Photos and article by Allanna Jackson 

Cinnamon was getting bored with the trails that we can ride to from home so the morning of August 30, I trailered her to Blue Ridge trailhead # 2 to ride the new Short-cut trail, which she hadn’t seen before.

The weather was perfect, a pleasant temperature with a few puffy white clouds. Cinnamon loaded, rode and unloaded perfectly. There were four cars in the parking lot when we arrived. Two of them left while I was saddling Cinnamon. It was 10:35 a.m. when we set off up the trail. I decided to go counterclockwise this trip, going up the Blue Ridge trail first and coming back down the short loop of the Short-cut.

Everything was lush and green with the grasses going to seed. The fresh grass at nose level was so tempting Cinnamon snacked as we strolled along, pausing to grab mouthfuls. The sound of my swatting the whip against my boot toe did not deter her. She merely snatched grass while walking. Horses are experts at eating while walking.

We’d gone about a mile up the trail when we met two hikers coming down. They politely stepped off the trail to let us pass. We exchanged pleasantries about the gorgeous weather. They noted that some of the clouds were starting to look like rain. I commented that it was a good thing they’d done their hike in the morning. We continued our separate ways.

A quarter mile or so later there was a grumble from a discontented cloud somewhere to the south behind us.

Cinnamon continued strolling along, snatching grass while climbing the slope. The trail wanders along the east flank of Blue Ridge Mountain before turning northwest to climb the northeast slope. The non-motorized trail crosses the motorized trail several times as it makes this loop. One crossing has the remnants of a butterfly gate that used to block an old road. Back in the late 1980s my first horse, Sassy, helped me open and close that butterfly gate. Now the gate has been uprooted and abandoned, leaning against a pine tree for support.

Cinnamon didn’t find anything to snack on climbing the mountain, though it was just as green as the rest. We heard the rustle of numerous lizards skittering away through the leaves and grasses. As usual, I heard more lizards than I saw. Cinnamon ignored them.

As we approached marker B8 Cinnamon stopped and alerted at something. I asked her, “What cha watching?” She continued staring intently to our right. After several long seconds of studying the direction Cinnamon was looking, I finally saw what she’d spotted. A cow elk was walking away down slope to the west.

The grumbly cloud continued to mutter to itself in the distance. At marker B9 we turned onto the Short-cut Trail. This was the portion Cinnamon had never seen because it didn’t exist the last time I rode her on Blue Ridge Trail. She strolled along, looking around. The New Mexico Locust that had been blooming so beautifully earlier in the summer were now unobtrusively blending in with the general greenery, posing a hidden danger to unsuspecting passersby who might blunder into their sharp thorns.

As we approached the views of the mountains to the south, I could see that the grumbly cloud was raining somewhere on the Apache Reservation. Cinnamon found more grass to snack on while I photographed the peaks, clouds, and rain. 

We resumed our stroll down the Short-cut trail. Cinnamon stepped across several small patches of Gambel oak leaf sprouts that are already reclaiming the new trail. I was pleased to see the run-off tracks from the rains showing that the multiple little bumps in the trail were doing the intended task of diverting water off the trail frequently enough to minimize erosion.

We continued down the trail which crossed the motorized route again. A hundred yards past the crossing, Cinnamon snatched another mouthful of grass, then froze alertly listening. The grumble of the clouds, which Cinnamon had been ignoring, had been replaced by the growl of OHVs on the road we’d just crossed. There seemed to be two machines with multiple people, some of them squealing and yelling. Cinnamon continued standing like a statue, holding the uneaten grass in her mouth while listening to the OHVs. I assured her they weren’t coming onto the trail we were on. When they’d gone, Cinnamon continued down the trail chewing her snack.

Half a mile or so later I spotted a buck deer watching us from a small clearing in the forest. To my surprise, Cinnamon didn’t seem to see him, not even when I stopped her to try to take his picture. She was too busy snacking on more grass.

As we continued, I started hearing raindrops in the trees, but we weren’t getting wet. Cinnamon seemed to be a little tired, though we hadn’t gone any further than usual. Maybe it was due to not knowing how long the unfamiliar trail is. She perked up a little when we came to the end of the short cut and turned onto the trail we’d come out on. We heard cows mooing down by the trailhead. I could see my truck and trailer in the parking lot. All the other vehicles were gone.



Back at the trailhead I asked Cinnamon to back up about 15 steps, just to stretch her back and hind legs a little. At the trailer I unsaddled Cinnamon, then groomed her until she was dry. I loaded her into the trailer, and we headed home. During the monsoon season there is always a chance of getting caught by a storm out on the trail. This trip our timing was perfect. White Mountain Boulevard was damp, and it rained enough that I needed my windshield wipers a little as I drove through Pinetop-Lakeside, but it wasn’t raining at my house when I got home, and we had not gotten wet on our ride.