Riding
Horseback I become something different, and with me on his back, I believe my horse is just as changed. Together we are another animal entirely. I like this other animal so much I have built my life around being it as much as possible.
I don’t have an arena or even much of a corral. I don’t have a barn with stalls or nice rail fences. I used to think I needed those things to be a good horse keeper. Turns out I don’t really need any of it, and neither do my horses. What I need are horses that know how to be a horse, and what my horses need is enough room to live like horses, where they can eat grass all day, drink from a stream and be in the company of their own kind. And I’ve come to believe there’s one other thing they need that’s also pretty hard to find these days: They need a job.
I needed a job myself 25 years ago when I first started day riding, although the pay was, and still is, so bad you can hardly call it a job. It is work. Hard work. But because of it my horses have learned what it is to be saddled at 4am, then ridden two miles in the moonlight to my horse trailer (the nearest we can get it to our house). They willingly hop in a dark trailer, travel an hour or more to a rendezvous point to be unloaded, then stuffed into another dark trailer - this time with a bunch of strange horses, all of them saddled and loose and fighting for footing as we travel another hour over rutted dirt roads to finally begin our work day. They know what it is to start moving cattle at daybreak and not finish until dark. They know the hardship of heat and cold, wind and rain and snow, and they know the treachery of rugged country, discarded barb-wire and bulls on the fight.
They’ve learned, as I have, to expect the unexpected. I’ve gone out to the corral in the dark before dawn, my horse shaking from morning nerves, my dogs bouncing with the same excitement, butterflies turning in my stomach; none of us sure what the day will bring. “Don’t nobody get killed today,” is a familiar line of one rancher I ride for. Just as dangerous as it is difficult, I sometimes begin to long for the safety and consistency of an arena. But I never was happy in a classroom and don’t think my horses would be either. It’s amazing what pushing a cow and calf up a steep, snow-filled draw, through a maze of deadfall, can teach a horse about being a horse. Even more amazing is what it can teach a person.
