The Five Brooks Trailhead at Point Reyes National Seashore was familiar. I’d parked there many times, gathered my pack, laced my boots, and headed down the trail. I thought I knew the place well. But the first time I arrived with Cash, a steady 26-year-old cinnamon-chestnut quarter horse who’d helped me learn to ride, gave me an entirely different map. Suddenly I noticed infrastructure that had been there all along: horse trailers at the lot entrance, a mounting block near the trailhead, hitching rails at the edges of the clearing, a weathered water trough at the far end. I had seen all of it before, but that morning I fully understood their purpose.

Rue Mapp and her horse, Cash, walking through a field of poppies.
Jeremy Collins

We were maybe a half-mile in when Cash stopped. It was quiet, just a stillness: a breath held, ears forward, weight shifted back the way a horse does when it is sorting something out. I steadied my own breath and looked ahead. Around the bend, a woman was coming up the trail with two large dogs on long leads. One of them had already spotted us, and it had gone stiff-legged, doing that thing dogs do when they are not sure what they are looking at.

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Rue Mapp is the founder and CEO of Outdoor Afro, a nonprofit that celebrates and inspires Black leadership in nature. From her hometown of Oakland, Rue started Outdoor Afro as a blog in 2009, growing it to an organization in more than 70 U.S. cities that connects people through hikes, conservation, and the outdoors rooted in joy, culture, and belonging. Rue has been recognized with the Heinz Award and in Oprah’s Book Club for her book Nature Swagger.