Horse Crazy (15 page)

The sooner you can be moving and
rehabilitating your injury, the sooner you'll be back in the saddle
again. Or, as is most often the case, back in the saddle again but
without the intermittent screams of pain that so often herald the
process of mounting and dismounting.

If you spend much time at a place where there
are horses and riders, you will see slings. And splints, and casts
and limping. It happens. Sometimes you just have to ask how it
happened. And usually, there's a perfectly good explanation.

"Oh, I was riding my uncle's thoroughbred
who'd never been off the racetrack before and I was on him bareback
and was trying to fasten my helmet strap when the farmer shot off
his rifle at some pesky dogs in the yard..."

Explanations such as this one merit a sigh of
mild relief from the listener. Other explanations, however, are not
so reassuring, as in the case of one heavily bandaged forearm.

"My horse bit me. No reason. Always was a
sweet horse. Just reached over and started chomping."

"But I guess you feed him treats a lot by
hand, right?"

"No, I don't believe in that."

"But he must've been acting a little grumpy?
Come on, you had to have provoked him in some way!"

"I walked up to him and said 'Hi, boy.'"

"Well! There you are!"

When an Incident occurs on a horse farm or
stable or riding academy, everybody stops what they're doing. The
Incident could be a quiet horse suddenly rebelling on a lunge line,
or a rider-less horse's sudden appearance, stirrups flying, reins
flapping, or just any situation that threatens to be dangerous.

A couple of riders may be embroiled in an
interesting, even heated conversation, but if, in the background
somewhere, there is a rider in the process of urging an obviously
balking horse past some terrifying object--a red jacket hung on a
tractor wheel or a pile of two by fours lying suspiciously on the
ground--the talking riders will unconsciously devote at least half
of their attention to the possible-Incident-about-to-happen.

The rider-radar that, if not built-in, is
quickly learned, that makes one aware and alert at all times.
Horses are unpredictable and they are way too big for that to be a
wholly comfortable status of things.

But, for most horse people, this very
discomfort is a big part of their attraction. In your normal
day-to-day pick-up-the-dry-cleaning, don't-forget-the-milk schedule
of life, you don't typically experience fear or that heady pump of
adrenaline that a herd of stampeding horses bearing down upon you
can evoke.

Unless they live in the Middle East, your
non-riding friends don't have to periodically be very brave or to
make their bodies react and perform when they're in a tight spot.
With riding and horses, there's romance, but also a constant trial
of oneself.

Our lives are normally so safe, so easy, so
risk-free. The result of not living your life, or at least a part
of your life like that, is exhilaration. You're not sprawled on a
couch watching someone else live their life on television, you're
concentrating with every molecule in your tensed body upon the
fence at the bottom of the hill--jutting out at an irregular
angle--vicious and challenging. And if you feel afraid, think of it
instead as feeling alive. And when you think of it this way, it
might even be a little easier to see why some horse people feel
superior.

The difference for me, is that now when I
mildly fanaticize about galloping furiously through dusty velds of
gold and green, my assegai punctuating the muggy, azure African
night in great swings over my head, I'm also conscious of whether
or not I'm on the correct lead.

For all the pains and mess and expense, the
love a horse and the pleasures of riding offer very potent rewards.
For every cold morning spent mucking out a stall or roaming a
twenty-acre field looking for your animal, there's a moment of
triumph, a sheer instance of glory, a time or two of inexplicable
joy when you've just come in from a blood-tingling gallop over
fence and log with good friends.

There's the exquisite, very possibly
unequaled pleasure of an ice-cold Coca-Cola going down after an
hour's dusty ring-riding and another hour of horse-tending in
95-degree heat. There's the simple delight of a cold tack
room--smelling deliciously of horses and leather--with your winter
afternoon's ride behind you and a steaming mug of milky sweet
coffee warming your hands.

Rediscovering the sky and all its colors, the
clouds, baby cows, secret clearings in the woods, the feeling of
being thirty-something and Annie Oakley too.

Horses can bring back the kid in you faster
than H.G. Well's Time Machine. For one thing, the last time you got
this dirty definitely had to have been pre-pantyhose days. To come
home with dirt on your knees is one of those carefree pleasures
belonging back there with mismatched socks and being able to go out
in public without mascara.

After all these years of simply showering off
the dust of the city air or your own body oils, how much more
satisfying to take a bath when you've got real grime. When was the
last time you simply wiped your filthy hands on your pant legs--or
on your shirt? It's not done. But at the end of a long day at the
stables, with no Handy-Wipe in sight and jodhpurs that have changed
colors anyway, that simple act can bring back your
childhood--complete with screen doors slamming and Mom calling you
to dinner--faster than any tattered photo or faded Super 8.

All the heroic fantasies borne from those
same Saturday afternoon matinees still live when you climb on
horseback. Scanning the horizon, looking for God knows what,
Indians, rustlers, cattle stampedes...anything but the typical. For
once the anticipation is not for the sight of your boyfriend's BMW
or your Mom's landing DC-10.

Going by way of horse is, in many ways, going
back into time. And that's a powerful benefit in itself. Whether
you're riding to the hounds in your terribly clever pinks, smart
boots and top hat or casually loping along a grassy ravine in
checked shirt and denims, your cowboy hat flying gaily behind you
like a fluttering flag, it's fantasy-time and it's steeped in the
past.

The way they rode to the hunt in Jolly-Olde
many hundreds of years ago and the way they scouted the Old West,
the look's the same, the feeling's the same. And all of it, in
great part, because the horse is the same.

And maybe that's the greatest gift of all
from the horse. He is single-handedly capable of transporting you
back to the sweetest part of your childhood--your girlhood, your
boyhood. He really can make all the dreams of adventure and
independence come true.

And maybe, just might be, who knows? If
you're very careful about the horse you choose, when you really
need him to, he'll go get the sheriff when you're pinned under the
rock slide.

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