Horse Butte is a small red cinder cone a mile from my house. There is a trailhead there, otherwise, it would just be another one of dozens (hundreds?) of buttes that pop up from the ground for miles to the south and east of the Cascade Mountains in Central Oregon.
I rarely run with anyone other than my dog, Mack. When I am getting dressed to run he doesn’t wait by the door. He sticks with me as I brush my teeth, pull on a jacket, get a drink of water, up the stairs and back down, until he is out the door, assured of going with me.
With strokes of luck and intuition, RK and I ended up in the perfect place. We can observe the Milky Way in the night sky with owls and coyotes as the soundtrack. The forest is just down the street,
