Back in the saddle

The coastal breeze on Sea Island carried a bouquet of aromas. The tang of salt sea air from the Atlantic coast nearby, the lush marshes beside the causeway, palmettos, white gardenias in full bloom. But it was the familiar fragrance of horse hide and fly spray that hit me like a gentle glove across the cheek and made me smile and inhale deeply in recognition.

I was about to go horseback riding on the beach in coastal southern Georgia, and this was a very big deal for several reasons. Despite owning horses for close to thirty five years, I hadn't been on board more than twice in the last fourteen, ever since the riding accident.

I'm a very lucky person. I took a long fall off a tall horse in a jumping lesson when I was pushing my limits in more physical ways, and ended up in a body cast for three months with a fractured vertebra in the middle of my back. Every day, I remember how fortunate I am that I came out of the accident alive, and came out of the body cast hurting...but still walking. The accident was one of those transforming events that divides the world as you know it into "before" and "after." I got braver, I got more intuitive, I went to law school and tested my limits in ways I could never have imagined before. When you start law school with a severe tendency to hyperventilate when called on for public speaking, what are the odds you'll not faint from nervousness when you have to argue before the state supreme court? Pretty slim. If anyone had placed bets, they'd have a nice little nest egg now.

But the horseback riding, which had been part of my life since I was a pre-teen, fell to the side. At first it was a case of still recovering from the accident. I went for a whole year afterward, measuring just how much pain it would cost me to pick up a dirty sock, and keeping a running tally of the number of times I could reasonably bend over in a day before my back quit holding me up. And then I started law school. My theory at the time was that as my kids got older, they would need me less and I'd have more time to devote to school and other things. Any parent of high schoolers who participate in sports would have laughed his or her head off at my naivete. I found that as they got older, I only got busier...but by then it was too late to rethink the plan.

But free time was only part of the problem. As my body gradually regained some semblance of "normal," I found that by that point my horses had finally grown too old and decrepit with age to ride. One suffered from arthritis, the other from emphysema and the occasional case of "founder." They lived out the rest of their thirty-plus year lifespans as expensive and pampered lawn ornaments, their nearness a comfort and a thing of beauty but their "useful" lives done with as far as remotely earning their keep.

I climbed into a saddle only twice after that. Once was a trail ride a few years after the accident, with my eleven year old son and a group of other children who had taken some basic riding lessons through the local recreation department. This, I thought, would be easy. A nice, gentle, completely supervised reintroduction to a part of me that I truly missed. I confess I was scared to death the entire way, uneasy in the saddle, hestitant and unsure. The next time was a few years later, when I took one of my daughters out West for a trip before college. A trail ride through the woods near the Grand Canyon seemed like fun, we thought. Again, I remember an overlay of dread and not much else.

But here I was, staying down on St. Simons Island, Georgia, taking part in the "Scribbler's Retreat" writers conference, and visiting my favorite place on the planet with a whole new perspective. Recalling wonderful week-long spring vacations on St. Simons when the kids were all young enough to get the same Easter breaks, I had wondered, before I hooked up with the conference, whether I would ever have a reason to return to this serene place. And how it would feel to walk the beach solo, without a herd of four children to count heads on continually, like a mother duck checking her trailing brood.

I settled in just fine. Picked up a rental car for a day of "me" time before the conference started, sat on the beach beside a tidal pool and watched a Great White Egret move in stop-motion as he stalked his dinner, admired the last of the blooming azaleas in the area, climbed to the top of the lighthouse, shopped for souvenirs at a delightful stained glass shop, "Pane in the Glass," which had been completely off the register for me before despite driving past it dozens of times on earlier trips with the kids in tow. The same way someone leading a bull by the nose would be reluctant to take him into a china shop.

And in reclaiming myself on the island, I asked my island friend Jeanie to set me up with a horseback ride on the beach. No better place to confront the fears of the past, I thought.

And so here I stood, as the trail steeds rested in their shaded stalls, all freshly groomed and saddled and sprayed for the first ride of the day, steadily munching their hay and smelling like a familiar trip through most of my life. I was matched up with a well-mannered little chestnut mare named "Penny," and once we were properly cinched up and our stirrups adjusted for length, our little band of four riders and a guide set off at a leisurely walk to the shoreline.

I ached in various places for pretty much all of the two hour ride. Knees, ankles, thighs, hips--all were body parts that hadn't been shifted into this position on a regular basis since I'd started having kids. Twenty some years ago. But the rhythm felt good, and the morning sunlight on the ocean was beautiful, and for the first time since the accident I could say that I wasn't afraid.

The ride triggered a sea of memories for me. Weekend riding lessons with my aunt in grade school; Friday evenings spent cantering through the woods on the outskirts of Chicago with my friends in our high school riding club; lunging my buckskin in large circles with voice commands, a long-handled whip cracking the air gently behind his haunches for encouragement; Sunday mornings spent on trail rides when I was eighteen, worshipping at the altar of nature with just my favorite livery horse for company.

It was a delightful trip through banks of memories, and it's still far from over. And it all started with the smell of horsehide and fly spray...