Falling

“The ground is much further away than it used to be,” we reply when asked whether we ride the horses, and it is true but Millie is ever eager for an adventure and we are loathe to deprive her again.

Nearly ten days ago we stopped simply hitching bareback lifts from round pen to barn or pasture. Millie is a lady who respects that fearless young riders grow into overly cautious middle-age women. Recognizing that we’ve no easy swing into the saddle left in us, she’ll stand catty-corner to a rock or a pile of logs and allow us to clamber ungracefully onto her back before spiriting us away on her long legs with her smooth gait.

Exchanging the halter and lead for an actual bridle with a soft rubber snaffle, then tacking her up with pad and Western saddle, two girths and a breast collar, we defy gravity by lifting ourselves (that being me, myself, and I) from ground to saddle with hardly a grunt. Okay, so Millie was standing downhill on the driveway, but still we are impressed with the small feat. She begins walking away while we’re still fumbling for the far stirrup, then waits patiently when asked to Ho!

Soon we’re moving off downhill, surefooted in a style I’ve not known in years, her Saddle Horse gait moving my midriff in that marvelous dance this body had nearly forgotten. Passing rocks, the rusting flagpole, grazing goats (without spooking), we descend to the valley with exhilarating ease. On the flat we inscribe figure-eight’s and try our luck at a serpentine—but Millie is having no such nonsense. The field is open, who are we to be acting as it’s enclosed?

Following the path along the newest fence line into the woods she slides into that gait that mimics a trot but without a shred of roughness, the rider might as well be napping in an easy chair. En route Millie begins to canter, slips immediately into a buck and is pulled back to that place where I’m confident all within a moment. Had a watching goat blinked, she would have missed the exchange.

Around the front field, avoiding the soft earth of the newly-filled waterline trench, drifting toward the barn uphill but willing to stay on the flat as requested with another pop!, canter, buck sequence neatly frustrated and this middle-age rider wonders Why not? The poor gal has not been on an adventure since carrying the visiting Caitie through the woods, if she wants to run along the hillside we need only hand in the saddle like a sack of sweet potatoes. Where’s the harm in that?

Almost as quickly as the thoughts have been processed, we’ve granted Millie her head and one stride, two, three we’re cantering when whoops! She’s bucking for keeps now. We stay on once, twice, but with the horse twisting beneath us we understand that parting is a sure thing. So much decision making is crammed into the next split-second—where are the rocks (everywhere!), where will we be if we hang on longer, how close is the water-line trench, how little impact are we having with bit and reins, and ah here’s a grassy spot let go and fly down in a clean arc, and Ooof! Shoulder meets ground as we’ve instinctively tucked and rolled, and Millie’s hoof beats echo as she races up the hillside without us.

Before she’s even reached the first pasture we are up and walking gingerly in her wake. That fear that has kept us earthbound for so long has been faced and realized. We are impressed with our own ability to analyze the situation and react; life here in the Southern humidity has kept our brain on a much slower track for so long we had nearly forgotten the exhilaration that comes of split-second decision-making. We twist our neck and inscribe a circle with each arm; nothing’s broken. That shoulder blade we landed on may well be sore tonight, but falling onto the rocky ground of Wilson County has proven quite manageable, thank you very much.

Millie is standing by the driveway gate, commiserating with Lucy and Stella when I arrive on foot. Only the near-side rein has even dropped and I scoop it up neatly and we head back to that spot from whence I’d mounted from the ground. We’ll get back on before Millie learns that she can call the shots and for the second time in one afternoon we step from earth to saddle without more help than the inclining geography.

This time Miss Millie stands while we settle ourselves, then moves off smartly to return to the field where she had just bucked me off. Energetically walking and oh-so-smoothly trotting at my request, Millie revisits the place where she’d taken the upper hand but tries no more tricky moves, and the ride provides us with the entertaining little adventure that we’d so long been promising her.

A quarter hour later we return to the barn. Although I’ve scouted surfaces where I might set the heavy saddle overnight, I find the whole rig pulls off neatly and I am quite able to carry it uphill to the storage trailer to put away properly. Cooling down Millie, fetching hay, and completing the evening chores are all done gingerly—expecting more stiffness than we actually experience. It’s quite gratifying.

Indeed it takes until bedtime for agony to be realized, by which time we can no longer take a full breath (a quarter-breath would be welcome over the ensuing two or three days) and achieving a horizontal position is anything but restful. At least Millie is not here to see the effects of her little stunt.

Nine days out I only resort to ibuprofen at day’s end, when I am tired and the little aches add up to pain. And I have learned to trust by instincts: indeed, the ground is much farther away than it was some thirty years ago, but that won’t stop me. Millie and I have trails in our future, adventures if you will; I just won’t give her the reins to drop her nose to her toes and launch me into space. She surprised me that day, probably because I’ve left her so long as a pasture ornament. We will make time for riding so that that will not happen again.