Equine Friends of Berrien County Trails

14/04/2024

Over 50 people attended our Tower Hill Equestrian Trail Meet and Greet. What a great day to meet neighbors and form strong local partnerships!
Thanks Equine Ladies for the help & refreshments!

14/04/2024

Worth reposting! And working together on.

Land owners and trail networks---

There’s a section in the movie “Unbranded” where the riders, who are going from Mexico to Canada, come to a locked gate. The distance across the fenced off land is only less than a mile until the trail resumes, but it made them detour more than 25 miles over rough country to get around the forbidden section.

That’s the heart of the fragility of trail networks. One locked gate might just as well be The Great Wall, Of China. Everthing beyond that gate, unless there is a way around it, is no longer accessible to riders.

Have you heard the fable of the frog in hot water (disproven, I think, but the idea is interesting) A frog put in a pan of boiling water will leap out, but if it’s put into cool water that then is brought gradually to a boil, the frog will die.

So you buy a property that has good trails around it. Now one new neighbor buys a property a few miles away, and puts up no trespassing signs. Not too big a deal, there are other trails. But over the next ten years, little by little, more land is blocked, and your ability to ride out shrinks to next to nothing. Houses and roads replace farms---we all know the drill.

If it had been like that originally, you wouldn’t have bought there, but like the gradually increasing temperature that did in the frog, you have begrudgingly accepted the limitations to your riding.

Back when there was land aplenty, the old saying was that it was time to move if you could hear your neighbor’s musket shot. For avid trail riders, maybe it’s when that first no trespassing sign cuts off a vital trail. Sure, economically impossible, I get it. But THAT right there, those newly forbidden trails, are what is killing outdoor riding in so so many places.

10/04/2024

Hope to see you at our Meet and Greet this weekend at Tower Hill!! A reminder that if you are planning on coming please RSVP to 269-426-3881 :D But if it just works out for you to stop by this weekend you are welcome.

07/12/2023

Land owners and trail networks---

There’s a section in the movie “Unbranded” where the riders, who are going from Mexico to Canada, come to a locked gate. The distance across the fenced off land is only less than a mile until the trail resumes, but it made them detour more than 25 miles over rough country to get around the forbidden section.

That’s the heart of the fragility of trail networks. One locked gate might just as well be The Great Wall, Of China. Everthing beyond that gate, unless there is a way around it, is no longer accessible to riders.

Have you heard the fable of the frog in hot water (disproven, I think, but the idea is interesting) A frog put in a pan of boiling water will leap out, but if it’s put into cool water that then is brought gradually to a boil, the frog will die.

So you buy a property that has good trails around it. Now one new neighbor buys a property a few miles away, and puts up no trespassing signs. Not too big a deal, there are other trails. But over the next ten years, little by little, more land is blocked, and your ability to ride out shrinks to next to nothing. Houses and roads replace farms---we all know the drill.

If it had been like that originally, you wouldn’t have bought there, but like the gradually increasing temperature that did in the frog, you have begrudgingly accepted the limitations to your riding.

Back when there was land aplenty, the old saying was that it was time to move if you could hear your neighbor’s musket shot. For avid trail riders, maybe it’s when that first no trespassing sign cuts off a vital trail. Sure, economically impossible, I get it. But THAT right there, those newly forbidden trails, are what is killing outdoor riding in so so many places.