A Texan rides at all state parks with equestrian trails, and finds solace along the way. Story and photos by Shannon King August 01, 2025 I didn’t want to go alone, but here I am, leaning against the sidewall of the truck pumping gas in Quitaque, on the downhill side of the Caprock Escarpment. There’s a dog in the passenger seat, a horse in the trailer and a thick layer of dust on it all. I slide the pump handle back in its cradle and turn and walk into the tiny gas station,

Long ago and today, the leaves, as they always do, had much to say. All of it different: various whispers and rattles, secrets told under cover of wind and darkness. Now, I sit – no, I lie, under them listening. Lip reading until I can read no more. Stay a while, they say. Rest. Breathe. Choose your path with heart and follow it. Yesterday, I drove all day and into the night. Into exhaustion. Into frustration. Finally, a campsite, an hour from our original destination served,

I follow the trail north, along the ridge and across the mesa, along a dry, eroding edge, along a switchback and into the canyon. Except for the four hooves beneath me, I am alone. Boulders and rocks grow into towering walls, some slick and slated – gray like a chalkboard, others porous and curved. A trickling stream runs through and somewhere it becomes the trail. Pebbles and rocks, smooth from years of water, mix with jagged moss-covered chunks from the edge above - oh to s

Cheers to Texas' newest state park, Palo Pinto Mountains! Ten equestrian sites and 16 miles of multi-use trails through rolling cross-timbers and open views. (Ridden Dec of '20, published in the Sept '22 HTA Horse Trails of America Trail Journal) A self-proclaimed expert “Googler,” in the spring of 2020 I came across an invitation to ride the up-and-coming Palo Pinto Mountains State Park. A ride advertised by Partners of the Park, in what will eventually be the first new Tex

Between the book ends we know today as the Republic of Texas and the Civil War lies the dog-eared and faded novella of early statehood, the Antebellum Era of Texas. Although typically measured by the rise of abolition and polarization of the country, the mid-1800’s was also a time of invention and innovation - a new spirit was stirring. While the eastern US navigated a second wave of industrial revolution, the western lands remained wild and unfenced. But “there’s gold in t

Photo by Mark Cunningham I saddle, mount, and boot the horse forward toward a deeply cut path of fringed roots and barren mesquites. Thorns and limbs reach upward and out like the clawed arthritic hands of an old witch. The sky begins to blow. Shake. Fade. A gunshot echoes. Shadows stretch and twist and lean in, searching for a foothold. A stronghold. A victory. Over what, I don't know. I dismount and lead the horse, my white knight against the dark emptiness. His focus is st

A month ago, I stood under the snow-covered peaks of Little Hatchet, gazing at the distant crest of her big brother, the sky heavy with wind and rain and dust. Mud everywhere. Little Hatchet Mountains, New Mexico Next to me there was a man in a car, no – a truck, one of those which carries its own power. Self-sufficient. Shaggy beard, wandering speech. A dog tucked in beside him. Waiting. A day hiker, I thought. Homeless, I thought. An attorney. A philosopher. A man waiting f

In 1903, a man named Wilson Bentley attached a camera to his microscope and took pictures of individual snowflakes. He was the first to do so, and through his pictures we came to realize no two snowflakes are alike. I find his photographs amazing. Snowflakes form, of course, when warm air collides with another air mass or weather front and condensation takes place. But the water must have something to adhere to, so it grabs hold of bacteria or dust in the air, and upon freezi

In the whitewash of midday, the land looks the same. Dry, hot, barren rolling hills and steep cliffs. But in dusk, in the shadows of a pastel sunset, the land comes alive. Each cliffside, each mountain differentiates from the other. The smallest of indentions make the biggest shadows. The harshest mountains turn velvet. This is a land where 80 feels like 90 and clothes must be shed along the way - but at least it's a dry heat, or so they say. This is a land where you wake up

At Santa Elena Canyon, I am the only one – for a moment at least. It has become a difficult thing to find in this park, solitude, unless one goes off map of course. Something I am prone to do often, but not today. Today I sit, in the middle of the resting Rio Grande. Today I sit, between the ever present yet-to-be and the ever present what was. Today I sit, just out of reach of walls so hardened by the past it takes a torrential river to bring them home, back into the earth o

I am not a historian, never have been. My degree stops at the simple baccalaureate and the only dates I have memorized are those of my own unfortunate aging and the anniversaries of immediate kin. But I am a Texan, and as every good Texan knows there is a grit here, a grit which anchors us to the very land. Before the internet, the telephone, the automobile, before the iron rails which connected east to west, the mail was an irregular thing. What takes the press of a button a

A good road starts out smooth and wide and narrows as you go, begins known but ends a stranger, is messy - wind in hair, dirt in air. It is a long, deep stretch, a song that never ends. There should be wildflowers, shades of yellow and violet, dangling and leaning into the breeze, sighing – waiting for a solitary traveler. There should be treasure, hidden behind locked gates, in secret culverts. An unplanned tire change along the way - a moment of hesitation. Doubt. A good ro

We camp at Ute Trailhead in the San Juan Mountains and in the morning, a white crystalline blanket covers the ground; my breath moves...

You do too much. You don't do enough. Don't drink, or don't drink too much. Dress this way. Act this way. Smile regardless. Ignore the...

The path is rocky and rooted in places, smooth and firm in others. The terrain a mixture of rolling ridges, rivers of talus slope, alpine...

I stood on the edge today… of a storm, a jagged chasm, a bridge, an open doorway. There are some who use words like weights, hefting them...

There is something about a river. She is not the calm soul of the pond with her springy cattails and lily pads, nor the vast moodiness of...

Like the west Texas wind, it took me a while to settle on a course. But I have... Over the last five years, Dex and I have ridden at least 130 different trails solo across Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, the southern border from Texas to California and back, and most recently the headwaters of our coveted Rio Grande in Colorado. Confessions of a Saddle Tramp: A Hundred Trails (work in progress) is a collection of short stories and journal entries from 14 hands high, intersper

A maze of washes and draws and mountains and ridges and hills and swales and low points and canyons. A crescendo of building pressure, descending then rising again, punctuated by staccato notes. A score only Beethoven could play. There is always another corner to be turned, another hill to be crested, another view to feast upon. It is a capture possible in real time only, in the sights, the sounds, the caress of a warm breeze, the fading sun, the twilight of jagged clouds acr

Everybody out here is escaping something, I said. Or running toward something, she replied. I am reminded of a poem from three years back. “I shall be an old woman in the desert, sitting under the moon and stars. Listening, looking: a symphony of crickets, a warm breeze, a light across the mountain - ranchers and rangers making their rounds - coyotes singing, horses on hay - a satisfied groan in the distance - the easy settling of structures as night falls. Wine glass to my l