I nudged Valentine, a chestnut pinto, clockwise along the rail and stopped in the middle of the arena’s oval short end, aligning my body perpendicular with the letter C placard. The horse and I backed up. One step. Two. Val hesitated with each go and twitched her ears, an indication that she might be listening to my legs pressed to her sides, or listening for something else. Something in the immediate wildlands, a saved-from-the-developer stand of Pacific Northwest lowland forest, chocked with fir, broadleaf maple, madrone, and blackberry bushes as tall as the mare’s paddock shelter. Val feared letter C, feared the arena’s northern end, the hotbed of fear. 

There were six of us in this October afternoon lesson. We rode dressage, a regimented style of English riding, and hugged the fence. Eleven letters, equally spaced, embellished the arena’s white posts. We had been instructed to ride the distance of two letters, stop, back up five steps, then move in a posting trot for two more letters, and to repeat the sequence as we ringed the arena. This was our third loop. The letters, black print on white placards, served as a touchstone, both for us riders and for the trainer, who sat in a covered box along the arena’s long side, adjacent to a meadow. The letters were arranged counter-clockwise, in a time-honored sequence: A Fat Palomino Broodmare Rarely Makes Calm Horses, Several Extend Vicious Kicks. Whoever made up this mnemonic for the letters’ order understood the mindset of a horse under saddle. 

A covey of quail often lurking on the other side of the railing, in that patch between tamed and untamed, feared letter C, too. Val’s churning hooves sometimes startled the bug-hunters, shooting them skyward and leaving their stomachs empty. Consequently, this feathered scattershot spooked Val and her sudden jump sideways jolted me. So I too, feared letter C. 

Lengthening my heels to relieve lower back muscles, I tapped boots to Val’s blotchy sides, urging her into a trot, adjusting her speed so I stayed a letter’s distance ahead of Alice, the youngest at eleven years old, on a Norwegian Fjord pony. Any closer and our horses might nip or kick each other, and toss us. We rode. Stopped. Backed up. Trotted. Horses snorted. Riders sighed. I concentrated with each transition, studied position: heel, butt, hand, hoof, concentrated hard, like learning to identify weeds so I wouldn’t yank the good with the bad. We were learning fundamentals, mastering rules, a lesson in two C-letter words: control and connection.

When I had started training at summer’s beginning with Sara, she had asked me my goals. I want to look good, I said. Sara, her short white hair bobbing, had nodded. 

Head up. Back straight. Heels down. Hands loosely holding reins, thumbs on top. Elbows in. Thighs against saddle’s knee roll, shins wrapping belly. Crisp pants, polished boots, matte-black helmet. Collared shirt. Pony-tailed hair. Tight butt and firm waist. No flopping. No flailing. No stooping or leaning. No anxiety. No fear. Calm. Relaxed. Effortless. One with the horse. Connected. 

On our fourth lap, Val and I were in sync, and the grip I held on my mental to-do list softened. No anticipating my terrier’s bladder, insisting she pee outside and not on the wood floors. No coaxing my skin-and-bones cat to try, just try, the salmon pâté that two days ago she had gobbled. No telling my work team to plant this and order that in our business of restoring habitat. Seems I was always telling somebody to do something. 

“Sit a bounce, Lisa, get your diagonal,” Sara shouted. I had been airborne when my butt should have touched saddle, and sitting when I should have been airborne. Posting wrong made for a jouncey ride and hurt Val’s spine.

Sara did not correct any one else. Alice, like the other girls, the oldest fourteen, felt in their souls the rhythm of their horse’s motion, when their best friend’s right leg led, they were airborne. Riding connected meant making the postured, stiff exercises appear effortless.

***

Five years of lessons later, effortlessness has remained out of reach. 

“How was your ride?” My twenty-something year old daughter, Ava, asked recently, a question akin to asking a non-horsey person about their day. 

“Just O.K.” Now, I rode with the women, rode within the lines of conformity. I missed riding with the girls. But they had grown into teenagers and none of them, especially Alice, needed my help tacking up. “Sometimes, I think my barn name should be ‘Sit-a-bounce-Lisa,’” I added. Horses had barn names, which differed to those on their documented papers, sometimes referring to cutesiness or behavior traits. So why not the riders?

“This all should be second nature by now,” Ava responded.

***

In those early months of learning, the girls didn’t know what to make of me. I was a beginner or I wouldn’t be in their lesson. But before we had entered the arena, Sara had asked me to help tack up for Alice. I had cinched the Fjord’s girth, set stirrup heights for Alice’s short legs, held the stocky pony, more suited for disking loam in plow’s traces than riding, so Alice could climb onto her saddle. If I was a beginner I shouldn’t have known how to tack up a horse. If I wasn’t a beginner, then I should have been in the earlier lesson, the one with other women my age, women who were brushing their sweaty horses in the adjacent barn, women with one eye on their horse and the other on the arena and us newbies. 

What was I doing at the barn? 

As a single mom I had brushed Ava’s chestnut Zangersheide mare. At a different barn, in a different state, I had untangled the mare’s black tail, picked ebony hooves, held supple, well-worn leather reins so my youngest child could settle into the saddle. For fifteen years, I had served as groom to her two horses, first a white Hanoverian, followed by the chestnut, at the barn and at shows both in town and elsewhere. When Ava left for college, she’d sold her last horse, the selling making me sob more than her. Ava’s absence was a tear in my heart, but the compounded loss of the mare and her horsey smell—sun-dried hay and sweet alfalfa grass—that lingered on hands, jacket, pony-tailed hair, triggered atrial fibrillation.

Which had led me to treatment at Sara’s.

“Go large!” Sara shouted, meaning no more stop-starts. No more control. We were simply to ride.   

Behind me, at letter H, Alice set her heel on the magic button of the pony’s flank. Smoothly transitioning to a faster pace, the Fjord’s toilet-brush-for-a-mane undulated as her round rump loped. Compared to the others, mustangs and American quarter horses like Val, the Fjord was a tug-boat among sailboats. An adult would have been embarrassed to ride her, even if they were of the right height. But Alice didn’t care. As the pony went large, Alice’s shoulders relaxed and she melted into her saddle. 

Alice was flying, at least in her mind. 

Which was why I preferred riding with the kids. 

The women riders worried. Would their horse bolt while tacking up? Bite while cinching girth? Move away from the mounting block so they stepped into air instead of onto the saddle? And, once riding, were they holding the correct posture? Was their horse collected, horse-talk for the horse holding the correct posture? When (not if) would the quail scatter with rustling wings and chirping voices? Would their horse pitch them in the dirt? When they weren’t worrying, the women riders spent their lessons on transitions, on rules. Trot. Walk. Back up. Walk. Trot. Canter. Trot. Stop. Turn on the haunches. Repeat. They buffed the C in control to a shine as polished as their tall leather boots. 

“Lisa,” Sara shouted. “At letter A come down the midline.” 

The referenced line was invisible. Sara had taught us that three lines transected the unmarked footing: midline and two quarters, the middle of each half. These lines were to be straddled, weight not thrown too far right or left, a lesson in control. I trotted Val along my line. I looked smack dab between the pinto’s alert ears and twinkled reins. I nudged heels against flanks. Right. Left. Right. Pointed Val dead on my line, aimed for C.

Like a child seeking approval, I hoped the women riders noticed how well I rode. 

“Perfect, Lisa,” Sara commented. 

I was about to say, “It’s all Val,” which was what the women often said when complimented because to say otherwise was to gloat. Somewhere between girlhood and womanhood we learned not to take credit. Learned to transform unseen lines into constraints. Learned to navigate rules. Learned to exist within lines. Learned to not cross them. 

I didn’t say anything. I was proud of myself. I understood, though, that me navigating straightness wasn’t all me. Or Val. Our straightness was both of us, together, connected. 

***

“How was your ride,” Ava asked recently. 

“I’m trotting better.”

“No more Sit-a-bounce-Lisas?”

Silence.

  “OMG, you should have mastered posting long ago. As well as cantering.” 

“I’m working on my seat,” I responded. Working on connection. On making any gait second nature. On being one with the horse. Which Ava was, and probably always had been, from the get-go.

***

Like the girls were.

“Alice,” Sara said. “Your turn.”

The rest of us stood still, adjacent to a letter and waited.

At A Alice eyed the woodlands opposite and trotted the Fjord along her line toward C. The pony see-sawed her hind. Shifted toward the meadow, shifted toward the paddocks. She wobbled. She wiggled. There was nothing straight about it. 

“Nicely done!” Sara shouted.

Alice pumped air with her left arm. She bent over saddle’s pommel and rubbed her Fjord’s thick gray neck with both hands. The other girls cheered.

A line was what one made of it.

The girls had yet to lean into perfection. Yet to feel scared at C. Yet to worry about what they looked like to others. They rode for fun. 

We trotted two more letters. Sensing my posting timing off, I stood in the saddle for two beats until I caught up with Val’s movement, then I moved with her. 

“Good catch, Lisa,” Sara said.

I concentrated on Val’s rhythm, which tethered my mind to riding, which required effort. 

***

“How was your ride?” Ava asked recently.

“Stressful. Exhausting.”

“Horses are supposed to be the place to escape to. Why keep at it, if riding makes you stressed?”

Because for an hour or so, I wasn’t telling somebody to do something. Not the dog or the cat or my work team. For bits of the hour my brain cleared. My to-do list vanished. I concentrated on how to fly.

Fun, though, remained elusive. Sometimes, I found my groove with Val. Sometimes, I felt elation, like Alice had. But for the most part, the something I sought remained out of reach. So why did I ride? Why, when I could fall at Letter C, like I had once and broken my right pelvis and landed in the hospital and rehab. Why?

Because I wanted to ride like Ava. Like Alice. I wanted to fly, even if for a teeny-tiny bit of my lesson. I wanted to go large.

***

“Your turn, Tara,” Sara shouted.

Tara, the oldest of the girls, jabbed her boot heel into Taz’s side. The chestnut shook his head, a sign of displeasure. Tara smacked his butt with her whip, and Taz sprinted forward along the midline. Tara gritted her teeth, yanked on the reins. Taz shook his head again, kicked out his right hind leg. Again, Tara whipped him.

Val stiffened beneath me, probably worried she would be treated as poorly. 

“It’s Taz’s fault,” Tara yelled, arriving crooked at C. “He tried to buck me.” She pulled again on his bit to show the chestnut who was boss. “My line would have been straight if it wasn’t for him.”

“Use your legs next time,” Sara said. “Connect to the horse, not force him to do what you ask.”

The riders remained silent. Nobody commented. Nobody commiserated. From the barn, the women shook their heads. Some, like me, had taken up riding after their daughters had left for college, some had ridden from a young age, some had started riding as a retirement hobby. 

“Go large,” Sara shouted.

We picked up the trot and looped the ring. I was flying. Free. Up. Down. Up. Up. Down.

“Sit a bounce, Lisa.”

After the lesson, as I lugged my saddle, girth, and bridle to the tack room. Tara approached me. The other girls were putting away their tack as well.

“Are you going to muck out Val’s stall?” She asked.

I stopped. The others stopped, too. Tara took two steps forward.

“No, I’m not,” I answered. Today was not my day to muck stalls. Mucking stalls was after Saturday’s lesson, and today was Wednesday. Today was Tara’s day, to muck Taz’s stall and Val’s. 

“You have to. You rode Val.” 

Cleaning after your horse on the day of your lesson was optional, seen as good for the barn community, virtuous even. But I had to adult and return to my remote job.

The other girls watched, waited. They never stood up to Tara. Not when she told them to wash Taz. Not when she demanded they push the heavy wheelbarrow full of stinky manure, claiming her back hurt. Not when she chased them with a whip. Not when she told them to do her chores.

The women riders watched, too. Like the girls, they stayed clear of Tara. Discipline was up to Sara, they said: her barn, her rules. But we talked about Tara. About her treating the girls poorly, being rough on Taz, bossing her grandfather around, the man that had custody of her because her dad was in prison and her mom lived two states away. We talked about Sara putting up with Tara because Sara hoped to make a difference in the girl’s life, hoped Tara would find connection. 

“You rode Val.” Tara said. “So you muck.” She took a step closer. Puffed up her chest. 

Up until now, I wasn’t sure what to make of her boldness. Yes, I wanted more assertive women in the world. Yes, I wanted to encourage teenage girls to be leaders. But community, another reason I rode, did not include bullies. 

“I’m not mucking Val’s stall,” I answered. 

“Don’t make me do something you’ll regret.” She balled her fists at her thighs. Closed her eyes, scrunched up her face. 

For a beat, I thought she might hit me. 

But she stepped back. Threw up her hands. “You’re… You’re… An old lady rider,” She blurted.

I was an old lady. Unbeknownst, she’d gifted me a compliment.

Tara could have said I was an unconnected rider who couldn’t get her diagonals. If she had hurled that insult, I would have wilted. But she had called me a rider.

Putting away my saddle on Val’s rack in the tack room, I brushed horse hair from my form-fitting pants and breathed in the heady scent of dried manure, alfalfa, and beet pulp. 

***

“How was your lesson,” Ava asked recently.

“Excellent,” I said. “For a moment.” I squeezed thumb to forefinger, “I flew.”