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Horseback Riding with Grace
I grew up riding. My grandpa used to put riding reins instead of driving reins on old Champ, his work horse, and put me up on him. Grandpa would go away, and Champ and I would disk the whole field by ourselves. I was about five. He'd let me drive Champ hitched up to the stone boat or the wagon. Those are good memories.
When I was ten and living in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, my mother used to drive me to Shaker Heights for riding lessons. I learned how to walk, trot, canter. And at twelve I got my own horse, Star, one of the great joys of my life for many years! Later I acquired and trained a beautiful mare, Vicki, whom I showed for a number of years in both English and Western classes. I also taught riding during those years, using old Star, occasionally Vicki for good pupils, at my riding ring at home or at the pupils' homes. $2.00 an hour back then--the early to mid-50's.
Somehow, though, when I started riding motorcycles, the horses became less important; I wanted to take down the pasture fences so I could ride my m-x bike back there, practice race moves. And somehow twenty years went by that I didn't ride anymore. I'd planned to go again with a friend during Christmas break in l990, but that was the winter I herniated the disk in my back, and a lot of things went on hold.
But this past fall, I finally rode again. I went with a friend to a lovely horse farm, was given a huge (17 hands?) white horse (click for a poem) that loomed like e.e.cummings'   "dreamhorse" out of the dim stall and into the bright lights of the ring. You don't forget how to ride. Once I was on, I ceased to wonder how my back would be. It was as if no time at all had gone by.
A short story , "The Day the Horses Came," based on my childhood with horses, a magical but true incident involving my first horse, Star, is included in a collection of  sports fiction for young girls called Girls Got Game (ed. Sue Macy),along with three poems on track, basketball, and soccer, from Henry Holt Co. 2001.
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©1996 Grace Butcher