Still Riding

                                                by Laura Crum

            I post a lot about other things here on this blog, but I AM still riding. I don’t post about my riding very much, because it’s just not that exciting. Short trail rides and just exercising the horses here at home is all I am mostly doing. Some days my son and I get Henry and Sunny out and ride them at the walk and trot in the riding ring for twenty minutes or so—until they are warmed up—and then let them gallop up the hill from the front gate to the house a few times (less than a quarter of a mile). And that’s it.

            Not very interesting blogging material. We are just trying to keep our older horses from getting stiff—and also keep them a bit legged up. The goal being that when we do want to do a more ambitious trail ride (which for us is a two-three hour trail ride) the horses will be comfortable doing it.

            There isn’t much to say about it. Our horses are well behaved and my son and I enjoy cruising around in the spring sunshine. It’s very relaxing. The horses enjoy it, too, as far as I can tell. They certainly meet us at the gate to be caught. We turn them loose to graze afterward…and I KNOW they really enjoy that part. We all seem to get a kick out of the short gallops up the hill. It’s a pleasant part of the day for all of us.

            But I am not teaching these wise old horses any new tricks, or preparing for any exciting event. I am not improving as a rider…rather the reverse. I cannot now do many things on a horse that I could easily do in my younger days. I don’t mind. I enjoy my horse time now as much as I ever did.

            It’s a lot about sharing time with my son. It’s a lot about wanting my horse time to be relaxing and stress free. It’s a lot about not wanting to work hard at the horses (just call me lazy). I want the horses to enjoy our riding time, too. They’re older horses who have given us a lot and they’ve earned an easy life. And I just don’t have goals any more with my horses—other than to share a pleasant life together with them. 

            There’s nothing wrong with any of this. It doesn’t make for an interesting blog post, though. Or for a very exciting horse life.

            On the other hand, if you are a horseperson who is longing for a pleasant, relaxing, drama-free life with horses, I am here to tell you that this is entirely possible. Choose a reliable, older horse, do things that are well within his/her capabilities, avoid events that are about sorting out who is “better” than who and/or who can complete the goal and who can’t. You must also have a bit of luck. But within these parameters it is entirely possible to have an enjoyable, stress-free life full of horseback riding fun. We can serve as an example.

            Henry and Sunny sharing a bit of camaraderie on a sunny spring day, while my son and I chat.

            Riding down the hill for a gallop back up.

            Galloping up the hill…I usually wear a helmet for this, but took it off at my husband’s request for a photo with my hair blowing in the wind. (This photo was taken last summer—see shiny horse—but the activity looks about the same right now, only on a fuzzy horse.)

            Good little fuzzy horse ready to go riding.

           

My son and Henry riding our local trails to the Lookout, about a mile or two from our front gate.

We do the occasional beach ride.

And we go riding in the woods.

Henry’s favorite part of the whole deal.

Sunny likes this part, too.

            It has rained for a week straight now, so I’m glad we kept up with the riding while we could. Today everything is sodden and muddy, and I am definitely a fair weather rider. But at least we are not whining about drought any more (at the moment, anyway). I hope the rest of you are having some early spring riding fun, as well.

            

Alone

                                                            by Laura Crum

            I spent three months all alone at a Sierra Lake when I was twenty-two years old, with only my young dog for company. (See my first two posts on this topic here and here.) For those who wonder what in the world this has to do with my life with horses, I’m getting to it. Slowly but surely.

            So I’ve touched on the magic I experienced at the lake, and I’ve talked about the fear, but there was one other notable thing. And that was the pure experience of being truly alone. Not in the sense of being afraid, which I’ve already written about. But just in the sense of how different it is to be really alone.

            We commonly don’t think much about this. We talk of being alone when we are merely without others in our home for awhile. We have neighbors, we go shopping, we drive down the street. We see other people every day. Almost all of us. We are never really alone.

At Burgson Lake, I was, for long periods, truly alone. Alone as in I never saw another human. I often went to town on Saturday to buy fresh food, but sometimes I did not. I sometimes saw others when I went hiking, but quite often I saw no one. It wasn’t a heavily traveled area in any sense. And I kept track. So this is how I know that I once went for ten days without seeing another person.

Ten days doesn’t sound very long. But stop and think if you have ever gone even three days without seeing another human. How about 24 hours? Most people have not. It’s an interesting experience. There can be fear, which I experienced. There were, for me, many moments of thrilling beauty, when I stared at the light sparkles on the lake and truly lost myself in the connectedness of the moment, just as I had envisioned. There was lots of time to read, and to write in journals. I didn’t bring a timepiece, but I became very good at reckoning where I was in the day by the sun. And the days stretched long in a way that could be both delightful and difficult.

Cause here is the part I didn’t imagine before I went to the lake. You get bored. You miss other people and regular things like cars and movies and bars and such. This was before the days of the internet, but now, I suppose, you would miss the internet. I missed my boyfriend. In short, there were moments where I was lonely. I would have given anything, at times, for a loved companion.

I had my dog and I had books. All in all, I did pretty well. I wrote in my journal when I wished I had someone to talk to, and I read. I stared endlessly at the lake and the mountains and the birds and lizards and deer and pine trees and tried to understand whatever message they had for me, just as I had hoped to do. I watched the light die out of the sky, and the flames of my campfire flicker in the darkness. I watched the full moon rise over my lake. Everything around the lake became deeply familiar to me, from the small, swampy forest at the other end (lots of mosquitoes), to the “granite beach” (a gradual sloping shelf of rock that led into the lake, where I sunbathed), to the “jumping off rocks” (where I dove into deep water) to the “dock” (a huge old floating log that I tied up near my camp, which functioned quite nicely as a pier).  I became very good at building fires and prided myself on not needing even a scrap of paper or such. One match, dry needles and ferns and twigs, voila!

 And sometimes I went to town on Saturday. You have no idea how much patience you can have with things like traffic and lines and crowds and such when you spend the rest of your time completely alone. It was fun just to be in the bustling tourist town. But I was always ready to go back to my camp after a day of town life. In many ways, which I barely understood at the time, I truly was soaking in the experience of solitude like a sponge. My Walden experiment was a success in a way I never could have predicted. It gave me a pattern for my life.

And now I return to what I said in the first postscript. I view my future as being shaped by this solitary summer which changed my life. Its interesting, that summer was the only period of my life since I was fifteen and first allowed to buy a horse of my own, when I did not own a horse. I had sold Hobby in May, and I bought Burt in September (see part one and two of “My Life With Horses). In the intervening three months I lived at Burgson Lake and learned some things.

Back to the present. I said in part twelve that I envision my future as being more contemplative, and my life as becoming perhaps a somewhat solitary and hermitish life. I wrote about these themes in my twelfth novel, Barnstorming. 

The truth is that I see that I have created a life that is somewhat modeled on my time at the lake. I have a small cabin on the edge of a round riding ring. The centerpiece is a round vegetable garden with a round birdbath of clear water in the middle. Symbols for sure.

 I can see no other houses from my front porch. If I keep my gate shut and don’t go out, I can spend days without seeing a human other than my husband and son. This is it. It’s the perfect form of the life I sought. I have loved companions, I have solitude, I have that cabin by the symbolic lake. I have my Walden. My task now is to deepen in my understanding and connection—the goal I sought that summer. I believe that vision can come to fruition now.

And so my life with horses is no longer about anything I especially want to “do” with them. It is more about sharing my life with them. Because one of the things I was acutely aware of missing at the lake was horses. I didn’t so much miss riding (though I would have been happy to ride)—I just missed having horses around. And if I am to be a hermit in my old age, I want to be a hermit with horses. A happy hermit with horses. 

I have written about my feelings about wanting to be a hermit recently (see On Being a Hermit), but that post covers only one half of the equation (the cranky part). Just as I did when I was twenty-two, I still have a vision of escaping the endless busy-ness of civilized life and the pressure to do and be something that other people exert. I want to sit on my porch and watch the light die out of the sky without feeling that I must go somewhere and/or do something. Just as I did then, I want to deepen in my connection to the natural world. To be with what is. I want to live as Thoreau did at Walden Pond.

And I can do that right here. In my own cozy cabin by the shore of my solitary symbolic lake, which is, actually, about as remote as Thoreau’s cabin was in real life (he could walk to town for lunch, and could see the railroad tracks from his front door). I have the loved companions that I missed at the lake and I have my horses. I feel that my life’s journey has brought me full circle to the goal that I sought in my youth. And I am happy with this result.

We don’t know what the future holds, but if I envision anything, I envision this.

And yes, I hope to keep riding as long as my horse and I enjoy looking at the world together. Here we are yesterday on a lovely ride through the redwood forest. As Aarene says (Haiku Farm, listed on the sidebar), “Life is good.”

My Life With Horses--Part Twelve (and a Free Book)

                                                by Laura Crum

            Here is where I must play catch up and add in all that has been left out. Because I have told the story of the seven wonderful forever horses that came to me, but left out many other parts of my life with horses.

            My first forever horse, Burt, was turned out for many years in a friend’s pasture, fifteen minutes from my home. He was joined by a motley collection of horses, two that I took because they were sweet old rope horses that deserved to be retired (ET and Gray Dog), along with Wally’s great old heel horse, Pistol, who was retired due to arthritic changes, plus another horse of Wally’s that I had trained who crippled up due to EPM in the prime of life (Rebby), and the last colt I ever trained (Danny), who tore up his stifle joint in a freak collision with a pickup truck. Danny would have been euthanised by his current owner, but I took him back and rehabbed him and eventually he was sound enough to be a pasture pet. I had Gunner turned out there for awhile, too. So at one point we had six or seven of these pasture pets.

            But life moves on. Pistol grew too sore to be comfortable even on painkillers, so we had to euthanise him when he was 25. And eventually Burt died of a massive stroke at 35 years of age. ET and Rebby were both very hard keepers, and as they got into their thirties and late twenties respectively, it became impossible to keep them at a good weight in the pasture, even with tons of supplemental feed. And Wally and I were both getting overloaded trying to take adequate care of all the horses we were responsible for. A couple of years ago we made the difficult decision to euthanise Rebby and ET and bring Gunner home. The pasture owner kept Danny and Gray Dog for her pets, and they are still doing well there.

            Wally is eighty this year and, like me, has decided he no longer wants to ride young horses. He gave his young horse, Smoky, to a good home that had already taken a previous horse from him, Lester. And Smoky and Lester are happy, useful riding horses to this day with owners who love them. Wally’s gray gelding, Twister, has been living with me since he bought the horse as a six year old. (Twister has definitely "whited out" as he aged.) 

            Twister turns 17 this year and he is the last horse Wally has left, and will probably be the last horse Wally owns. I have made a commitment to keep and care for Twister until he dies. I owe it to the horse and to Wally. Twister and Wally accompanied my son and me with Henry and Sunny, on many, many expeditions. So Twister has a forever home with me.

My gold, silver and copper horses.

            Today I have five forever horses living with me on my small horse property (five horses is the maximum number I can have here). My own Gunner, Plumber and Sunny, my son’s Henry and Wally’s Twister. Flanigan and Toby the pony are buried here, and Burt is buried in the pasture where he lived for his last ten years and where he died.

            Gunner is 33 and still doing well. 

            Plumber is 24, retired, and sound, perky and happy.

            Henry is 25 and my son rides him a couple of days a week, mostly at the walk and trot. Henry is still perfectly sound and shows no sign of weakening. 

            Sunny is going strong. I think he may be nearly twenty years old. He has no papers and when I bought him he was said to be 10, but the vet said he had “funny” teeth, and could have been as old as 15. So who knows? But he is sound and strong and I ride him a couple of times a week on average. 

            Wally is recovering from knee surgery currently, so Twister, whose usual job is team roping horse, is getting a little downtime. Twister is sound and strong and doing well at 17 years, and Wally is already back to riding again and will be roping soon. Here's a recent photo (taken on 4th of July) of Twister and Wally along with my son and Henry on Wally's first ride post knee surgery (exactly one month after the operation).

            As I’ve known for awhile, if I keep taking good care of these forever horses (which I plan to do) there is a chance that in five years or so, I’ll have five older horses that are not ridable for anything more than puttering around—and no place to put a younger riding horse. And that’s OK. Its Ok because I love these horses and am deeply grateful for all the hours of happy riding time that every single one of them has given. I don’t in the least begrudge becoming their caregiver as they get older. Yes, I like to ride, but I have achieved all the goals I set myself in my life with horses and my mind and heart are both full to the brim with everything that horses, and these horses in particular, have brought to me. If there is more riding to come, that’s great. And if there is not I take complete joy in spending time with my horses and connecting through them with all the wonderful things we have done together. Time past is as present as time present when I am with my horses.

            I will add that it is important to me that every single one of these horses are good horses who have been great riding horses. None of them EVER purposefully dumped or harmed a human (to my knowledge). And yes, this matters to me. It is not my calling to babysit a herd of rescue horses who never had a partnership with humans, and would be happy to kick your block off or dump you on your head. It’s my pleasure and privilege to reward some fine horses who are richly deserving of a happy, peaceful retirement after their long, steady years of good service. And who are now, as they always were, a true pleasure to be around. I will feed them three times a day, and brush them and doctor them as needed, and ride them lightly if it seems right, and turn them out to graze and live happily with them in my garden. 

            As with my horses, so with my novels. I set out initially to write an even dozen, and that goal has been accomplished. People have asked me if I will write more, and the truthful answer is that I don’t know. The novels cover twenty years in the life of horse vet Gail McCarthy—she is 31 in the first story (Cutter) and 50 in the last installment (Barnstorming) and it took twenty years of my life to write the books. Gail goes through many of the life changes that I have gone through in the course of the series. My husband said, upon reading this series of posts, “You need more anecdotes.” Well, the anecdotes are all in the novels. The names have been changed to protect the innocent—and the guilty—but most of the things I describe in the stories, really happened in some form or other. I wove the events of my life into my books. (Oh, and just by chance, this series of posts about my life with horses is also twelve episodes in total--serendipity.)

And yes, its possible that I could write more about Gail, but its also possible that I won’t. And either way is fine with me. As I said about my horses, I’ve achieved the goals I set myself and I am happy and at peace with where I am now.

There are those who ask, what’s next? Well, I don’t know, and I am OK with not knowing. I may have many more adventures ahead of me, or I may live a peaceful, fairly solitary and hermitish life from now on. Right now my focus is on raising my young son. My life is good and I love every minute of it. I spend as much time as I can with my husband and child and our critters and garden. I try to enjoy the present moment fully. I don’t ask for more. And I am very grateful for all that I have. I will always love my horses, and if luck favors me, I will always live with them.

I know that there are some who will consider this a sort of “do nothing” life. There are those who think one must have goals and be working hard to achieve these goals for life to have meaning (both with horses and in general). There are those who think one must be busy to be happy. I am not in this group. I feel I have been plenty busy and productive in my life, and I have achieved pretty much every goal on my “bucket list.” It’s my intuition that moving on to a more contemplative stage at this point in my life is a good thing, not a bad thing. If you want to read more thoughts on this subject, I wove them into the last book in my series, Barnstorming. This book somewhat tells how I view my own future, as well as how I see Gail’s future.

Finally, I am deeply grateful for all my readers. And so, I’d like to offer a gift. For the next five days, Cutter, the first book in the series, and always one of the most popular titles, will be FREE as a Kindle edition. (Starting today, July 7^th, and going through Thurs, July 11^th.) Hoofprints, the second book, is currently on sale for 99 cents. So right now, for less than a dollar, you can read the first two books in the series. The remaining ten books are available for just $2.99 each as Kindle editions. The order is Cutter, Hoofprints, Roughstock, Roped, Slickrock, Breakaway, Hayburner, Forged, Moonblind, Chasing Cans, Going Gone, and Barnstorming. Click on the titles to find the Kindle editions. And for those who have read some of these books, I would be eternally grateful (really) if you would post reviews on Amazon or Goodreads. These reviews mean a great deal to authors nowadays. A huge thank you to those who have already done so. And I very much hope that you enjoy my stories. Cheers--Laura

           

The Has Been

                                                by Laura Crum

            Yes, I once used to be a pretty handy cowgirl. And my good horse, Gunner, would really watch a cow. Looking through my old albums yesterday, I came upon these photos. They made me smile, remembering.

Gunner and I cutting cattle at the family ranch. Do we look determined or what?

Roping on Gunner at my uncle Todd’s arena.

Gunner winning the cutting at the county fair.

            But these photos were taken maybe twenty years ago. Today Gunner is grazing peacefully on the lawn, as I rub his neck and scratch his withers. And we’re both happy in our has been status.

Gunner at 32 years.

            Gunner put in ten solid years as a competitive horse. I broke and trained him myself. I’m pretty proud of what we accomplished together. But what does it mean now?

            When I talk to my various horse friends, both in real life and on the internet, they are mostly pushing towards some goal. A competition they want to enter, a clinic they want to take…etc. Whether it be dressage, endurance, cowhorse, roping or just horse training skills, they want to progress as horsemen. And me? I don’t.

            Alone, it sometimes seems to me, among the horse people I know, I am content to putter down the trail on my solid horse, riding with my kid, knowing that my skills are, oh, about one-tenth what they were back in the days when I was training and competing. I still have the thoughts and opinions I developed over those years, and my ability to read a horse is as good as it ever was, but my ability to execute—not so much.

            I don’t train horses any more. I don’t even ride young, green horses any more. I don’t compete. I don’t cut cattle or rope cattle these days (though I still gather cattle and move them from here to there on horseback). I only ride solid horses. I am, in fact, quite happy to ride what my friends teasingly call my “plug.” And Sunny is, in fact, a laid back little plug of a trail horse. Guess what? I like it like that.

            I enjoy the relaxed tranquility of my horse life today. I delight in the freedom from anxiety and pressure, in the peace of it all. I ride two or three days a week and enjoy it very much, but if I had to choose my favorite aspect of horses now, it would be having them with me here at home, taking care of them, seeing them many times a day, turning them out to graze. Just what I do with my retired horses. The sight of a horse’s pricked ears at dawn means as much to me as anything.

            Don’t get me wrong—I love my trail rides on Sunny, riding along with my son on Henry. But my absolute favorite thing is just living with horses. And I take endless pleasure in the fact that I don’t feel any pressure or anxiety surrounding the horses any more, something that I wasn’t aware that I once felt until after it was gone. I still remember the day, not so many years ago, when it dawned on me that an inevitable tension, that had always accompanied my interactions with horses, had disappeared. After some thought, I realized that the tension had been a product of underlying anxiety. No matter how much I loved what I was doing, there was a basic anxiety composed of the stress of training unpredictable young horses, and the desire to do well at various events. With that removed, I found a whole new level of peace and joy with horses.

            Nowadays I ride without goals, other than to enjoy the ride. I don’t put much pressure on myself or my horse—we’re both relaxed. And it makes me happy. I think my horse is happy, too. Just looking at the beauty of nature from a horse’s back is more than enough for me.

            Sometimes I can’t help comparing myself to others and I always laugh ruefully. I’m the has-been. I’m not accomplishing much of anything. Then I think back to the twenty-plus years in which I trained and competed relentlessly, and I shrug. Been there, done that. Got the T-shirt, or rather, belt buckle. I’m happy I spent those years achieving my goals. It leaves me free. If I hadn’t done all that, I think I would always wonder what if? What if I had pursued my goals?

            But I did pursue those goals, and achieved the things I set out to do. And now I don’t need to do those things any more.

            I’m not sure how this appears to others. At some level, I don’t really care. I’m doing what I want to do and it makes me happy. Maybe it seems as if a has-been shouldn’t be giving advice about horses (of course, when I do, you are all free to ignore it). Maybe I seem as if I’ve given up, or am just lazy. That I ought to try harder. Some have said that my life seems enviable, though I don’t mean to cause envy. In fact, my life with horses would be pretty boring for many of my friends.

            And there are days when I do question myself. I wonder WHY I don’t want to do more with horses now. I have many friends my age and older who are still competing. And some days I feel a bit lonely and isolated, disconnected from my horse friends who are still caught up in the passionate striving to improve as horsemen—whether it be for competition or for its own sake. I can no longer share in that camaraderie to any great degree.

            So, I sometimes wonder…are there other horsemen like me? People who have accomplished a fair amount with horses in their life, and are now content just to enjoy a relaxed ride from here on out. Or am I some sort of aberration? The truth is I don’t much worry over this—I’m happy with my life as it is. And I am very grateful to have (so far) survived a life spent very much on horseback with no serious injuries…and a continued joy in riding and horses. Not to mention the immense delight of sharing my horseback time with my son for about eleven and a half years now (yes, his first ride was at six months old, in front of me on my great old horse, Flanigan). So I’m Ok with being a has-been in the eyes of others (and for that matter, myself). But I am curious. Any other lazy has-been horsemen out there? Anybody else happy to just putter down the trail?