Horse Tales

I began to think about my horsey years when I read another blog by a person who also loves horses.  This picture is of me and my horse BJ.  It was taken at the farm where I boarded him.........called Trapho Farm.  He was a dream come true.  The second picture is of me and Darby, my second horse.  After I sold Darby I saw his name in the paper for winning a ribbon at a dressage competition with his new owner.  I had to sell both of these horses against my will.  I still feel teary when I think of it.

 Before I had my own, I rode horses at riding stables as a child every chance I got, hung around the race track in Bangor, and generally made myself present whenever a horse opportunity presented itself.  I was a dressage fan and took lessons for many years before I had my own horse.  I learned the vocabulary and all the commands.  I guess my fondness for drama and pageantry drew me to the ritualistic performance of horse and rider together, the rules and regulations, the precision (or at least the striving for precision), the quest for harmony and subtle communication between horse and rider.

 Of course there were trail rides as well.  I can still feel the strange sensation of riding bareback on Peach, a huge gray draft horse, as he swam across a river that flowed through the pasture.  He loved the water.  Those were some of the happiest years of my life, when I was defined  by how well I could perform a "shoulder in" or how gracefully I could "sit the trot at K."

My two kids were young then, and we had a pony as well.  Neither one of them really loved the horse world the way I did, but they participated in it all with good humor.  It seems to me that it was one well-defined chapter of my life.  I was wife, mother, horsewoman.  I made cupcakes for school  holidays and costumes for school plays.  I went to PTA meetings.  I passed out cups of fluoride.  I  printed the PTA newspaper.  This was, I suppose, the second chapter of adulthood after my life as a psychiatric Social Worker.  Although there is some overlap, they seem very separate to me, very different. 

The one constant from the moment I was able to hold a pencil or a crayon, was making art.