you want to go, how are you going to get there? There were times when we had to decide which path to take to get us to our destination. There were times we didn't choose the right path and we didn't get to the destination we had in mind.  But we usually found ourselves in yet another area of the forest that had something for us to see.  Do you accept that fact that you will make wrong turns but that you need to find something in the moment to enjoy anyway? Sometimes the path we have chosen is not the one HE has chosen for us?

I was in luck because I was with people who are not directionally impaired.  In the middle of a forest it is easy to get lost.  I was the follower for this trail ride—unless you count the times I just gave my horse his head. He always gets us home.    Do you know when to lead and when to follow? We are all weak at some point, but if we have our friends and family to support us, we will all get through--God will get us through. 

At one point we were told we could take a short cut to get back to camp sooner. Well that right there was a big life lesson. It doesn’t always pay to take the short-cut. What we found was a trail that was not maintained. We got seriously scratched up by briers. Jim looked as though he had been through a war—his entire arm was covered in blood. I had been right behind him and he tried to protect me from the briers. Once we realized we were in trouble we had to decide if we should go back or deal with where we were at and make the best of it. If we were half way, should we just keep going?

We chose to keep going but abandoned the trail and found it pretty easy to ride through the forest instead of the bramble. You know that old saying, “you can’t see the forest for the trees”? In this case it should have been, you can’t see the forest for the bramble”. But the point here is we all make mistakes. Admit you are human and do the best you can to correct your mistakes and apologize.

One of the very coolest things we did was to ride through One Horse Gap. It was a crack between two huge formations that you could ride one horse through . . .literally. The walls on each side were about 15 feet. In order to get through we had to pull our feet out of the stirrups to get through. It was one of the rockiest paths we had to take to get to it but it was one of the coolest things we did. If that isn’t the way life is than I don’t know what is!

As I have said the riding was beautiful. It was easy to gaze around in wonder only to find yourself starring over a cliff—and I mean a cliff—as in 15 stories down. But what you saw when you carefully looked down was just incredible. Sometimes you just need to take a chance because you never know what may be around the bend or just over the hill. If you proceed with caution, it may very well be worth it!

Every night and afternoon we would all make it back to camp to do a tick check. The ticks were horrendous. We all said the state animal is the tick and the poison ivy was the state plant. But every morning we would get up at dawn and do the whole thing over again. Were we nuts? Are some of you wondering why in the heck we CHOSE to do this for our vacation?

Collectively, as a group we have been told a child would die and didn't, that both of our children were gravely ill and could die and didn't, we have dealt with bi-polar disorder, loosing a parent & caring for the one left, divorce, lupus and this list goes on. As I write this one of our group was not with us because of a broken pelvis and broken ribs. What we have figured out is that  if you put your energies into the negative, you could possibly loose your mind.

But if you choose to look at the good part of the trail . . . . . . Indian Kitchen with its pool of beautiful water, or Owl’s Bluff where you can see for miles, or Stone House where you can walk in a cool cave, or Natural Bridge where you can walk under tons of rock, the Gap, or the old cemetery with markers dating back to the 1800’s or Garden of the God’s where all you could do was stand in awe.   If we wouldn’t have went through the mud, and the rocks, and the briers, we wouldn’t have seen that child survive, or the children get better, get married, had our first grand child be born, or cried as our daughter graduated from high school, or watched our son run in his first track meet with titanium rods in his back. And we would not have had the fellowship of some pretty incredible people! 

As I am writing this post and putting in the tags, something dawns on me.  Do you realize the word trails and the word trials both have the same letters and only two letters are switched.  I guess you could look at life as filled with trails or filled with trials.  The order you put the letters is up to you!!

“Life is a journey, enjoy the ride!”

The Horse Girl ~~ Tami Vroma

www.LiveInWestMI.com

This post was written driving back from vacation last summer.  I knew I didn't understand Active Rain and I wanted to wait to post it because I felt it was something special!  I wanted to be able to do it right!  I think I can now!

**There is suppose to be a frame here with more pics- I'll fix it when I get back from church**