With 50% of Palm Spring’s population gay, (according to my yoga teacher yesterday) and the other 50% geriatric, I was obviously going to fit in well in this town.  But Palm Springs is more than just a strip of shops and restaurants with a unique water-misting air-cooling device for diners who want to sit outside (apparently invented by my friend Emma’s dad - who knew?).  What you have to do here is head out to the desert on a horse.  See something different.  So that’s what I did. 

Smoke Tree Stables is like most of PS’ best-kept secrets, plonked at the end of a long drive of million dollar condos with their perfectly manicured hedges and lawns.  I thought I must be lost at first, and then there it was, awash with pick-up trucks and trailers, a well-ordered, productive community that seemed incongruously placed with its suburban neighbours yet sat perfectly at ease with the desert mountains it was flanked by.  The horses looked hot, it was 2pm and about 105 degrees.  They stood still, eyeing me up, the only person crazy enough to want to go riding in the day’s heat. 

Bruce Poe, my guide, was unperturbed by heat.  ”I like your t-shirt” he said, with a slight southern drawl. (I should explain that I’d swapped my Obamarama t-shirt for a Free Burma one, just in case I was riding with Republicans. I’m sensitive like that).   We set out for a two hour trip in the Agua Caliente Indian Reservation, armed with bottles of water that hung from the saddle-horn, the horses, (mine was called Fernando) climbing up rocky paths and down sandy banks with the ease of mountain goats.  

We passed wavy sand-prints, the sign of snakes; we saw Jack-Rabbits, their enormous donkey ears sticking up, tinged pink with blood capillaries to help cool them down.  We heard the plaintive song of Mourning Doves; saw the pretty white tails of Antelope Ground Squirrels. And of course, we saw the rocks, the giant boulders, the mountain ranges of Murray Canyon, orange-brown and covered in sun-bleached grass.

Riding towards the oasis, the tall crowns of the palm trees an easy to spot landmark,  the only splash of real colour in an otherwise soft-brown landscape, I recalled afternoons in Maidstone as a child, glued to High Chaparel on tv.   Bruce rode in front, Wrangler jeans, Stetson, spurs and cigarette.  He reminded me of every John Wayne film I’ve ever seen, the Marlboro Man, the Rhinestone Cowboy song by Neil Diamond. Possibly not Brokeback Mountain.  He taught me to loop my right fingers through my belt hook on my jeans, to hold the reins in my left hand only, and that there was no need to bounce up and down in the saddle when trotting.  That was the English way, and not how they do it here.  And if I held on to the saddle-horn when Fernando deigned to break into a trot  (he seemed to prefer to chomp on the brush) then I was obviously a sissy. 

We stopped for a bit, my legs stiff and aching, the heat oppressive, but we were soon back on our horses, heading back.  The views were dazzling, a slight breeze as we returned lifting the heat from our backs.  

Bruce gave me a couple of horse-shoes for Armand and Manu and warned me I might feel a little stiff the following day.  He was right about that.  But it’s nothing a margarita and a massage can’t sort.  I really recommend if ever you’re headed this way to call Smoke Tree stables on 760-327-1372 and ask for Bruce Poe!!!!  http://www.smoketreestables.com/