First installment from the trip

"Nineteen feet of snow," I remind myself. "Nineteen feet of snow." It's a mental mantra. The sun is shining and the fireweed is in bloom around the glass-clear lakes, and I'm surging up a green hill on a strong 16-hand bay. "Nineteen feet of snow." I'm trying very hard to convince myself. It isn't working.

The Gaspé riding trip is billed as five days of hard riding, 107 miles through the rolling hills. I've done enough horseback trips to expect a certain amount of soreness—okay, a LOT of soreness, which is why half my baggage is pills, braces, and heat packs—but so help me I have yet to figure out the magic potion that will keep me from getting almost sick nervous before the riding starts. It's a strange fear but a persistent one, a conviction that I will somehow lose all my ability to ride when I get into the saddle of a new horse. Doing that on a vacation? Priceless.

I'm somewhat reassured when I meet Pierre Guerard, CinC and guide extraordinaire, before dinner the first night. He asks me where I've ridden and what style I prefer, and he grins when I tell him I'd rather not use English tack. Pierre uses mainly Western endurance saddles, which don't have a horn but otherwise could be the doubles of the saddles at my barn. I'm the only person to arrive on time; the rest of the group, a team of five riders from Texas, suffer the agonies of Newark airport and don't roll into Les Boules until 3 AM.

The first morning of the ride, after a spartan breakfast of strong coffee, toasted fresh bread, and strawberry crepes swimming in cream and maple syrup, we sit down with Pierre to review the rules. "Post or two-point for all trots," he tells us. "And switch diagonals every 15 steps. If you don't, the horses will get sore on one side, and I will see them limping." I swallow, picturing long miles of up-down-up-down-up-down, up-up, down-up-down-up. The horses may not get sore, but we will. "Canter, you should be always in two-point. When we water the horses, I want them all four hooves in the water. Always, when we are watering or grazing, they should be at least one horse-length apart. No making friends, no fighting—they are working. You will tell them, or you will ride with the luggage in the van. No racing, no switching places in the line; I don't want a bolt when we canter." My nerves are receding; this is a guy who knows horses and, more to the point, riders.

When we meet our horses, Pierre gives each of us a short biography of our assigned mount, complete with a list of any foibles. I get Smouti, a 10-year-old QH/Standardbred bay with a small white star, who is tall enough to fit me physically and calm enough to finish off the last of my jitters. Most of the other five riders get handsome chesty Canadian-bred horses, but Pierre's daughter, who will ride drag, turns out on a prancing white Arabian. We cram water bottles and rain kit into the saddle bags, along with the first-aid gear and shoeing equipment, and head out down the road, jingling quietly.

The first morning, under a gray sky, we trail down the roads looking at the incredibly green wheat fields, dark firs, and spikes of pink fireweed under the slow pinwheels of the wind turbines half a mile away. "Okay, we're gonna do a little trot," calls Pierre from the head of the line, raising his fist. "Pooh poooooh!" We'll come to know that high-pitched hoot well, and the horses move smoothly into a clipping trot. We post (with at least one of us counting diligently to 15 over and over inside her head) down the long road.

After a few hours of riding first on grey-graveled roads and then on trails that wind through maple forest and across the edges of wheat fields almost iridescently green, we stop for lunch at a maple cabin, where the bar and old posters show that the unpreposessing low-roofed house is home to epic parties in the syruping season. Mattieu, the innkeeper from the night before, delivers sandwiches, pasta salad, and juice, and we get a chance to sample and buy the house syrup and sugar, for delivery at the end of the week. None of us have the maple palate of Canadians, but we can tell that it's pretty tasty, and most of us spend a few bucks on take-home treats.

In the afternoon, we try a canter up the road, stopping only briefly to pull on rain jackets as a fast-moving storm breaks over us. I'm not used to riding in two-point, with my weight up off the saddle, but once I follow Pierre's suggestion and bridge my reins, my center of balance reappears, and I find an easy crouch over Smouti's neck. He's calm, but he's fast and responsive, and we switch effortlessly into a hand gallop to pound up the gleaming hills. When we try the first "roller coaster," a twisting path with slight hills and quick switchbacks, I have to bite back a whoop of glee.

Soggy and tired, we arrive at Lac Malcolm, a small resort area where the horses stay overnight in a barn and the rest of us tuck in at the lakeside auberge. There are options for kayaking and swimming, but with the storm clouds still overhead, we opt instead for hot showers, drinks on the patio (the staff don't speak much English, and my French is limited at best, but we manage to meet in a franglais patois), and an early dinner and bed. Anyone who thinks that riding isn't exercise has never been to Gaspé.

The next day, I learn why it's not wise to have two cups of coffee before long posting trots. Let's draw a curtain across the rest of that bit of empirical data. We follow the road for a few hours, watching out for the pestiferous ATVs that share the track with varying levels of courtesy. Pierre reminds us all that we shouldn't allow the horses to step around the puddles in the road, lest they run us into branches; he then tricksily has us do a long trot that allows him to see whether we follow his directions. Smouti doesn't mind having wet feet—he steps willingly into the rocky streams where we water—but he loathes mud, and it takes me a while to learn to steady him through the squashy footing. When the ground permits, we do long smooth canters: up and forward, reins bridged, and away to the races. Pierre tells me, when I ask, that he doesn't mind if the horses accelerate into a hand gallop: "To me, three beats or four, it's the same thing, as long as it's not a runaway." Okay then. Smouti approves.

The ride today is shorter, with a break for a cold lunch at a cabin near a blueberry farm, and we end the afternoon at Pierre's house, the Ranch des Collines Chic Chocs, where we will spend two nights. We meet the local critters, including several cats, a flock of chickens, the kids' spaniel, and the rest of the herd, and we spend the long sunny afternoon out on the lawn, reading, petting cats, and taking inventory of our aching bits. I hurt from neck to toes and privily resolve to go the gym for core and quad work when I get home; all that two-point is taking a huge toll on my lower abs.

To be continued!