Trails 211 
They may be encountered in Colorado and 
there are some in the Santa Inez in California. 
When following them in the dark I have 
always felt I relied as much upon faith as upon 
anything substantial underfoot. 
One is far from being wholly absorbed 
with these practical considerations in follow- 
ing the trail. There is something mysterious 
about all trails. They seem matter of fact 
enough as the pony plods laboriously upward, 
panting and straining from the shoulders or 
floundering over the loose stones, but as you 
start briskly at a fox trot over the mesa or 
along the ridge in the fresh morning air, the 
world at your feet, you may feel you have 
somehow left yourself behind and acquired, 
for the time being, a new self. Somewhere on 
every trail another and freer self waits for us, 
and as we come up, silently and mysteriously 
steps into the body and inhabits it while we 
are on his domain. When we come to go 
down again, he steps out at the edge of his 
province and the old self slips into his accus- 
tomed place and jogs along quite as if it were 
he who had been in the saddle all the time. 
Ever since I discovered this I take to the trail 
with a peculiarly pleasant anticipation of 
somewhere in the wild country being met 
