The Knot of the Year

I didn't say much in my journal about the difficulties of this year with the horses; not in particular details, at any rate. When I did mention barn moves and poor standards of care, I always added that the horses got through it, I got through it, my friends got through it, etc. People told me we'd get through it, and they were right. It's true: everybody got through it.

There are hidden side effects of squeezing through a bad pass, though, and I think I'm being impacted by one of them now. The difference between rushing to my horse because she's my refuge and rushing to my horse because I am worried about her is vast. That change of focus can be subtle, but it ends up being very consequential. I lost track of its silent encroachment into my consciousness somewhere near the end of the events, as we worked our way home to a good, steady, reliable barn. It wasn't until after we had settled and some other chapters were concluded that it all came to bear and I realized how disconnected I feel from my mare right now.

Such good things happened, too, this year, but there's that raw-deal thing about how fleeting is their power. Somehow it's not easy to hang onto the lift of them and let oneself be carried for a while. Instead, I have to list them from memory. Scout and Special K came together. I released Scout to K with full openness, acceptance and peace. Dar's been gone for over a year and I have no way of tracking him, so he's subsided to just an occasional daydream. Late in the summer I found an instructor I understand and respond to with sublime, practical ease. All these things help resolve and reshape my horse life for the better, I know they do.

...and I realized how disconnected I feel from my mare right now. But I don't know that it's her. I think it could be horses in general. And I'm struggling with it, very much so.

Here's how it went. Everything with the horses settled and then I moved home, but my job asked much more of me much later into the post-season than it ever had. I could not wait until the holiday break; I felt myself leaning hard against the gate, wanting so badly to burst into my own free space. An immense sense of pressure was building that left me on edge and preoccupied.

Now I am in that time I was awaiting with such need. Alone at home, holidays done, typing on a grey afternoon, cats asleep, the phone silent, I expected finally to exhale into calm, but that's not what's happened. Instead, I realize that I'm filled with aftereffects of the year and they are spilling out with a vengeance. I feel distant from my horse, as though something has changed. It's like a taint, a lingering pall cast over us by trouble, even though it's past. She's got nothing to do with it, and I know that, but I'm stuck here in this thing, stuck in a knot I don't think I tied. Or, I feel like I'm looking down at a bruise that just won't fade when I should be looking up at my horse. Why?

I don't know what else to say about it right now.

Finding Home, Concluded

Part I, Part II

I could have hope for Scout's future, perhaps, but not expectation. You can't have expectation when it comes to horses themselves. They are separate beings, living their own lives. As much as they must adapt to us, who possess them, so must we adapt to them. I'd adapted to not riding Scout and she'd adapted to not being ridden. There was a balance, but not a very useful one, with waste on both sides.

I get so busy in the summers, five months are wiped right out of my year. I told Special K she could ride Scout anytime she wanted and left it at that. It's not that I was indifferent, it's that my future with Scout only meant keeping her with me so she'd have the good, safe life she deserved. I remember how I'd get an email here and there from Special K in which she detailed some ride she'd had with Scout. She rode her out alone, in groups, for hours on trails. One day she told me she'd been putting all those miles on Scout just for me, so I'd feel less intimidated about riding her. Such a good, good friend. I shook my head no. Scout wasn't that for me, was never going to be that. There was a diamond in the rough in her, but I wasn't going to be the one to find it.

 

In July of 2010, I returned Dar to the jousters, and in September Saxony fell out of the sky and I bought her. I remember having a window of time there where I had just one horse. I thought hard about keeping it that way. But... I had Scout, yet I didn't have her. I needed a horse I could have in all three dimensions, one I could manage and grow with. That fall, our vet let Special K knew that her aging Arab needed to move to semi-retirement. No more four-hour rides for little Gambler. After her shock wore off, Special K proposed taking a half-lease on Scout. Of course I said yes, and together they rode out into the coming winter.

Then we went through a horrible year. The climate at our little-bit-of-paradise barn changed and the standard of care dropped rapidly. In May we moved our horses to another place, just before I was grabbed away by the festival. I  brought Saxony over from her barn to make us complete. The way I saw it, even if the summer claimed all my time, our horses would finally be together in one place, we'd have left barn drama behind, and we could start clean in the fall. It was not to be. The new place was a joke. Special K had to go there every day to care for our horses.

 

I worked and worried, but for Special K it was different. Her Arab had reached retirement; he was fit for light riding only. She was at the barn every day and I was gone, so she turned herself loose on Scout as though she were her own. I'd get these dispatches about where they'd trailered, which shooting range they'd ridden by, what group ride Scout had aced. Sometimes I'd get a quick call right in the middle of a show day at the festival. Amidst the churning crowds, I'd press the phone tight to my ear to Special K. Breathless, she'd squeal, "Scout is the bomb! She was perfect." Then, in a hushed tone, she'd say,"She's a trail goddess." The joy in her voice made my heart lift, just had to. It was like the C.W. Anderson novels I read as a kid, that simple, that magical.

We left the second place in August and moved everybody to the steady, reliable barn where I'd bought Saxony. What a hard, stressful summer it had been. But I remember following behind on Saxony, watching Special K handling Scout on a loose rein during our ride to the new barn, and feeling the first sense of calm I'd experienced in months. The ease, the rapport, the familiarity of each with the other, their confident sense of purpose. They were lovely together.

I don't know the precise moment when it happened. It might have been the moment when Scout bucked her off and made her so mad, or it might have been the moment when Special K realized she had the one horse on a long group ride who wasn't going to wig out. It doesn't matter for me to know; it really is between them. What matters is that at some point, Special K fell in love with Scout. And then she fought it, thinking there might be one last chance left in me for Scout. And then she quit fighting it. When she called me, asking could she buy her, I said yes, yes of course, because all I'd wanted was for Scout to find her true home. Now she has. They both have. How lucky am I?

Merry Christmas, with all my heart, to my two favorite redheads.

Finding Home, Continued

The thing is, when I put Scout up for sale, I was already drunk on another horse, a cranky youngster who the jousters couldn't bring around, wouldn't bring around. It was Dar, a six-year-old Percheron Morab cross, of all things. He was slow, lumpen; he seemed so much less complicated than Scout, though just as remote as she had been in the joust herd. I took him with me on trial, confident that I'd re-home Scout and have a horse more suited to my own re-education.

Circumstances derailed that, and, while Scout tolled her days of stall confinement, it really began to weigh on me that I now owned two horses, one I'd sort of already given up and the other one I'd yet to fully embrace. I wrote about it in a heart-heavy funk that winter of 2009/2010 and spent countless moments feeling pretty sure I'd been a fool through most of my return to the world of horses. It was a dilemma I spoke often of with friends, including Special K.

That mysterious thing of having a great friend who's right there, nearby, but never quite in the spotlight. That's what we were to each other before we ever knew it. Unlike me, she never really left horses, but like me, she had fears. Where I loved riding in an indoor arena, she was phobic about it. Instead, she was in full, thrilling bloom out on the trails, where I was anxious and clamped down. I remember one day, when Scout was throwing a screamy alpha tantrum about being separated from her herd, Special K exclaiming to me, "You ride her?"

Sometimes, and Kind of, is what I said to her. By the time we began to grow close as friends, I was already in my own conversation about letting Scout go. I was embarrassed about it, too, because I saw Special K as fearless when I rode out with her. Her way of laughing off her little Arab's rare spooks and startles left me awestruck. She would never part with a horse because of something like nerves, is how I imagined it. No need for embarrassment, though. Special K never minded dealing with me announcing my fears whenever they erupted in me. She'd just calmly lead us onward or homeward.

Of course, she's the kind of person who will ride any horse. Any horse. She's just that curious about them, that passionate about riding. It had to be inevitable that eventually she'd want to try Scout, have to try her, just to see what she was like. One warm, springtime day in 2010, we brought up the subject with each other in a spontaneous burble of coincidental thought. Dar was in training while Scout lay fallow, recovered and happy to be left grazing the days away. A voice somewhere deep in me whispered hope.

Finding Home

Having left my summer home, I haven't yet found my way into my winter home. I've moved back, yes, and everyone else has settled, but it's as if I'm on the outside looking in. I don't know where my head is, but it's neither here nor there. I have nothing sensible to say about me or my life right now, but I do have a story it's time to tell. 

This story is about Scout, the little red mare who gave rise to my journal. It's called Finding Home.

Part I

This is what she was the day I got her, a seven-year-old scrub mare with a name so unlike her, I won't even say it. Sound, strong, unattended, she was an island unto herself. Pretty, curious and unkempt. A jouster who'd quit her job. She drew me in, brought me back to horses after 25 years away. I had all of her to love.

I cleaned her up and built her up. Lots of hands on, hours and hours. It was easy for me, not so easy for her. She was used to indifference. It took her a while to develop a taste for attention, but she did, she did. Along the way, she re-learned ground manners and played at trusting me. I was deeply invested in winning her affection. I didn't ride her very much, just dawdles here and there around the indoor.

A couple of years in, I began to see she was too much for me. A little too hot, a little too fast, with real rawness around the edges from erratic training and a rough-road career that I didn't have the experience or skill to handle. I could do some reshaping, and I did, but not where it was really important. She challenged my confidence and fired up my doubt and soon those things ran away with me. We needed help.

 

I went through one trainer before finding another who worked with us for a while. The trainer rode, then I rode, but I couldn't ever convince myself that Scout and I were the right team. My anxiety ramped her up, and we quickly found our way into a dance of mutual tension-building during most rides. I loved her more on the ground than I did on her back, felt more able there, more present and equal. Five years after I got her, I put her up for sale, doubtful but resigned.

I abruptly pulled my ads less than month later, when she was kicked at a barn I'd moved her to where she might be seen by prospective buyers. She underwent surgery to remove a shattered splint bone. Her fierce strength through the operation and subsequent nine weeks of stall confinement made me know I could never leave her in the hands of someone else. I was lovestuck.

Liner Notes Inside (Me)

I have been away from lessons for two weeks for moving back to the city and it will be a few more weeks before I resume them, but they have left an expected echo that could sustain me until I can get back.

Lesson Notes

After my sixth lesson, I realized I hadn't ridden Saxony since beginning the lessons. To be fair, she'd been recovering from an ulcer in her left eye, but that had healed by mid-October. It occurred to me that I was putting off taking her out because I felt so changed as a rider. What an odd thought, coming unbidden into my mind just when I felt exhilarated to be standing at a new verge as a rider.

Typical disarmament, I thought to myself. The old check-rein of nerves insinuating its way into a galvanized me. I thought, You can't ride her like you ride that schoolmaster. There, the conditions are artificial and rigged for success, aren't they? Don't test it by riding in the real world.

But the Saturday after Lesson 6 was beautiful and I just had to know, so I went to the barn. The first thing I did when I tacked Saxony was remove the knee blocks from my dressage saddle. The saddle I've been using during the lessons rides like a close-contact saddle and I love how my leg and seat respond to it. Liner note: Where practical, minimize the middleman between horse and rider as much as possible.

At the mounting block, she stood motionless. I've worked on training her not to walk off, but it hasn't quite reached Golden Rule status in her mind. But she stood like a statue there because that's what the schoolmaster does, so I wasn't expecting anything else. Liner note: Where possible, believe in and expect the desired outcome.

After walking a few strides, I dismounted and lowered my stirrups two holes. Oh, they'd felt awkwardly short to my newly-lengthened leg. Statue-like again, Saxony waited for me to remount. We walked the fence line of the ring. The stirrups were still too short. I had to question whether it mattered that much, but I dismounted and lowered them another hole. That's when I knew my laziness wouldn't trump my desire to learn, to better myself in my relationship with my mare. Liner note: Best to go to school when you're ready and willing to let yourself learn.

Riding her offered a kind of multi-tiered revelation. My long leg let me feel her in ways I hadn't so far - hadn't felt her or any other horse, for that matter. I felt how unbalanced she is, how right-handed she goes, her bracing when moving to the left. I put her on a straight line right through the middle of the ring and she rippled her way across, warping each stride just a hair under me. I was aware of that happening. I felt my mare and she felt me. This is what my lessons have given me.  Liner note: Lots of good forward walking will do wonders for both of us.

Archaeologist in the Interval

I'm one of the people who returned to horses after a long time away. It wasn't even a One day I'll have my life in hand, be steady and settled, and then I'll get another horse kind of thing. Life just carried me off and, one by one, the four horses I owned in my twenties fell away. Then, I always missed them. I missed it, that indescribable thing of having a horse in my life, right there in my life. It was an absence I experienced as an ache, a mostly silent but real longing that would pull me into myself. Sometimes I forgot the cause; often I didn't even think of the cause. I could call it melancholy, call it phases of life. And those things could be true, but I missed horses.

You know, you turn quickly at the sound of hoof beats, glance and then glance again at riders on the road, hunch toward the screen whenever horses move through the frame. That kind of absence. They were something my being recognized, auto-alerted to, before my mind got involved. Like a kind of training just in case, keeping me adding a teaspoon of fuel to the tank, storing up a bit in anticipation of that one-day drive. There were horses at the festival and familiar pastured horses I could look for during my daily commute. Like many who've put horses aside but can't forget the life, I even watched the few annual televised horse races, until the death of Eight Belles ended that for me.

No more Derbys for me after her.

Somewhere in the past year, though, I've come to realize that I never really did put horses away during that long interval. Not really. I collected things emblematic of them all the while. A framed print, an old lithograph, a statue, a notebook horse-themed in broken Korean English. Once I bought a brand-new double bridle for who knows why, and later a fine leather halter and lead. I had a ridiculous, trendy pair of haute couture "jodphurs" from Gianni Versace that I never had the nerve to wear, but that's not why I bought them in the first place. An ashtray, a horseshoe, a worn riding crop; artifacts piled up, findings, evidence of the thing that I missed. It's like I was an archaeologist, discovering horses over and over again through the years.

Some of my indeliberate excavations unearthed items that speak, I think, to and of the evolution of the horse/human interaction, a subject of enduring fascination to me and one I will revisit in this journal.

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.