Barnmaven

The adventure years

I was in the 8th grade when my mom turned forty.  A couple of years before, at the end of my 5thgrade year, we had moved out of the city to an island in Puget Sound.  On a small two and a half acre hobby farm Mom transformed from urbanite to country denizen, planting a garden, learning to haul her daughter around to horse shows and riding lessons, tending a flock of chickens and all the other sundry things that rural life involves.  The year she turned forty, Mom entered what I tend to think of as her "real" life -- now that my brother and I were less dependent, she had more time and energy to invest in the things she wanted to do. 

It started out with a daily walk and a few friends who were also interested in getting in better shape.  Before long she was race walking over 3 miles a day, entering 5K and then 10K events.  By the time I headed off to college what had begun as a daily walk had turned into overnight mountain hikes in the Olympics.  When my Mom was in her fifties she had better looking legs than most women a quarter of her age, and she had the stamina to match those muscles.

Since then she's slowed down some, but not much, not by most standards.  She takes Zumba classes a couple of times a week and when she's not Zumba-ing she goes for walks or works out to videos.

Thanks to my mom I've grown up with a terrific example of the benefits not only of exercise, but of taking the time to do what you enjoy. 

When I bought my midlife horses five years ago I think one of the last things I expected to ever be doing was to ride in a horse show again.  My years of circling a ring were a long time ago.  The last few years have been more about enjoying my horse, but what I've found is that enjoying my horse naturally leads me to wanting both my horse and I to grow in what we can do together. 

We progressed from general trail riding to mounted orienteering, then last summer we started working at cow sorting and re-learning how to ride english - and we started jumping.  Whenever I can I take my horse to clinics and events that I think will help both of us improve what we already know and find new things to try.  With the encouragement of a couple of my friends, this past weekend I entered my first horse show in almost thirty years. 

I didn't go with any pretense of thinking I'd win a bunch of ribbons.  For one, it was a schooling show, which is a much more relaxed environment than a straight-up show.  You can use training aids and you don't require formal show clothing.  Because Bugs had never been in a horse show environment I thought it would be a great learning experience for him - and it was.

I was so damn proud of that horse.  He's a big, energetic boy, very forward and all GO.  I usually have to wear him out a little bit before he can become smooth and relaxed.  Saturday was no exception, but we had a great judge and he was very generous with providing feedback and suggestions.  We entered eight classes - and came home with eight ribbons.  Even a first place ribbon, but I take no pride in winning the Novice Western Horse class with only three riders, one of them about seven years old on a Bashkir Curly horse named Peaches. 

I do take pride in how far my horse and I have come together.  He teaches me and I teach him, and together we are having great adventures.  I'm way closer to fifty than I am to forty anymore, but thanks to my Mom I know that I'm really just in the early part of my adventure years.  Mom knew it before I did -- there is no age limit on discovering something you love to do. 

Many of the women I encounter on the trail and at clinics and other events are my age and older.  Some have been riding their whole lives; some discovered riding after their kids grew up and are getting as much time in the saddle as they can.  One woman who I met at a clinic is in her 70's, still active and still riding.  I want to be that person -- the one where all the kids on the trail ride go home and tell their friends about:  There was this lady on the ride that was like 90 years old. 

When I pulled in to the horse show on Saturday morning, just me and my horse, I felt a little out of place.  I didn't know anyone there.  SG would be arriving later.  My friend Debbie was nowhere in sight.  I filled out my entry form, paid my fee, got my number and put the final grooming touches on my horse.  While I was standing outside waiting for my first class to be called, who should drive up but Mom. 

How apropos that the first person to show up and offer support at my first show since the late 1980's was the woman who taught me that life begins in your forties.

Thanks, Mom.  I love you so much.

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Girl things

Forward and Back

 

He doesn't sit still in class.  He hides behind the door when the teacher asks her class to move to the reading rug.  He takes the staples out of the stapler and pokes a little girl with them.  He pretends to be sick so the school nurse will call me to come take him home.

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At the beginning of the ride, a mule in our group gets antsy and suddenly squirts sideways into the horses waiting to go through the gate.  Like a small brown bowling ball, he scatters the other horses like pins.  Bugs jumps ten feet sideways and tries to bolt.  He is frightened of the mule now.  He doesn't want it near him and keeps edging away from him as we head out on our ride.

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He goes two days at after care without an incident report or without someone having to be called to come get him.  He grins as wide as the ocean when I tell him how proud I am of the way he controlled his behavior, and practically skips all the way to the car.  He lights up when I tell him this means he has earned his toys back, and is so excited to play with them he chatters all the way home.

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He recovers from his initial scare and as we head up the road toward the first set of clues, he relaxes his neck and lets his head lower.  He walks along nicely , not trying to break into a jog or trying to crowd out the other horses.  He responds to my leg and seat cues and moves out at a brisk walk.  His ears are forward and he starts to look content. 

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His daycare provider sends home a report:  He was scratching and kicking another child today.  It wasn't bad enough for them to call me and come get him, but it was worth an incident report.  His toys go back into timeout as he screams "NO!" at me and tells me "I HATE you!!"  He spends the evening in timeout.  I catch him swatting at the dog, who has done nothing more egregious than be in his presence.  He screams at me, "GO AWAY!" when I ask him to use "nice hands" with the animals.

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My trail riding partner takes her horse Maggie over to the second clue in this set while I wait at the first clue so that we can get our bearing lines and find the intersection.  To get to the second clue Maggie has to go over a slight rise.  The moment she is out of sight he panics.  I attempt to let him walk over to where she is, but he tries to trot, to run.  I pull my "oh shit" rein a few times to get him stopped, but when he comes out of the last circle, he goes straight up.  I am afraid we are going to go over backward, but he somehow regains his balance.  He stands, shaking and breathing hard while I try to recover my composure and figure out the best next move.

***

He spends the afternoon with his grandmother at my house.  To pass the time, she picks up toys and puts things away, folds some laundry and sweeps my floors.  As he sees her cleaning, of his own initiative, he goes to his own room and he cleans up every single toy from the floor and puts them in his toybox. I catch him sitting on the easy chair in the living room, our little cat on his lap.  He is petting her and she is relaxed, purring and happy.

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As we try to regain some time on the other teams, we let the horses move out.  Smoothly, he begins to trot.  When I ask him to give me his nose, he breaks perfectly at the poll, and as I let the energy flow down into my seat, he begins to extend his trot, throwing his front feet forward while still remaining fluid and smooth, keeping his neck low and his nose pointed straight at the ground.  It feels like perfection and I suppose it looks the same.

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Every day, we have a measure of success and a measure of failure.  I know that life is a mixed bag, and that whenever we have a bad moment that doesn't mean that all is lost or that I should give up the battle.  Keep looking for solutions.  Don't give up on him.  Try to have some patience and when you have to discipline, do something that makes doing the wrong thing hard and doing the right thing easy.  Be positive, even when he isn't.  Remember, we're not looking for perfection -- we're looking for progress.  Celebrate every single win and make sure he knows how proud and thankful you are for his successes.

For every step back, we take another forward, maybe even two.  Its all in the balance.   If I don't lose sight of today because I'm too busy looking for the day when every day is good, I'll forget to notice the many beautiful moments that happen right in front of me. 

In Sync

I used to row.

I did my college rowing at the University of Washington, Jan Harville was my novice coach and Bob Ernst was my varsity coach, back before he moved over to coach the men. (I hear he's coaching the women again now). 

After I graduated from college I took a couple of years' break from being a jock to invest more of my time into being a wastrel.  Inevitably, that too palled, and so I returned again to the world where your backsplash, your puddle, and your swing were all that mattered. 

Swing.

Swing is the sweet spot.  Its the orgasm of rowing.  Its where all rowers in the boat, all eight or four or two of them, hit the same rhythm on the slide, they come forward, drop oar, push back and finish each stroke simultaneously.  When swing happens, the boat just picks up out of the water and grows wings.  If you've felt swing, you'll never forget it.  One year at Seattle Rowing Club we entered both the eight and the fours at a four mile race in Fremont.  Our eight had some rigging problems before the start, and by the time we had the spacers set correctly, the field was twenty or better lengths ahead of us.  We rolled into the start and sort of simultaneously thought "screw it, we're behind, we've got nothing to lose, let's just row the shit out of this thing."  We just went with it.  By the third mile, we hit it.  SWING.  Before long, we were passing boats.  Leaving boats in the dust.  Swinging.  Flying.  We flew up the canal and by God we WON that race by open water. 

An hour later we did it again, in the fours.  We split the eight up into two boats.  The first four, with our stroke and all heavyweights, was heavily favored.  They got to use our club boat.  For the second four, it was me and three lightweights.  Our club didn't own a second four, so we borrowed one from another club, a heavy old wooden behemoth of a boat.  The four of us looked at each other and kind of laughed.  We had no expectation for this race.  We'd already poured our hearts out on a four mile race.  We were just hoping to have enough left in us to finish.

Inexplicably, it happened again. 

Swing.

Somewhere in that race we found the sweet spot and we flew home.  We won again. 

I don't remember too many details about the rest of that day, or anything else.  I just remember the swing.

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When you ride, there's a thing you look for.  Its like swing, but I'm not even sure there's a word for it.  Its what happens when you start working together as one.  You have a thought in your head of what it is you want to accomplish, you transmit that thought through your hands and your seat and your legs, and your horse, all his muscle and his brain and his nerves, they act out your thought completely willingly.  Its as if he's an extension of your will, not because he's forced to, but because he wants to.

Yeah.

Saturday we took a horrendously awful never-to-be-repeated drive up mountain roads (just thinking about the dropoff right on the other side of the truck door gets my heart pounding in abject fear) to do an orienteering ride.

The night before, T-Bone smashed my nose with his head as he was jumping up on my bed.  I was up past 11 with ice and a towel trying to stop the bleeding and minimize the swelling.  I was up again at 4:30 with a headache and a painful face, trying to will myself to even want to go on this ride.

After we reached the trailhead (and I pried my fingernails out of the truck door), I wasn't expecting much.  I was exhausted but ramped up on anxiety and adrenaline (amazing how worrying about falling down a thousand-foot cliff will do that to you), my nose hurt, and you know when you feel miserable you typically transmit that straight through to your horse.

I took some time to relax and calm down, to put the drive up behind me.  To groom and saddle Bugs and walk him around a bit to loosen the long, bumpy ride out of his legs.  Belatedly I realized he'd thrown a shoe sometime in the week prior, but I was able to borrow a hoof boot from another rider. 

We started down the long initial trail.  It had rained the night before and where the dirt was hard-packed, the horses slipped and slid on their hind legs, trying to find a grip in the earth.  We made it through the first three objectives, and got to the fourth.  It was a camp area and as we were separating to check our orientation points to find the plate, Bugs started to get antsy about being even a few feet apart from his riding pal.  I took him and circled him a few times, let him move his legs and get his brain back into the game.  We finished the objective and headed off down the trail. Where it was not rocky, we trotted and loped to make up some time.  The last ride we'd done this, and Bugs had it in his head that he was in a big fat hurry.  I spent the last hour of that ride fighting him to stay collected and not go barging off into the sunset. 

But Saturday, even with challenges, we found our sync. He was collected.  He was patient.  He went where I asked him, he stayed where I asked him. He moved off the leg like a dream, he didn't spook or get scared even when we ran into four hunters on atv's.  He enjoyed the hell out of himself, and so did I.  We found the sweet spot that makes you want to get up on the horse again, over and over again, so you can get that all-over amazing feeling that comes when you have swing.

A trail of bread crumbs, perhaps

Just you, your horse, a compass and a terrain map.  Your team of three to six people.  You may NOT use:  GPS, cell phone, any map other than the one provided you.  You may not hide the markers from another team.

On your terrain map, a number of large circles are drawn.

 

On the back of your map, 10 sets of three clues.

Inside each circle, the clues lead you to three reference points, each which is assigned a degree.  A pile of rocks, a stump with a rock on it, a soda bottle hanging from a tree.    Using the three points and your compass, you will triangulate to find a paper plate with a code written on it which you  must notate on your map.

Your goal: Don't get lost.  Find the most correct codes and return to base camp with the fastest time.

We started sometime at 9 am up in the woods on top of a mountain.  We finished sometime after two.  I'm going to guess we covered somewhere between 15 and 20 miles.   I am going to be very saddle-sore tomorrow, but thanks to our two other experienced team members Debbie and Megan, Michelle and I won on our first time trying Competitive Mounted Orienteering.

Most fun I've had on a horse in years.  Excuse me, I need to go soak my backside in some hot water and epsom salts.