Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
So once we get in there you guys are going to climb off your horses here in a few moments
when I tell you to, we're going to ride through all of these guests, we're going to ride down
the road, and I'm going to stop at each campsite and give you guys, I'll call out your name
and you guys will be able to camp in those campsites down there. Well, the program is
with the Boy Scouts. It's a Boy Scout program, and it's, one of the neatest things about
this program is that we're not just out here on a horseback ride going around in a little
circle and then back to the same place. We're moving the herd. We have of about 70 to 80
head of horses, which, there are about 50 out here with us right now. We're moving them
between our two camps. We have a winter camp ranch. The ranch itself is outside Scott's
Mills and we have a mountain camp that's on the backside of Mt. Hood not too far outside
of Dufur. And we run these horses up there all summer as a scout program. We're with
us 9 days. We start with many kids who have never been on a horse before. This trip here
we have 36 folk on. And there's a number of them who have never rode before. We start
with an orientation day on the first Saturday. It starts at 11:00 and it goes until dark.
And then the next morning we wake them up at, before light, feed them before light,
and we're down at the corals as the sun's rising. And my 8:30 or 9:00 we're on our horse
heading toward our first campsite. The Boy Scouts of America have a long tradition of
stewardship across the landscape and here on the Mt. Hood. My big hope with the Boy
Scouts of America is that they will form the new stewards of our country and will work
within Public Service towards trying to promote land management across the landscape and all
of our public lands. You know it's something that has changed over the years. Years ago
this was a trip to get our horses moved. But, I don't know if it was just because I wanted
these kids to experience more or if I was just bored with just riding or whatever, but
we've really transformed this thing into, a 9 day horsemanship clinic that we talk continually
about humanship skills. We have a whole session on leadership, a whole session on goal setting,
a whole session on having a positive attitude and how that attitude can transform your life.
I'm learning about horsemanship, and how to be successful, and how to just be a better
person in life and to see what acting like a Western cowboy can teach you. I have also
grown in, kind of just faith in myself and also relying on others and an animal that
I'm riding on trusting my life with and it's a great partnership between you and the horse
and I think I'm having a great partnership with Oreo. She's a great horse. She is an
Appaloosa I think. She 16 years old. She's slow, but she get's the job done. It's a trust
thing, she trusts me, I trust her. It works. I've only fallen off once. It wasn't that
bad, so I think we're doing pretty well. The very first day, we start talking to these,
to everybody because there are adults on this trip too, about the difference between human
time--the time we all run out in the city and when we've got a job and responsibilities
and all that. But then the other thing is horse time. And that horse time that we teach
these kids about is the time that slows down to the pace of the horse. And whatever happens
happens and however much time it take it takes. There are a lot of different sayings these
kinds of kids, these kids start picking up on. Like if you take the time it takes, it
takes less time. Make the right thing easy and the wrong thing difficult. Recognize the
smallest change. Reward the slightest try. And they start looking at those little things
with their horse and then they start realizing how important that is with their lives. The
youth that are involved in this program, are very interested in protecting the resources
of the Mt. Hood National Forest and use them in a way where they can be sustained over
a long period of time. Boy Scouts in general are people who have a high ethic related to
land use and land protection and I view them as the future stewards of our public lands
across the United States. It's an amazing program. I wish every kid in the country could
go on it because it's one of the things that people don't realize their kids need. They
need responsibility, they need boundaries, they need to know what they can do and what
they can't do. They need to have people tell them they are great and they need to be successful.
And that's all something that happens to every kid who comes out here. They just long for
this. It's just what their hearts' desire is but they just don't know it because we
don't do this in the world anymore. And so it's great. I tell these kids when they get
here, it's a trip of a lifetime. It's going to transform your like just get ready to have
your life changed. And I don't let them down. They know that and they come back and tell
me that and they come time after time to get more of that.