I WAS STEELING MYSELF for what was going to be a three-hour horseback ride through Great Sand Dunes National Park when I realised I was unprepared. First, I didn't have a ten-gallon hat. (I learned early on that not a single outfitter within a two-hour drive of Colorado Springs Airport carried a Stetson that would fit over my dreadlocks.) I knew that the hat wasn't required, but not wearing one just felt odd – like playing baseball without a cap. Second, I didn't have chaps.
“Do chaps actually do anything?” I asked Ruby, a wrangler at Zapata Ranch in Mosca, Colorado. As I gazed out over the desert before us, Ruby patiently explained the many practical reasons chaps are a good idea (thorn-bush defence, rope-burn protection). She'd done this before – reassuring city people like me who and were looking to the rough country as a means of escape. And in a form of western hospitality I experienced many times during my extended weekend at Zapata, she guided me to the least troublesome situation for me without actually telling me so. “You'll be riding Big Lil,” Ruby said. Luckily, Big Lil appeared as kind and forgiving as Ruby.
