Friday, March 24, 2017

We shall be released in unexpected ways



When I was a young girl I took English horseback riding lessons at Stanford Riding Academy.  My mother was a natural born horsewoman and wanted her three daughters to have the wonderful experience she had with horses as a young woman in her 20's, but none of us inherited her gift with horses.  One of the many horses I rode was named Beau. Beau was very much like the horse in the YoutTube video in that he had a mind of his own.  Beau ran away with me on several occasions and once stopped abruptly, and I flew over his head and landed on my feet on the ground in front of him.  Shaking in my boots, I climbed back up on Beau.  I clearly remember my tears and frustration.  I wanted so much to be good at riding horses like my mother, but I simply didn't have what it took.

It's been a long time since I laughed in the way I did watching this video and the one on my previous post with the Tyrannosaurus Rex making a snow angels and wandering off into a snowy landscape. Something is shifting inside me, with the arrival of both tears and laughter.

I would not have found the horse that made me laugh if I hadn't searched for, found, and listened to the video below.  For some reason, the horse video in the sidebar caught my attention.  Who knows why.

3 comments:

Colette said...

What a character that horse is, he just wouldn't let it go.

Sabine said...

Same here. My mother drove us to horse riding lessons every week, watching from the wings. I never lost my fear and after one particularly bad fall, finally had the courage to refuse going back up and I haven't been on a horse since. That fall actually fractured my coccyx but it took four years of restless sitting to diagnose and remedy this.

I don't think I ever saw my mother riding a horse, apart from photographs, did you?

am said...

Colette -- Yes!

Sabine -- Sorry to hear that you were injured as a result of riding. When the young woman in the video first lost her balance, I could feel in my body how that would feel and how dangerous horseback riding can be. The video could just as easily have been documentation of a serious injury to the young woman.

Such a relief to see the young woman unhurt and to be able to enjoy watching the horse evade capture and complete the course and then calmly return to the young woman.

I don't have any memory of seeing my mother riding, although I do have a photo of my mother wearing jodhpurs and jodhpur boots. She is standing next to me and a horse I rode when I first took riding lessons. That was the summer just before I turned 8 years old. I may have posted the photo on my blog before. Maybe not.