Camping at DuPuis Reserve near Indiantown, Florida with family, friends, and our horses over the New Year’s weekend was an idyllic first for me.
Having a horse, being a cowgirl, and snoozing beneath the stars with my four-legged friend were dreams of mine since I saw my first Western at the age of three. Alas, growing up in New York City in a non-equestrian family, I had to settle for sleeping with the window open and riding a rocking horse that was stabled in the basement of our house. Eventually, my childhood toy pony succumbed to over-use and I manifested the innate Virgo requisite for sanitary indoor plumbing. That, coupled with eventful nomadic bi-coastal urban life prevented me from camping or acquiring a real horse of my own until I moved to South Florida four decades later.
De facto cowgirl was well worth the wait.
Besides sunbathers, snowbirds, socialites, retired criminals, and dodgy drivers, South Florida is a haven for trail riders, a majority of them over-forty, multi-tasking, erudite professional women like me who also maintain their little girl passion for horses and a just do it sense of adventure. My midlife trail-riding posse has been sleeping under the stars with their families and horses for years at park facilities throughout Florida. DuPuis Reserve is a favorite of these ladies.
DuPuis is a 21,875-acre multi-use nature reserve located approximately ninety minutes NW of Ft. Lauderdale, betwixt Palm Beach and Martin Counties. Besides tropical green tranquility, abundant wildlife, ponds, wet prairies, cypress domes, pine flatwoods, and a remnant Everglades marsh, DuPuis offers twenty-two miles of hiking and forty miles of horseback riding trails, color-coded for convenience. There are three well-maintained barns with water and electricity, numerous fenced paddocks, vehicle paths, near-by boating, and no-frills campsites with an unmarred view of the night sky, excellent for stargazing. There are also men’s and women’s shower and toilet facilities. Wouldn’t call them primative, but I would recommend bathing in flip-flops, and don’t forget insect spray, for you and your horse. Fresh air spawns some mighty fierce buggers, even in January. The cost to partake in all that DuPuis offers is free. The friendly on-site park host asks only that visitors leave the reserve as tidy and unmarred as they found it. No dogs permitted.
Our group arrived at DuPuis late morning, the day before New Year’s Eve. Sheryl, Linda, Carol, Sue, and Karen had their campsites ready in a jiffy, with and without familial assistance. My very competent husband and tween-teen children pitched our three-bedroom tent with equal ease while I situated my horse and helped set-up the seating and dining area adjacent to the campfire circle.
By noon it was time to ride.
British racecar driver Sterling Moss once said, “Motion is tranquility.” He was referring to car and driver, but he just as soon could have been referring to horse and rider. There is something about the movement of a horse through a tract of unspoiled land that quiets the mind and soothes the soul, the bathing balm of Mother Nature.
Over the three days, my friends and I rode our horses a total of twenty-five miles. It was True Grit, Wild America, and The Man from Snowy River all rolled up in one. When not riding, our group of more than twenty friends and family, hiked, napped, read, chatted, canoed, sipped wine, swatted mosquitoes, snacked on crackers and Brie, sang campfire songs, shooed flies, and shared gourmet potluck meals beneath a blanket of twinkling stars. Life’s simple pleasures.
If being a weekend cowgirl in Indiantown is any indication of what awaits in 2012, I’m looking forward to many more horsey camping trips, and many more dreams coming true in the New Year.