Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Ode to Summer my only favorite arabian mare

  I saddled up yesterday and took an old white arabian mare for a beautiful ride up the mountain with my father and mother in law to enjoy the view and the stillness and the world from where I stood at the moment.
   I could not help but be reminded of my very, very first western ride more than ten years ago up a trail in Utah. Now I had spent years and years at an english equestrian barn learning all about how to take care of hunter jumper horses and the time spent grooming, exercising, wrapping, cold hosing, to finally get to ride yet here I was throwing an old white arabian mare tacked up in an old dusty saddle into the big stock trailer with my father in law's horse and off we drive up to a sandy dirt road to unload the horses and ride up the mountain. Now to many this would seem normal but to me it was anything but. I was used to riding in a flat riding ring where a 10 percent grade meant that someone needed to bring out the tractor and drag the ring. Yet here we were heading up this sand bank on switch backs that were about 170 degrees, I remember well my father in laws only warning, if the horse is going down jump off to the UP hill side. I was pretty sure this was going to happen to me as we marched up and up and my old mare started puffing like a dragon and her sides were heaving in and out so there was more motion there than forward, she was dripping in sweat and foaming and I was sure, sure, sure that if I let her stop for one second she would either never start again or die right on the spot and I would have to jump off UP hill. Looking down off of basicly a cliff on which one is riding, feeling like you are on stilts that could at any moment colapse is not a beautiful and calming sight, yet for some reason my father in law kept showing me the view and pointing out places somewhere down somewhere in some canyon that I was more than sure I would see face to face rolling down a blur of white and leather and me. Of course we made it to the top I was genuinly surprised my horse made it there I was sure it was going to die. I made sure to get off right when it stoped just in case it could not stand without it's forward momentum. I loosened it's girth and let it walk and rest and eat.
   Then for the way down, if I thought going up was crazy- down was a real life wild mouse ride, this is what it feels like heading down, first your saddle slides as far forward as possible till you are sure you are riding on your horses neck then at the switch backs as you are facing and looking down-down-down this looooong way down your horse's nose, head, neck shoulders are heading straight down the mountain and your old white mare has this far away look in her eye and after the ordeal getting up I can totaly relate if she is just going to step right over the trail and throw herself headlong down into the rocks and spiky trees making a giant avalance in her wake yet when I am sure she will go over this time, just like the wild mouse ride at the fair no mater how many times I ride it I am sure that this time it will go to far and fall it always turns and so does my mare, she always turns and never stumbles and continues on like it is a walk in the park which I suppose to her it was, in a way, as she has probably never had a walk in the park. When we get down we stick the panting horses back in the trailer, drive home, untack, and stick them out in the field. That is it, no cold hosing, wrapping, brushing, tack cleaning, stall mucking. I was pretty sure that the next morning the horse I rode would not be able to move or be dead but there she was walking around, eating alfalfa and as happy as a horse could be.
   I have gone on quite a few more rides since this one and each more enjoyable than the next as I learn to enjoy the view, to ride in a different way and though less thrilling it is breathtaking in it's own beautiful way.

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