Exploring the road less traveled: Flathead resident heading out for 7,000 mile ride

JACOB DORAN / Bigfork Eagle

In the 21st Century, where the culture of fast food and technology has made most people somewhat timid about any adventure that takes them too far from electrical outlets, cell towers or Big Macs, few people will ever cross the country on the back of a horse.

Those who still do are known as "Long Riders," equestrian explorers who could never imagine life far from the saddle and who feel more tied to the wind and reigns than the power cords that keep the modern lifestyle on technological life-support from cradle to the grave.

Bernice Ende of Trego is such a person. She makes no claim to being a cowboy — or cowgirl, as the case may be — but she is a Long Rider, and will likely be one until the day she dies. However, her choice to embrace the Long Rider way of life was a recent one that began with a ride from Trego to Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 2005.

She returned from her third ride — a 3,000 mile trek that took her across Montana, all the way to the southern tip of Nevada — late last October, just in time to vote in the November election. Since then, she has been giving talks in communities around Northwest Montana, including one in Big Arm about her experiences a few weeks ago.

With the open trail calling her, Ende has been preparing for her fourth and longest journey across the country. It is a 7,000 mile ride that will take her to the mouth of the Columbia River, near Portland, Ore., then to Yoakum, Texas (near Austin), Arkansas, Tennessee, and Kentucky, through the Appalachian Mountains to Ottawa, Quebec, and then across southern Canada to re-enter the United States at the port of Roosville. She'll leave on March 20 and return in 2011.

Beginning such a journey in March might seem absurd to those who have never undertaken a "long ride," but for Ende it makes sense. Although the cold winter months can make riding in the northern states a challenge, the hot summer months can be unbearable in the southern states.

Of course, the routes she chooses take her through a lot of small towns and open country, along roads that few people ever travel. That means she rarely sleeps in a house or anywhere that would take her away from her horses, a thoroughbred mare named Honor and a Norwegian Fjord named Essie Pearl.

Occasionally, she benefits from an old, abandoned house, barn or corral. Most of the time, she pitches her tent in ditches or campgrounds, or along railroad tracks and service roads, so she can be with her animals, which includes her dog Claire. The tent is actually a luxury, since she brought only a bedroll and tarp along for her first ride.

Although she tries to camp someplace with water, it can sometimes be scarce. In such cases, she makes a dry camp for the night and tries to find water the next day. These and other challenges — like getting her horses across rivers, freeways and bridges with cattle guards — are part of what makes her rides a true adventure.

"You have to be creative," Ende said. "You always find a way. I get that from my father and all that he taught me.

"It's more than a just a journey; it's a story. It's a story about our country, about our communities. We have such an enormous country, filled with generosity and good will toward one another. When I'm out on these rides, I don't see the America that is filled with crime and indifference. I don't see the hostility that you always see on television or in the news. I get to see the heart of America. I see all these small towns that share a unique willingness to form communities that care about each other, that care about their neighbors and their families and their schools."

Not surprisingly, most people that Ende meets want to know what drove her to become a Long Rider. To that, she replies that riding has always been an integral part of her life, having been raised on a dairy farm in Minnesota.

Ende chose a career in classical ballet and taught dance for 25 years. However, she also trained horses and gave riding lessons during the summers.

She eventually moved to Northwest Montana and continued to teach ballet, living in a mountainside cabin. However, after retiring in 2003, her focus returned to riding.

Despite her sister's pleas for her to rethink the idea, she planned and prepared for her first trip for nine months and finally set out on her first long-distance ride in 2005, on the back of a Tennessee Walking Horse. She borrowed the young gelding, named Pride, from her friends Mack and Evelyn McCurry at the McCurry Ranch.

Her first ride was to cover 2,000 miles and take her to visit her sister, Marianne, in New Mexico. However, when she reached the red Wyoming desert, she nearly gave up. It was then that a rancher named Don Irwin and his wife Jeannine took her in for four days, fed her and taught her how to cross the desert. By the time she finished crossing Wyoming, she had fallen in love with long riding and knew she wanted to continue doing it for as long as she could.

A second ride soon followed, covering a total of 5,000 miles and giving her the opportunity to discover even more of America in the spirit of the first explorers and trail blazers who paved the way for countless communities to grow up in the western half of the United States. That ride took her from Montana to Minnesota, then south to New Mexico, west to Southern California, north along the Siera Nevada's, to the Oregon Coast, across Eastern Washington into the Idaho Panhandle and home again.

To see the world on two feet, Ende says, is one thing, but to see and experience the world on four feet is to experience it in an entirely different way.

"The world moves by slowly," she said. "When you're on a horse and you're watching the landscape, there's such a meditative and methodical rhythm. You are embraced and submerged in the landscape. You eat, drink and breathe the landscape. It touches you, and you touch it. You slow down and you experience it."

It's no wonder she became enchanted with long riding and chose to pursue it professionally. Her rides are now funded by a variety of sponsors, through pass-the-hat talks she gives during her rides and by individual donations. Adding a pack horse, the Norwegian Fjord, to her team has enabled her to carry more food and supplies — not the least of which are a real tent and sleeping bag — and cover more distance between stops.

"Now, I carry on the tradition of the Long Rider," she said. "It's a reminder of where we came from and the people who settled this country. It's the legacy of this country. We still need a Long Rider silhouetted on the horizon. We still need that romantic, legendary image.

"I certainly feel so much more appreciation for America than I did when I started out. We're united by the spirit of independence, and that's really the spirit of the Long Rider. It's really a symbol of freedom and endurance that everyone can relate to on a fundamental level.

"It's a powerful metaphor that I use when I speak at schools and in prisons. Each of us is on a long ride. How are you going to ride the long ride of your life?"