After poking fun at an innocent hiker in $500 worth of fancy REI duds with a little help from reader Kelley who envisions him in $200 sunglasses and requiring emergency assistance from the local sheriff's posse (and their mountain horses!), I just realized that my groovy new winter hat that came in the mail last week is from ... REI ...

But. Never mind that.

Somewhere in the hazy recesses of my mind, I recall a girl who never would have been caught dead in a hat with earflaps. (You may recall my other stylish winter hat from the Barn Babe Contest.) I recall a young woman skiing down a mountain in Taos with her dark hair flying, ears naked. Never mind a little thing like frostbite. She was cool.

When I wore this out to the barn for the first time, I knew my percheron horse Toby was going to like this hat. After all, it has an interesting tassle on top, perfect for snatching. (For the record, I will not be teaching any more draft horses to steal hats on command. Toby takes the hat and then begins walking away from me or a little kid. The giving it back part we still don't have down. He is enough of a character to find this immensely funny.) But instead of snatching my new sherpa hat by the tassles and winging it around over my head as I expected him to do, he snuffled it. Closed his big snuffleupagus eyes and huffed and puffed into it. Breathed it in like a fine wine. The big horse followed me around the pasture like he was in love with that hat.

There's no accounting for taste apparently.

I remember a neighbor calling me once because she was concerned her horse was colicking. I threw on my winter barn duds and ran down the arroyo to her ranch. As I had my ear pressed to her gelding's side, listening for signs of life in his gastrointestinal system, my friend and I caught each other's eye, and we just started laughing. It's as if we were reading each other's mind.

We both had on hats with earflaps.

Yeah. She used to ski at Taos too. Blonde hair flying.