Chicago Tribune from Chicago, Illinois • 67

Ch'icago TribuneWednesday, July 20. 1977 Section 5 3 Horseback riding Getting back on the path to fitness V-" .1 t'''" lU Till'" V. IS f-Vl- --''7 tendons so you can obey the first commandment of riding keep your heels down. Yoga is good for a general awareness of your body, especially if you haven't done anything strenuous for a while. You learn how far you can reach, and where the muscles are in your body.

A fun summer exercise that is good for balance is tunning barefoot in the sand. ON A HORSE: While the horse is walking, take your feet out of the stirrups and make 360-degree circles, pointing your toes. This loosens your ankles. While the horse is walking, reach down and touch your right hand to your left toe, and vice versa. This helps improve your balance.

With someone leading your horse, let your feet hang loosely at the sides. Lay back on the back of the horse. This arches your back, gives you a sense of the movement of the horse, and improves your balance. Walking your horse, put your reins in one hand. Put your other hand on your head, behind your back, and out to the side.

Reach up and touch the ears of the horse. All the time you are doing this, keep your feet in a heels-down position in the stirrups. While the horse is trotting, stand up in your stirrups. This is the best exercise to use to get your heels down. When you are more sure of yourself, take your feet out of the stirrups as your horse trots.

This is the best exercise for tightening all of your muscles, and for helping to develop a good Ride as many different horses as you can. Each horse has a different personality, a different mouth, (hard, soft, or average an indication of how sensitive he is to your handling of the reins), a different gait, and build. You'll learn how to respond to many situations this way. By Diana Milesko-Pyte! "AFTER THEIR THIRD year ia high school, when they're, no longer required to take gym, most people never do anything again that really tones their bodies," says instructor Jan Garrett. "They want to lose weight? They eat diet candy.

They lose their self-discipline, forget how to relax. Riding helps with those kinds of problems." One woman can testify to the difference riding can make. "It's taken inches off my calves and she says. "I measured them before I started, and again a few months later." Horseback riding is not a sport where the horse does all the work. When you first begin to ride, you may think, "I didn't know I had so many places to ache in." The aching can be reduced by riding two or three times a week and by exercising daily.

WHY SHOULD yon get In shape for riding? You can work as. much or as little as you want on a borse. You can sit on the animal and be taken around, or you can use riding as a self-competitive sport. If you really work on a horse, you use every muscle in your body. When those muscles are flabby from disuse, yon can't ride well.

Yon want to develop what is called a 'good seat' in riding. This is a soreness that you won't fall, out of the saddle. It comes when your balance and muscle tone is good. After you develop a good seat, you can concentrate on other aspects of riding. Here are exercises yon can do at borne and on the horse to improve your sense of balance, to limber up, and to tone your muscles.

AT HOME: "Jumping rope hs the best exercise for riding," Garrett says. It's good for balance and strengthens your legs and arms, as well as your heart and lungs." Start with 1 or 2 Trigone Photo by Et Guslit The backpacking boom has prompted publication of field guides on a variety of subjects. A guide to field guides Horseback riding is- a good form of exercise for staying in shape. mmutes a day, and work up to 10 or 15 minutes. Stand barefoot on the bottom step of a stairway with the balls of your feet on the edge, your heels hanging over to the next step (but not touching it).

Sink your heels as low as you can, and bounce. You will feel the muscles stretching in your calf and up your thigh. This exercise umbers the leg pages. Golden also publishes "nature guides" on 21 subjects, including insects, weather, rocks, and minerals. These books are smaller in format, shorter, and less detailed than the field guides.

They cost between $1.25 and $1.95. The late May Theilgaard Watts, a naturalist at Morton Arboretum in Lisle, also wrote a series of pocket-size field guides. Plant species are limited to those common in the Midwest. Titles in this series include "Master Tree Finder," "Flower Finder." and "Winter Tree Finder." You can buy them at the arboretum for 75 cents each of order them from Nature Study Guild Publishers, P.O. Box 972, Berkeley, Cal.

If your curiosity still sfiRisnt sated, here are a few regional gems to add to your collection: "Newcomb's Wfldffower Guide," published last spring by Little, Brown Co. Author Lawrence By Glenda Daniel FIELD GUIDES ARE pocket-sized leys to the wonders of nature from trees, flowers, and birds, to rocks and minerals. They used to be found mainly in summer cottages, where they probably were most appreciated by the mice who wintered there. But the boom in backpacking has produced new buyers and the. little books have, become as de tigueuc as goose down vests.

I'd rather leave my Swiss Army knife behind on a backpacking trip than my library of field guides. They give me eyes to see basswoods and white pines instead of trees, and they help me hear the call of the wood thrush in the chattering forest. Here is a guide to a few of the guides yon may find in bookstores. The Peterson Field Guide Series Is probably the best' known. There.

are 19 books in the series, describing plants, animals, animal tracks, rocks and minerals, even stars and planets. The books are sponsored by the National Society and National Wildlife Federation under the direction of noted bird artist Roger Tory Peterson. The publisher is Houghton Mifflin Co. Peterson wrote "A Field Guide to Birds," which started the series. He invented and copyrighted a system of field identification that selects a small i 1 .1 I 1 Newcomb uses 1,284 line drawings (183 in color) to describe common wildflowers in northeastern and north central North America.

The identification-key has been simplified for use by untrained, observers. Every time you see an unknown specimen, you ask the same five questions about the type of plant and the structure of petals and leaves. $6.95. and Weeds of the Great Lakes Region," by Booth Courtenay and James H. Zimmerman.

Published by Van Nostrand Reinhold New York and available at Morton Arboretum. Small color pictures accompany descriptions of each plant. The $11.50 cost reflects the great number of color plates. "Forest Trees of Illinois," by Robert Hi Mohlen-brock, is available from the Department of Conservation, Division of Forestry, Springfield, HI. or at Morton Arboretum.

Photographs of tree trunks, line drawings of leaves, buds, and twigs, and state range maps accompany brief descriptions of the most common area trees cost $1. "Forest Trees of Wisconsin," by F. G. Wilson, fe available free from the Department of Natural Resources, Madison, Wis. Line drawings of leaves, buds, and fruits accompany brief descriptions of the state's most common trees.

"Michigan Wildflowers," by Helen V. Smith, fs published by Cranbrook Institute of Science, Bloomfield Hills, Mich. A good current selection of common local wildflowers, including 231 black and white illustrations, 17 color plates, and numerous drawings. Cost is $6. HUmoer OI UlSlincuve uaiis uiai itiwuiy acymmco one species from another.

The drawings teach novices how to look at a bird and get a precise catalog of characteristics rather than a general impression. The "Field Guide to Wildflowers' simplifies flower instruction' for beginners by arranging them by color, form, and detail rather than in taxonomic order. "White flowers growing in umbrellalike clusters with toothed leaflets," for instance, are grouped on, the same page without regard to the botanical family or genus to which they belong. Most of the books come in hard and soft covers and cost $3.95 to $5.95. GOLDEN PRESS OF New York publishes three field guides (birds, trees, and seashells) that are comparable in quality and price to their equivalents in the Peterson series.

The advantages to the Golden series include range maps, and words and pictures for each species arranged on facing mm Pommd Th 111 r1- tm. Hi If iwufy 1 I qame room A bridge too jar your chance to repeat history 1 1 Just press one button-that's it! The motor hands you the picture. You don't focus or set anything. opposing military forces are a hundred different counters, each marked with movement and fighting capabilities. THE INITIATIVE belongs to the Allied player who begins the game by dropping airborne troops near three designated zones.

On succeeding turns, both sides bring reinforcements onto the board to support units already there and to replace those lost in Combat. Terrain, of course, plnys an important role in what follows. It can significantly affect the results of battle and determine the speed of the Allied forces. To slow down the enemy, the German player may try to demolish rail and canal bridges, forcing the Allied player to make repairs. An optional weather rule adds realism to the game and makes the Allied effort 'more difficult.

Victory is decided on a point basis with points awarded for eliminating opposing units and achieving various other objectives. A complete game can be played in two to three hours, although you'll need an extra hour or two for mastering rules and set-up the first time around. FOR THE more ambitious and those with a fondness for historical accuracy, SPI has produced another version of Operation Market-Garden. "Highway to the Reich" ($20) employs a playing surface that's 3 feet wide and 10 feet long and has more than a thousand movement counters. Built into the game are several sophisticated refinements designed to increase realism.

For example, as a unit incurs battle casualties, its morale and therefore its combat effectiveness decreases. 1 Here you can choose from seven different scenarios, and you'll have to pay careful attention to the logistics of ammunition, supply, and transport resources. Hidden movement and multiplayer variations are yours to explore, as is the chance to modify Montgomery's plan or devise a new one. Put it all together and you'll be into a 200-turn game that will require several hours to finish. But you'll be rewarded with an understanding of the largest airborne operation in military history that no movie can ever provide.

You'll have experienced it from the inside. By Roger Verhulst NOW THAT YOU'VE seen the mofe and possibly have read the book, it's time to play the game. "A Bridge Too Far' (Simulations Publications, $5) offers a chance to learn firsthand what went wrong with Operation Market-Garden, the September, 1944, Allied offensive in the Netherlands that resulted in 17.000 casualties and gained little ground for the participating English, American, and Polish forces. Any credit for the plan that may be due belongs to British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, who thought he saw a chance to end the war before Christmas. His idea was to air-drop 35,000 men behind German lines.

Their job was to capture and hold a series of bridges across half a dozen Dutch rivers and canals. Doing so, he argued, would clear a direct route to Germany, allowing Allied forces to motor quickly and decisively into enemy territory. There's no question that Monty's scheme was flamboyantly bold. It was as. English as the Charge of Light Brigade, as magnificently courageous as Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg.

And just about as effective. MONTGOMERY is reported to have said afterward that Operation Market-Garden was 90 per cent successful. And that's true in about the same sense that the Bears might be described as 90 per cent successful when their touchdown drive is stopped on the 10-yard line. The Allies bit off a little more than they were able to chew. They captured most of the bridges they needed, but not quite all.

As Cornelius Ryan summed it up in the title of his book, they tried to take one bridge too far. That last bridge marked the difference between victory and defeat. The Allies had cleared 50 miles of roadway, but they were stopped short of the German border. What went wrong? That's what -the movie is about; and the book; and the game. As military simulation games go.

"A Bridge Too "Far" is relatively easy. The playing area is a 17-by-22-inch hex-gridded terrain map showing towns and cities, roads and trails, rivers and canals, and the crucial bridges. Representing the the battery's built into the film pack. Only 14V2 ounces. Fits in the palm of your hand.

Sling the strap around your neck and take it Long shots, shots as close in as out feet, flash just press the' buttc and that's it! The simplest camera you ever used. Press the button, and the picture's in your hand! You never focus, never set exposures. Just pick it up and shoot Motor drive.The pictures eject automatically, the film advances automatically. You can shoot every 2 seconds! Nothing to pull or peel, nothing to crank or wind. Beautiful SX-70 pictures develop in minutes while you watch -and Polaroid's sharpclear SX-70 color lasts.

There's fresh power every time you load, too, because T-T.