Found an unmarked trail about a mile from my house and decided to see where it went. After a couple hundred yards of rocky single track through a moderately wooded area, it opened up to a power line access trail.
It rained all night and into this morning, so the ground was very soft and muddy. I should probably have aired the tires down a bit, the bike was very squirrely in this stuff at street PSI despite the brand new tires. I managed to not dump it though, traversing about 3 miles of this mucky path.
One thing they don’t tell you about this kind of riding, it is physically exhausting. my arms, shoulders and hands ache just from a half hour of riding. And it was quite terrifying because I’m not used to the feeling of the bike slipping and sliding under me. If that happens on pavement, bad stuff is about to happen. But on slippery mud, it’s evidently status quo. I have to learn to not fight the bars as much and let the front tire find its own path a bit more.