A Call from The Long Riders' Guild

I received a call from the founder of The Long Riders' Guild, CuChullaine O'Reilly, this morning.

What a great call. He is a wealth of information. CuChullaine gave me email addresses for some military and ex-military who are currently long riders, or in one case plan on becoming long riders when they retire here shortly.

We went over some issues that I had questions about in my email to him.

1. what is the bear situation? He has not heard of a single problem with bears from any long rider.
2. what issues are associated with changing elevations from sea level to high mountain altitudes? The horse will acclimatize with no problems.
3. what issues have there been with local folks on the back roads? Every decade at least one long rider has been purposely killed. Another concern are backpackers that don't think horses should be on "their" trails. Nevermind that the horses opened those trails and built those trails in recent times, for the backpackers to use. Also, the fact that it is PUBLIC land, not backpacker land. He gave me a couple of instances of interactions with purist backpackers.

I thought my biggest concern was going to be bears and other wild animals. It looks like the 2 legged animal will be the biggest concern. I grew up in south Georgia, where real rednecks existed, where they thought (and probably still do), that the Mason-Dixon line runs through Macon, Georgia. This was before Jeff Foxworthy showed most of the country that rednecks were everywhere. The rednecks that Mr. Foxworthy speaks of, I would classify as "good ole boys". The kind of folks that would run down someone that is minding their own business, is the kind of person that needs to go the way of the Dodo. They are no better than some gang-banger in a large city.

I can see myself about to go off on a tangent that I do not need to pursue at this juncture. I am hoping for the best, but trying to prepare for the worst.

Live free people.

-GW