THE SUMMER ARE BACK COOLEST NIGHTS

SATURDAYS JUNE 7 - JULY 26

Cool things down this summer with the Safari Nights concert series at the Dallas Zoo. Free with regular admission. Featuring The Killdares, Brave Combo, and more!

For more information, visit DallasZoo.com or text “SAFARI” to 47464.

Rocking M Stables

In 1955 Tommy Ernest Mayes, a devoted rider, purchased 10 acres on Dallas’ peripheries. He dreamed of a laid-back ranch where he could relax on his front-porch rocking chair overlooking his pasture and horses. Over the years, our neighborhood sprung up around the Rocking M farm (7807 Fair Oaks). In ’78 the City of Dallas bought most of the land in order to build the Walnut Hill bridge. Remaining is an acre and a half of peaceful, rural terrain

Florist stables housing some 60 horses — in the middle of a growing metropolis. Mayes’ grandson Michael, who now owns the place, says his grandfather instilled in him a reverence for nature and horses. Mayes labored over the years to turn Rocking M into a first-rate equestrian facility offering boarding and training for horses, and lessons and camps for humans.

For those fortunate enough to board their own horse at Rocking M, riding along the White Rock Creek trail toward White Rock Lake offers quintessential soul quieting. “A lot of our boarders are from Lake Highlands,” notes Mayes. “I live across the street,” a woman who is happily hosing down her animal chimes in as we pass.

Of course, boarders come from all around the city and the affluent Park Cities — after all, one must have a disposable income to break into the sport of horseback riding or dressage, the equestrian sport in which Rocking M specializes.

A stable at Rocking M runs $600-$800 a month. Mayes and his staff feed and water the horses, but, ideally, clients regularly ride and exercise their own animals.

For slightly less committed families, the summer is an especially good time to enroll in lessons and camps, according to Yvonne Kusserow, Mayes’ wife and a horse-riding master (literally, she has a master’s degree in horse riding from a German university). The sessions teach horsemanship, which means learning everything about the horse — what they eat, names of equine body parts, required gear, rules of safety and so forth. They progress to advanced classes and training in dressage and Olympic-level sport.

Even for neighbors not directly involved with the ranch, is it difficult to deny the aesthetic benefits its presence lends to our area.

On a summer evening, for example, a cyclist might find herself keeping pace alongside the paint horse named George Henry and the Lake Highlands woman who rides him almost daily.

A jogger might find herself trotting alongside Kusserow and her majestic steed Royal Falcon. Those trails, notes Kusserow, are where the horses find solace. “I like being in the [ring], practicing, but the horses, they need this for their peace of mind.”

Does your congregation have a heart for weaving?

Faith Inclusion Network of Dallas

We’re here to help faith-based communities FIND ways to weave inclusion of individuals with special needs into our North Texas congregations.

The Faith Inclusion Network of Dallas (FIND) is a collaborative network of community leaders, organizations and service providers committed to impacting change within faith-based communities and congregations in the ways individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities and their families find opportunities to fully engage socially, emotionally, academically, spiritually and in service to others.

Weaving Inclusion Into Our Faith Communities

Free Symposium | June 19th & 20th | Highland Park United Methodist Church For more information, visit www.JFSdallas.org

June 5, 2014

Dallas City Performance Hall 2520 Flora Street Dallas, TX 75201

7 PM | Tickets $13 www.dallasCONFAB.org

GUEST SPEAKERS

Robert W. Decherd, Robbie Good Brandon Hancock, Michael Hellmann

Daniel Huerta, Max Kalhammer

Dr. Gail Thomas, Willis Winters

Sponsored by

Proceeds benefit the Dallas Parks Foundation a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.

Proceeds benefit the Dallas Parks Foundaiton a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.

Richland College Campus

This Dallas community college (12800 Abrams at Walnut) plays host not only to a population of students from varying walks of life, but also to residents of the surrounding neighborhood looking for a relatively quiet retreat or place to exercise.

Our pursuit of peaceful places led us straight to the tranquility labyrinth situated at Richland’s northeastern reaches. A labyrinth, unlike a maze, has no wrong turns and is employed in various religions as a meditation tool.

There are no rules for how to walk the labyrinth, but its creators suggest you “clear your mind and become aware of your breathing. Find the pace your body wants to go. When you reach the center, take time for illumination, reflection or meditation. As you walk the winding path back out, be strengthened for your return into the world …” Near the labyrinth is a symbolic water pump honoring the Walton family, who owned the land before the college was erected in 1966.

The east side of the rolling campus is a state-of-the-art soccer complex that hosts the Dallas Cup each spring. When not in use, the fields offer a lush green parkland for impromptu ball games, dog walking, trail running — a jogging/hiking path expands behind a wall of trees north of the fields.

South of the college is a three-quartermile asphalt track, which passes public-access tennis courts and a serene duck pond. It is common to see new ducklings and goslings each spring, as well as turtles and the occasional snake sunning on the pond-side concrete. Swans, gulls, rabbits and skunks also inhabit the preserve around the property.

HARRY MOSS PARK OFF-ROAD TRAIL

Visible from Greenville are the Moss Park soccer fields (7601 Greenville), which are at the heart of one of Lake Highlands’ woodsiest expanses. South of the soccer fields is an entrance to the Harry Moss Park Trail, the product of a partnership between the City of Dallas and the Dallas Off Road Bicycle Association. It took shape in fall 2010, and it includes more than five miles of dirt paths winding through towering trees, traversing quaint bridges (which, according to DORBA members, are made 100 percent from stuff found at the trail) and bordering rippling White Rock Creek. Posted outside the trailhead is signage including information about the five color-coded tracks that make up Moss Park’s trail system. It tells visitors, for instance, that the purple loop is 1.54 miles and the white is just a quarter mile featuring easy terrain for tots and pets. After a storm the area can get its fair share of trash buildup washed down from upstream, but there are several stewards of the trail that help maintain cleanliness, trim trees and weeds, and champion the rules such as “keep dogs on leashes,” “pick up after them” and “no littering.” It is perfect on a summer morning or evening as the setting or dawning sun pokes through the treetops — unless you have allergies, in which case you should stick to the nearby concrete trails that are in a more open, less wooded area. Turn into Buckeye Beverages parking lot. Continue past the metal gate. The trail is to the right.

Lucky Dog Books

“A bell jingled overhead. The mild, spicy smell of old books hit him, and the smell was somehow like coming home,” wrote Stephen King in The Waste Lands.

If your preferred mode of decompression involves curling up with a book — a real, paper-and-ink page turner — you’ll get lost, in the most pleasant manner, inside Lucky Dog Books (10801 Garland).

The building is small and welcoming. Inside, though, room after room, at least 10 of them, offer books organized by topic then author. Comfy chairs in crannies beckon visitors to loiter and peruse the pages they’ve heretofore plucked from the endless shelves. Once you’ve wrested yourself from the cozy couch in, for example, the poetry reading room, check the wall calendar for book signings, discussion groups, workshops and writing classes, and purchase your picks with cash, plastic or store credit, which you can obtain by donating your old books, records and media.

The Advocate’s ongoing series about poverty-related problems in our neighborhood and the efforts to end them. To read more stories from the series, search “solutions series” at lakehighlands.advocatemag.com.