palace of winds

I had to pull a tick off my toe this morning. NOT a good way to wake up. So now I’m all paranoid, wondering how long it was there, where I picked it up, if there are eighty-seven more lurking in my bed somewhere. I kind of want to crawl on out of my skin to somewhere safe and tick-free.

But then, driving into work this morning, I realized it’s Tuesday. Tuesday! What a great feeling.

I had a pretty fantastic long weekend. I missed having Bren up, but Beth and I had a blast in her honor. We had tons of good food, browsed Ikea & Patina & Dream Haven, visited the pony and Molly’s puppies, saw Prince of Persia (I liked it!), and went to a Saints game (complete with tailgating and fireworks). The weather was absolutely gorgeous, aside from some brief smatterings of rain during the ballgame (which worked as a nice excuse to smooch with my man under the umbrella, ha). Beth headed back for the wilds of Iowa mid-morning yesterday, and I spent the day with said man, enjoying the sunshine. We discovered swings across the street from my apartment. Swings! Swings are one of my absolute favorite things in the world. We also found a little walking path/alley/supposed park meandering through some of the neighborhoods just northeast of me, and spent a while walking through what could have been a movie set of suburbia: blue sky, singing birds, manicured lawns, laughing kids. The afternoon rounded out with a nap in the hammock, which is another of my favorite ways to spend a sunny day.

Before all that I had a pretty perfect Friday too, come to think of it. My trusty Friday night riding buddy and I took our horses out in the back field. All the baby jumps from the Pony Club rally a couple weeks ago are still there, so I jumped Poe out there for the first time. He found it all very very exciting, and charged boldly over everything (except that one run-out we had because he was charging TOO boldly pell-mell across the field — definitely need to bit him up a little before next time!). He even cantered into and through the water! After bopping over the three baby-baby fences we meandered over to the BN bank. He went up to the edge willingly enough, but was giving it the eye, trying to figure out what the heck it was all about. When Lennie walked her horse Ollie past him and Ollie popped off the bank, Poe’s expression was priceless: Oh! That’s how it works. Well, if he can do it, I certainly can! And he hopped right off after Ollie. This horse, he is going to be a cross-country maniac. I can’t wait.

I spend a lot of time dreamy and far-off, thinking about horses. Window-shopping for horse stuff online, reading forums, watching videos. In the saddle in my head. But they are, in the end, a call to now. When it’s good, how it should be — which it is most of the time — you’re there with the horse, and you’re there. Present.

It’s about you and the horse, and it doesn’t have quite the same centering self-aware-ening as yoga, say, but when I’m riding — even when I’m frustrating us through a failed leg-yield, or trying Yet Again for that left bend I just can’t get — I can promise I’m not thinking about that problem at work, or what I’m going to have for dinner, or the dishes waiting in the sink. I’ve been riding Everett a couple times a week, and he is especially a call to the big wide world. It’s been beautiful, a fairytale April, all warmth and sunshine and tiny blossoms and things coming up green. We walk and I remember to breathe deeply and look far.

Baron Baptiste is in my head this morning. “We are either now here, or we’re nowhere,” he says. “Be present.”

It’s humid.

Let me say that again: IT’S HUMID. It’s April, and it’s humid! No snow. I spent the morning on the couch in my summer pjs (I love days the market’s closed!), sweating. In April! I think the weather’s mocking me for that time a couple weeks ago when it was really pretty nice, like a brisk fall day, and I told Joe I wished it was maybe 85 or 90, 95. (Dear Weather: I meant hot, not humid.) But I love it! It’s good. I’ll take it, and months more.

I think I’m also paying for having fallen off the exercising bandwagon. I’ve done a little step aerobicizing over the last year, in fits and starts, but mostly I’ve been larking around on my horse. (If you’ve never ridden a horse, let me clarify: they’re work! Just generally not as much work as step aerobics, at least not at my skill level.) So I’m trying to clamber back on the wagon, and just finished an hour puffing on and off the step, and bunny-hopping, mamba-chachaing, clean’n'pressing. I would like to once again be the person who can get up a half an hour earlier to do this before work.

Mr. Poe-face has been amazing. (Guess it might be time I consider banning that word from my horse vocabulary — I think I say that every time I talk about him.) He’s just so fun and generous and sweet, and I cannot. wait. to gallop the hell out of a Novice xc course with him. I mean, that’s years away: he’s not quite four yet. I imagine we’ll start jumping lightly later this summer/fall, and spend summer 2011 at Beginner Novice. I can’t make any other predictions until I’ve actually had him out cross-country, gotten some field trips under his belt and all that. (But who am I kidding: I have my secret hopes that we’ll be ready to move up to Novice in 2012. I also have secret hopes that I will grow a pair and be able to do Training in a few years, and maybe even run Prelim at some point? That is how much I like this horse: I have actually thought about Prelim.)

And now, before this rambles any further, I’m going to find some lunch.

Five months ago, give or take a few days, I handed over the leadrope of my first horse, and watched him walk into a trailer and off to his new life.

Yesterday, I saw him again. I’ve spent the last five months searching for his replacement (I rode twenty-five! before finding the new guy) and then getting back to training. From the looks of things, Ev’s spent the last five months in a pile of hay.

Part of it, I’m sure, is that I’ve been looking at Poe’s scrawny, tragic no-neck for the last three months — but Everett’s is looking particularly chunky. I’m very excited to hop on next week and see how much I’ve forgotten about how he goes.

Huge milestones for the Poe-nay: Sunday we went down the road with some buddies, and Monday all alone! He was a total superstar, especially on Sunday. He marched right out in the lead, alert but not freaked. Monday we went further than we had the day before, and he did a lot more tip-toeing without his buddies for back-up. We had a couple sticky moments checking out some new horses and a guy with a ladder, and when two kids came flying toward us on bikes. Bikes are a big scary for a lot of horses. Luckily the kids were very sweet; they noticed he was freaked and stopped a bit away from us. I hopped off (he was thinking about exiting stage right, and I didn’t want to let it get to that point), and coaxed him over to sniff the bikes. He never totally relaxed with them, but he was very brave, so I thanked the kids and continued on home. All said, I’m very proud of my little dude.

Okay — I started writing this post yesterday (Wednesday), but now I have more proud-of-my-pony to share: Yesterday we rode out again (with two others down to the culdesac, and five others up to the top of the hill), and he was perfect. There’s a fairly busy state trail (the Luce Line) that crosses our dirt road, midway between the barn and the main road. It’s very pretty, winding through forest, orchard, next to fields, over bridges, past the llamas… Because of the trees at this particular intersection, the visibility isn’t so good until you’re right up next to it. We were walking next to Dan & Liz in the lead, and just as we came up to the trail crossing, someone came zooming up on a bike. He was very nice and slowed down as soon as he spotted us, but we had to either hurry on or stop directly in front of his path to let him go by. Since we had four others behind us we stopped, and I prayed my pony wouldn’t come unglued with a scary wheely monster passing right by his nose.

And honestly, I thought at first he hadn’t seen it. Surely he hadn’t noticed it yet, because he was just standing there, totally chill. I was ready for him to spot it any second and go flying backwards — but he never did. I don’t know if it’s because his buddy Dan couldn’t've cared less about it, or because it was crossing his path instead of coming at him, or if he figured out bikes don’t bite. Whatever the reason, he looked at it and just didn’t care one bit. Horses, go figure.

We headed back to the indoor arena after our short but highly successful jaunt, just for a little trotwork and a brief canter each direction. I also wanted to make sure he was more settled about the open door (we had a big turn-and-scoot away from it before the road hack, when he caught sight of Riley coming down from the barn, and afterwards a bad case of bulgy-shoulder-itis). He was lovely — very responsive and working beautifully over his back. We had a stellar walk-trot transition: he stayed quiet, steady in the bridle, head down, and stepped right into it. The canter work was less good, but not horrible. We finished up by working on getting into the far right corner, which has become a bit of an issue in the last week; it’s not fixed, but we’re getting there!

You know, I’d originally planned to write about the instructor dilemma I’m having, but I think I’m going to leave it for another post. The sun is shining, my horse is awesome, and today I’m just feeling pretty darn good about it all.