50 PUNCHMAGAZINE.COM {due west} PHOTOGRAPHY: COURTESY OF ALLAN HACK SADDLE UP happy trails words by JOHANNA HARLOW here. I’ve been riding here my whole life,” says Abbey, but “I took a hard left for a while.” With quite a bit of experience on the stage (including a memorable and feisty performance as Ophelia in Hamlet), Abbey moved to New York to pursue acting. But when the pandemic hit, she returned home to her family on the West Coast. “Everything I was working towards suddenly just disappeared,” Abbey recalls. Her sister, who had been working at Chaparral Ranch for years, encouraged Abbey to join as a camp counselor. “It was like flicking the light switch back on,” she says. These days, Abbey runs the show at the ranch’s Woodside location, teaching the riding lessons, taking guests out on trail rides and Sometimes the road of life takes us in unexpected directions. Today, it brought me to the woods. I find myself on horseback deep in Woodside’s Wunderlich Park on my quest to learn more about Chaparral Ranch, an operation offering equestrian camps for kids, riding lessons, horse boarding and trail rides within the county park. The horse I’m riding, a mild-mannered gentleman named Ernie, trundles along at an amiable pace, and I soon lose myself in the side-to-side rock of the saddle and the steady clompclomp of hoofs on dirt. “We’re extremely lucky to have this facility,” says Abbey Vixie, my guide today and the site manager here. Abbey knows a thing or two about unexpected paths. “I grew up in Woodside. I’m from PHOTOGRAPHY: JOHANNA HARLOW
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