It's Only an Ocean When There Isn't a Bridge

Or, How I Mythologized the Canter.

I'll be taking Saxony to my trainer in two weeks. We'll be there for four to six weeks. It's a first for me and I think it'll be a first for her too.

In my first horse life, after I graduated from wild summer-long bareback rides on a borrowed horse but found I hadn't left my love of horses behind, the options I saw were riding lessons or showing; I mean those were the milieus around me. People who wanted to learn to ride had riding instructors, and people who wanted to show had trainers. I would never show, didn't even have a horse, so I had a riding instructor. There was no middle ground; at least, I didn't know about any. I had some riding lessons and eventually I had a horse. She cost money, so I quit the lessons to pay her board. Several happy years passed during which I acquired two more horses. I became a better rider through miles and hours, but I didn't learn anything more about how to ride properly or well. Nothing, in fact.

When I came back to horses after 2o years off, I remembered the familiarity of them, the habitual nature of wanting them, the whole love of being able to touch them. I remembered all those things and it made it so easy to come back. What I overlooked was that I had never learned how to ride from beginning to end, through all three gaits, not to mention any of the other myriad nuances.

I returned to horses in the unexpected company of a fast, sturdy, opinionated mare who I eventually learned to be frightened of. I felt that I did not know how to ride her the way, perhaps, that she should be ridden. I didn't know what way that was, exactly, just that whatever it was, I didn't know it.  So I took riding lessons, the option I remembered from all those years ago. I hired someone to instruct me and "train" my mare. Fits and starts, fits and starts. There was never unity, never a unified course. I never "finished" those riding lessons and she never "finished" her training. (Understanding neither of those endeavors is ever finished, but I mean the basics roughed in.)

That's history and now is now. Before my lesson with B began today, I mentioned cantering. I was thinking that Saxony would be arriving at the barn in two weeks and those things felt connected, to me. "I'm not going to say never," B said to me, "but not until your sitting trot is there. You can't canter without it." I felt chastened and elated at the same time. Chastened like an eight-year-old, Oh, I'm not that good? Elated like an adult suddenly understanding something key, Oh, I can't canter without it? I get it. B went on to say that the canter is simpler to sit once a rider has command of the sitting trot.

It feels lame to write this, because I've had so much experience with horses, done real time with them in my own relative way. But no, I didn't continue with my lessons back then, so I never made it to the sitting trot. All these years intervening and then to come back seated on a high-spirited, spooky mare and find myself wondering what comes between the trot and the canter? Hmm. I just couldn't get Scout into a canter without both of us wigging out. There was a void there, so I filled it with fear, simple as that, and began to broadcast it, too. The canter became huge in my mind, mythic.

It didn't help at all that I had a riding instructor that used to call it "the C word." Literally. She'd say something like, "Just another couple of lessons and we'll start work on 'the C word'." Oceanlike, my fear of the canter grew, spreading as a sea of impossibility in front of me. It also became, in the negative space around it, the zenith, the height of my ambition: Cannot be a rider without it.

My thighs are just burning as I write this, sore from so much rising trot, sitting trot, rising trot, sitting. I get it. Someone has told me. I am being taught the sitting trot. It is hard, hard work, and I would go back there in an hour if I could.

The Strange Integrity of Fear

Lesson Notes

(When it lives in the body and not in the mind.)

I had my eighth lesson the other day. Unlike before, the arena was frenetic with activity on Friday. Air compressors hissed at the near end of the arena, interrupted by the abrupt thunk of pneumatic nail guns. Some carpenters were building a set of bleachers, pushing against a deadline. Two riders were practicing a Pas de deux on their horses, intertwining in the middle space of the arena, while the owner of the barn trained a horse at the far end.

These lessons are expensive, so I approach them with an almost military mindset, a stance of silent dedication and resolve that's unusual in the history of me and horses. Still, I felt I was leading the schoolmaster into bedlam when I brought her into the ring.

We begin each lesson with longe line work in full tack, a few minutes in each direction to warm the mare up, and then a short bit of in-hand work to stretch and bend her. The coordinating of several pieces of equipment in my hands has been awkward for me, but each time I get a little better, a little more fluid, a little neater in managing side reins, whips and lines. Usually the schoolmaster will relax and blow out during that work, but not this day. She was tense, and blamelessly so, I thought.

The space left to us in the arena felt pinched and tight on the ground, but it was worse when I was in the saddle. Most of the time we were working on a 10-meter circle. It felt a little daunting to me, riding a strong working trot on a circle no more than 35 feet in diameter.

The brilliant schoolmaster was off somewhere in her body on Friday, and she displayed her displeasure by kicking out one hind leg or the other as we circled our instructor on the line. The thought I had, after several of these moves, is that a year or two ago just one of them would have been cause enough for me to dismount. My head would have dictated that course of action before I even had a chance to wonder.

The schoolmaster became increasingly tense, her ears pinning flat when other riders passed near. She crow hopped once, and then again. Sometimes she tipped me forward, sometimes not. I felt as though a two-by-four were lodged beneath the saddle, right under my left seat bone. My body felt her tension and stiffness. My body felt it, felt the lack of balance and flow between us. I know I have never felt that, and understood it, not in that way, before that instant. My body recognized it and then adjusted to help her. It just did. I moved to help her find my flow since she had lost hers. That's the only way I can think to say it. Where on earth did that confidence come from?

She blew out and snorted, releasing through her topline and settling into the easy, swingy trot that I have come to expect from her. In part, I did that for her. Maybe I did most of it. 

What I think I've realized now is that some of my anxiety has come from riding with a disconnected, uneducated body, that not all of my fears reside in my mind. The body can't lie. A natural thing, it has an integrity built into its functioning. Because I didn't know in my body how to really sit on a horse, I felt ill at ease sitting on a horse. My mind picked up on that doubt and spun it into fear. On Friday, exactly the opposite thing happened. Because my body knew what to do, my mind wasn't even consulted for a second opinion.

These lessons are fantastic, they are giving me the rider inside, and I will grub for every nickel to keep on taking them.

Sensing Ahead

Spring has been previewing around here for the last week or so, prompting me to wonder ahead.

My horses: the work, the rides. The rides. With my wondering comes, always, no matter how slight, the twitch of recognition of my fears, doubts and anxieties. The sense of it ripples through me, familiar as a muscle, makes me stretch my neck, wring out my shoulders. No matter the prospects, it lives. I'm used to it.

In Saxony, I have such possibility. In Scout, I have such history. I'm looking forward to being with both of them now, feeling like I'm ready to move into all of it, in part because of this really good post from Olly at her young new blog, It's Harder Than It Looks. I recognized so much of what she said; I'm used to so much of what she said. Somehow, realizing that has cast how I see my fears in a different light. They aren't as big as I imagine they are. I'm used to them and they have become old. It may be time to discard some of them. I think maybe I will.

Fever Bends the Mirror

Did I See It or Just Dream It?

Only once, a long time ago, did I ever get seriously sick. It lasted a week or so. I've never been hospitalized, but I probably should have been then. I didn't know what sickness I had, but I was  tempted to imagine it was some rare, exotic malady, Dengue fever or the like. It felt especially foreign and intriguing because it threw me into a sustained, fitful delirium, where I stayed for days. I remember thinking a lot during that illness, or thinking I was thinking, anyway. One thing I seemed to obsess over was that Hitler had been to the United States. Friends who came to visit me still remember my asking them When did Hitler come to the U.S.? That's what I asked: when, not if. I was convinced that he had been here and that I had missed the precise details in all my reading about the two world wars. I still recall the certainty of those feverish Hitler thoughts; it's as if the baking happening to my brain seared them into brands. (It did: When I was better, I still had to go check the Hitler business with H.G., who wasn't my lifetime mate yet, only someone I was selfishly flirting with.)

Here, now, I've been thinking of one particular incident with Scout during the past few days. The recollection weaves through sleep and wakefulness, pushes into the foreground, then recedes into the background. What is it about it that caused it to flower in the over-rich Petri dish that is me in a flu-state? I don't know.

Back in early 2008, I kept Scout at an expensive semi-private barn for a while. I put her there because my trainer's new horse was there and the indoor arena was huge. I was willing to scrape together the board in pursuit of the answer to the question about whether Scout and I would ever be able to partner. This barn wasn't elitist or smug, but there were a few expensive horses there, no matter that some of them seemed rarely to be ridden or even visited by their owners. It all motivated me to ride through the winter months, and I was in a regular lesson schedule with my trainer, as was Scout, who even played a role as a walk-trot school horse once a week.

I have to define "lesson" in this context. E always worked with me on my riding, but she also worked with me on how to ride Scout, in particular, and additionally worked with me on how to train Scout as I rode her. A three-layer sandwich slathered in patience. A four-layer sandwich, actually. E had to manage my fear, as well.

During a lesson one cold morning in March, Scout began to crow hop as we rode on a 20-ish meter ovally circle to the left. All the other horses were outside and she was ticked off. The crow hopping terrified me. I could hear E calling instructions, but her voice was drowned out by the rush of fear in my head. I quickly fell off. E was never judgmental about things like that. Calmly, efficiently, she checked on me, reminded me to breathe, and then went to fetch Scout.

I knew I would have to get back on, and I did. As I settled into the saddle and gathered the reins, E stood at Scout's head and repeated the instructions I had been unable to follow. She told me Scout would do the same thing, only this time I could be ready for it. Meanwhile, the tears were building up; my emotions had really seized. I could only nod. We walked on. We made it almost all the way through a wobbly, misshapen circle before Scout blew, and then she did. I was crying. Like a robot, mechanically, I followed E's instructions, and they worked. Scout crow hopped and I stayed on. I pushed her forward, I made her work. All of it worked. But none of it worked. I nodded, crying, while E pointed out everything I had done to bring Scout back to me. I got it, I understood, but I didn't care. My fear was just oozing out of me, it was what was defining the moment. And this was nothing like the fall that had led me to consider divorcing Scout in the first place.

That was Tuesday morning. Thursday night I went back to the barn. The fall had jarred me and I was sore. I did something I hadn't planned at all. I took Scout out of her stall, groomed her painstakingly as I like to, clipped my double-ended lead rope to her halter and led her to the arena. It was well lighted; it looked beautiful that night. From the mounting block, I slipped onto her bare, fuzzy back. There were people around, and a couple of them must have known about my fall. The barn owner did, I'm sure. She was a kind person. E finished brushing down her big mare, and then she and the barn owner stood leaning in the doorway. They weren't watching me, but they were being near, and I understood that. I lifted my knees and rested them against Scout's withers and then hunched low over her neck, stretching my sore back. Gently, she shifted underneath me, so soft, so easy. "I needed to sit on my pony," I said. I was really comfortable, familiar with me in my jeans, sweatshirt and scarf, wearing battery-powered hot socks, and familiar with Scout warm underneath me, comfortable to feel me, carry me, ready to dawdle on forever. Scout mindful that all the other horses were inside.

Remember Slam Books?

When I was in junior high school, there was the thing called a Slam Book. Someone would grab a blank notebook, tear out half the pages, and then write a question at the top of each of the remaining pages. The notebook would be passed around and anyone who got it had to write answers to the questions. Kind of like what goes on below.

First, the setup. I had my reasons for starting this blog, one of which appears here, but it was, and is, just a journal to me. The fear I felt of my mare, Scout, was deeply troubling to me, so I wrote about it. It's harder for me to buy into self-serving, evasive personal mythologies when I'm confronted by them in black and white the next morning.

The writer Henry Miller once said, (loosely paraphrased), If you write for an audience, you'll never write the truth. So I didn't, and I haven't. But it did occur to me that there were other horse owners out there who could be struggling with confidence. I thought maybe they could help me. They have.

Four different bloggers in the ether decided to give me an award. I'm not sure what to say about that, so I'll just assume Denali's Mom, On The Bit, Dock Start, and A Process of Learning have found something useful in my journal. If so, I think that's wonderful.

This little award (which I put on my sidebar) comes with caveats, however. I've already taken care of the first, which was to thank and link back to the person(s) who gave me the award. The second is to offer up seven things about myself:

1. Seven is actually my favorite number.
2. I will never be able reconcile myself to being called "Ma'am" for the rest of my life.
3. I value being an adult because no one can make me eat anything I don't want to. 
4. I knew even as a young girl that I never wanted children.
5. My idea of hell is to be trapped for all eternity in a public women's bathroom.
6. People think I'm strong and outgoing. I'm not. I just know that the best defense is a good offense.
7. I'm still missing my calling.

The third directive was to bestow the same award on 15 newly discovered bloggers. My list is shorter because some I would have passed it on to have already received it.

Two Horses - After reading one post just last week, I went back to the beginning and read all of this well-written and insightful blog. Don't be too jealous of her life, it's hard work.

Sofie Learns Dressage - I've enjoyed following this young writer's journey as she attempts to persuade her cranky $750 former trail horse that she too can learn to love dressage.

My Life With Rescued Horses - Jay's strong love of horses and his belief that all of them have something to offer are enchanting.

Confessions of A Struggling Dressage Rider - She's candid, often funny, and always helpful. I love the role unvarnished truth plays in how she describes her rides. She offered the best advice for achieving a workable sitting trot I've ever heard. I tried it, and she was right. It worked.

Solitaire Mare - The blog is really called A Good Horse, but this is how I think of her. I like her bluntness as she writes her way through some really rough turns and searches for the new horse she will surely find.

Hoofbeats for Heartbeats - This blog used to be called K is For Kiki. I've found much to compare in her story of working with one of those "chestnut mare" types and I admire her for her guts.

Equine Insanity - A recent discovery, I find this a rich blog to mine, really well written. She takes the time to capture her thoughts in depth. I'm willing to read a three-page post, no problem.

I recommend all of these blogs for anyone committed to deepening their relationship with horses -- and with people, for that matter. The fears I face with my horses must always live in me, musn't they? It's just that horses expose and touch them quicker than humans ever can.

Mortise & Tenon - Learning Saxony No. 1

A long-awaited day of firsts, anticipated and not. I prepared for it by riding Saxony yesterday at dusk, 40 minutes of transitions, bends and on the buckle in the simple, square outdoor arena at the stable where we board. It was an uplifting ride because it showed me that I could be ready to begin with her today. I have a childish tendency to enshrine big moments, so no matter that I began with Saxony even before I bought her, I marked today as the time we'd really start our journey together.

I had her groomed and tacked at 10:30. K rode over to meet us. We would ride together off the property, deep into a nearby trail system. Not that nearby. There would be some road riding first. I wanted to do this ride, wanted to be bold, but only because I could depend on K to help us.

Saxony: absolutely unafraid of traffic, unfazed by roads.

Me: worried by roads, absolutely frightened of traffic. (I grew up at a time when cars slowed to an utter crawl if coming upon riders; now it seems drivers don't fathom that horses are animals, not ATVs.)

I could feel the tension enclosing me as we rode away from the barn. I ran through my tricks. Look up at the sky, settle deep in the saddle, lengthen my body. Stretch. Breathe. But it was hard not to be fixated on what lay ahead. Saxony suddenly began calling in her girlish, seemingly undeveloped voice. 

Me: knowing exactly where we were, comfortable that there would be a beginning, middle and end to this ride.

Saxony: not knowing where we were going, worried she might not see home again.

This bridge became a fulcrum for the ride. We couldn't go on without going over. I was afraid of it. There's no place to escape the traffic. Saxony stopped. I knew her previous owner dismounted and then led her across, remounting from the guardrail on the other side, a choice I completely respect. I know I could have turned that into an out for myself, but I really didn't want to give up on us like that. I have a horse now that I can ride. She doesn't know anything about my fear. She isn't my fear.

Saxony: Maybe I would respond to the aids and move forward, if you ask. 
Me: Maybe, if I trust myself enough, I can apply the aids and ask you to move forward. 

And we did. We crossed that bridge.

I learned other things today, during four hours of riding, but maybe nothing more important than that the two of us are interlocked in good ways. What's she worried by doesn't bother me; what I'm worried by doesn't bother her. One day maybe we will be solid as an old oak chest, held together by mortise and tenon jointwork, built by hand over time, with care, patience and love.