As the mist lifts into the trees on the hilly trail I squeeze Miss Phoebe's round sides gently with my almost-muscular legs. If she tries to slow her forward gait I squeeze harder, for when you ride a horse you have to be in charge. The animal below you knows if you aren't.
      I breathe in the dewy air as we bump down a slope. I smile somewhat smugly when I greet several late afternoon hikers. I feel content, eagerly anticipating more and more horseback riding (or pony-back riding, since Miss Phoebe is actually a pony), as Summer eases into Fall.
      My overriding (no pun intended) sense was, and is, one of gratitude as I think about all the equines—a mule, many horses, and now this energetic little pony—who are changing the course of my life. In my early fifties I'm horse-crazier than I ever was before.
      The seeds of my current passion were planted when I was about twelve. Back then I didn't like much of anything about myself. I definitely wasn't athletic—I dreaded PE and all competitive sports. I had the self-confidence of a rock, and my creative muse (in the guise of writing and art) that keeps me ticking nowadays, was only the merest inkling. I was withdrawn and had one close friend, Kathy. So I remember being sad a lot, but I also remember this: being impressed by Kathy's collection of plastic horses that sat on her long white dresser, of wanting to draw them. One thing led to another and my parents—probably hoping to find something I could get jazzed about, signed me up for riding lessons. This was around the time that the turbulent sixties where morphing into the less dramatic seventies. But my internal life felt dramatic. Fighting the demons of depression that would plague me nearly into middle age, I found my weekly group lessons a helpful diversion away from self doubt. Grandpa Mersh (who lived with us) often drove me to my lessons in his old black Chrysler, his elbow sticking out the window on some of those muggy New Jersey days. "Go ride 'em, Cowgirl," he'd say as I got out of the car in my riding pants and boots when we got to Hasty Acres Ranch.
      I usually rode seasoned, easygoing horses. My lean legs grew muscular, and in my eighth grade English class I turned in a story about my favorite of all the lesson horses I'd ridden, a Quarter horse named Charlie.
      Although I'm unlikely ever to forget Charlie's sweet, trusting disposition; the way he'd always whinny softly whether I approached him with a carrot or an apple or empty-handed, the names and characteristics of the other horses I rode as a kid blur the way decades-old memories tend to do.
      I didn't ride for long; a couple of years at most. I liked it but somehow didn't grow to love it. Grandpa Mersh died and shortly thereafter so did my sweet Grandma Sophie. For a time I was caught up in grief as I floundered into high school trying on different personas (carefree hippie; angst-ridden artist; writer of deep poems), stopped taking lessons, and began to lose my horseback-riding muscles.
      Then, as I grew into an only slightly more confident young woman, and later became a single mom (and a foster and adoptive mom), my time spent on the backs of horses, mostly from overpriced rental-horse barns, merely hiccupped and sputtered along. Finally, in my late forties and nearing menopause, with glimmers of depression hanging around my peripheral vision once again, I began taking private lessons from an experienced trainer.
      "Do I look like I've ridden before?" I asked her toward the end of that first lesson.
      "Yeah, but not in a while," she answered honestly, then added more reassuringly, "But you know, muscles do have memories." My legs ached for days after that.
      "You learn a lot riding different horses," she told me a few months later. By that time I'd relearned how to post, I'd learned (or relearned) the meaning of words like withers and hocks and hackamore and headgear and snaffle and noseband and pommel. I'd experienced—and remembered loving—the thrill of cantering, its rhythm, like riding on a wave.
      I took my instructor's words to heart. Horses are expensive to keep. Leasing (or "sponsoring") was the way to go, not only for financial reasons, but also because the more horses I'd ride, the more I'd feel like a rider.
      The first I sponsored was a sweet-faced mule (the offspring of a donkey dad and a horse mom), named Pippi. But after an ill-fated trail ride in which I learned that mules can definitely live up to their reputation (when she balked at going past a gate and did a sidestep that slid me onto the ground), I decided I'd rather be on actual horses.
      Next I rode for a while on a spooky little Quarter horse with the same name as mine. I never took her on the trail because she'd startle too easily, and eventually her owners moved her and their family to the country where they said they'd put Annie in a pasture and do the homesteading thing, growing their own food and home-schooling their kids. I sometimes imagine Annie high on a hilltop, her white-blonde tail blowing the same direction as the dry grass, happy enough if she's never ridden again.
      Bailey, the Polish Arab, didn't seem to mind being ridden at all, always coming to his stall door to greet me, much like Charlie-horse did decades before. Once he was all tacked up he'd eagerly pick up a trot or fast canter at barely a touch from my legs, even if he did sometimes rumble and grumble—unsurprising for the old horse he is.
      My fiftieth birthday came and went and I kept finding different horses to ride. Whisper, the Mustang, went lame just as I was getting to know her. Sadly, her owner couldn't afford to get her diagnosed or treated. Blazy, the Icelandic pony, is fine for me to take lessons on ("I would never put a beginning rider on him," my newest trainer told me), but his owner doesn't want anyone else to ride him on the trail. I've ridden in Oakland, Orinda, Half Moon Bay, Tahoe, and in Marin and Humboldt Counties. Miss Phoebe, all thirteen hands of her, is my latest. Collectively the horses I've ridden have offered me not just humility and joy, but are also a teasing, tempting reminder of how much there is yet to learn. My body is stronger than it's ever been, and psychologically, riding has helped me deal not only with my teenage son's suicide attempt; but also with the prickly moodiness of my preadolescent daughter, a challenging romance; loneliness.
      Now, as early evening sunlight pours through the window of the café where I write, I'm relishing memories of the trail ride I just took on Miss Phoebe, the sturdy Haflinger pony I'm currently sponsoring; of how I stayed solidly on her back even when her saddle slipped a little to one side, of how well she listened—but mostly of how quiet my mind became, and how my confidence grew the further we wound through the crooked, wizened trees.

The End

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