Out Our Way: Check your back trail

Out our way, you can ride for miles over some beautiful country and just enjoy the scenery — but suddenly realize you have no idea where you are or how to get home. Years ago, out in the EmpireRanch in Wyoming, my friend and mentor Elsie told me to get in the habit of checking your back trail. The scenery doesn’t always look the same coming the other way. That ridge you rode over heading east looks totally different heading west. So she taught me to check my back trail so I could find my way home again.

As I have discovered, like so many others, sometimes you discover you really want to go hom...