aIMG_6717, a photo by k0re on Flickr.

Bells was a witch today, for Reasons, but by Grabthar’s hammer I am fond of this mare.

…is that these days I ride her on the lightest imaginable contact with the lightest imaginable aids, and yet when Sonya says “lengthen!” and I ask invisibly for a lengthened stride, Sonya then says “good!”

I used to haul this mare around like a school horse, and now I hold her in my hands like she is made of spun crystal, and she does not put a single hoof wrong. I sink into the saddle in front of fences and feel her locking on five strides out. “Everyone chill out, I got this,” she says. I soar. I am a hawk.

My calves are absurdly hypertrophied from trying to keep my damn heels down, such that the field boots I bought with an already-widest-possible calf are currently at Anthony’s being stretched.

Tuesday night lessons are usually really hard; it is dark, it is cold, and we are tired after work.

But lessons on Bella are always good, and lately they have been near-magical. We did an exercise where we trotted ten strides and then came back to the walk for three and then trotted for ten and back for three and so on. My contact remained the same and Bella softened and softened and softened until she was trotting off the barest pressure from my leg. Then we did it again in the canter and trot, ten strides of canter, three strides of trot. We fell into the rhythm. Back engaged, neck arched, she cantered at a breath.

A waking dream.

Dez took off her own spurs and buckled them on under my chaps: “Your leg’s quiet enough now.” Alex had already put the rope gag bit on Bella: “Your hands are quiet enough.” Responsible horsepeople won’t give you the grown-up kit until you’ve proved you won’t misuse it.

Bella, moving off my leg. Bella giving me more forward than I was asking for: the best and most welcome of mistakes. Bella stepping up from behind and flowing forward. My hands quiet and still, my elbows floppy.

Bella reaching down into the contact.

Sunday I was an hour and a half early to my lesson, to Jeremy’s infinite amusement. I hung out in the cafe in Ladera watching Men With European Cars. It was one of those meetings where they stand around looking at engines and discussing detailing. O the infinity of my scorn, but standing around discussing flexion and distances is the same exact thing. I am lucky, they are lucky, to be so fond of something so complicated.

I rode Austin, as I have not done in ages. I first rode him when I was still in my twenties and he was barely more than a colt. He’s my friend Beth’s horse and he’s one of the best horses in the world. I’d put my kids on him without hesitation, and yet I can ask him for flying changes and lateral work and he’ll give them willingly. That’s rarer and more precious than anything you can imagine.

I told Nicole I wanted to work on having a more consistent leg and a more following hand, which turned out to be a mistake, because she cranked up my stirrups to jockey length to stretch the tendons and everything still hurts. It worked, of course, and I went on to ride Austin really well, which is lucky because Beth came to watch. The last course we rode was good, and the last line especially good; I relaxed and sank into the saddle and Austin liked that.

I was sugar crashing when I got home and had to collect the Fitzhardinges. I desperately wanted the linguini and clams from Park Chow, as you do, but I knew I couldn’t make it that far. I was finding a place to park near Church and Market when Jeremy reminded me that there is another Chow right there. When my linguini appeared in front of me I was teary with the pleasure of a wish come true.

We met Gilbert and Heather and Heath and Ada in GG Park and rented paddleboats and had pirate and accordion battles all around Strawberry Hill. Then we climbed the hill, passing a drag queen photo shoot at the waterfall. In the ruins on the peak the four children fell into a complex and brilliant medieval castle game that I was sad to have to end, so we planned a picnic there next week for a rematch.

Al left this morning, but I did get to follow him all the way out to Cobbadah, which made me feel a bit less like crying. Mum and Jeremy and I were on our way to Upper Horton and the last day of the big New Year’s campdraft.

I had no idea what the rules are, but a really nice lady named Jen explained that each competitor cuts out a head of cattle from a herd of seven or eight in a small corral called the “camp.” Then they ask for the gate to be opened, and they race the cow (sorry, “beast”) out into the big arena, where they chase it around a figure eight and through a gate marked with road cones. (Not actually cones; it’s the tall cylindrical ones that Google says are called traffic delineators, but Sarah says if I use the word delineator in my blog it makes me a major wanker. Such are the perils of blogging at my sister’s house.)

Campdrafting? Is awesome. The horses are all compact little stock horses, with big butts but built uphill, light in front and high head carriage. When you see them working cows, you see why. They sink back onto their hocks and pirouette left, pirouette right. They keep the beast in that big high eye of theirs. Then when the gate opens, they take off like a rocket after the sprinting cow. The riders sit them like centaurs, riding in plain snaffles, and the horses pull up short when the rider so much as thinks about stopping.

Did I mention that this is awesome? It’s really, really cool to watch. You lean on the fence, while ten feet away the horses lock intensely onto the cows, and the cows spin and run. Mum and Jeremy enjoyed it, and I could have watched it for hours, except that I got hungry. We had sausage sandwiches and cups of tea. We’d watched this one epic run early on, a big guy on a lovely chestnut with a baldy face, and I was beyond thrilled when they packed up during lunch and presented awards, and my favourite chestnut walked away with the grand prize. Then we drove home the back way, which was SPECTACULARLY BEAUTIFUL, like a huge park; like you imagine the grounds of Pemberley.

There was a dead fox on the road which because I am my father’s daughter I felt obliged to move. (He frets when carrion birds are killed on the roadkill carcases they are eating.) Poor little fox; it was quite fresh. Not fresh enough, as we discovered when I got back in the rental car with a boot reeking of decomposing fox. I washed it with water from a bottle, and also stopped at the next river to wade around. These are my favourite Frye boots! I guess at least they’ve been blooded. I offered Mum the brush, but she politely declined.

Got back to Sarah’s to find that the children had had three bowls of Cocoa Bombs and were watching cartoons. It’s the best day ever.

Since we last spoke about riding in a frame, I have tried the same technique on Archie and Jackson. (Dudley, Bella, Louie, Archie, Jackson, Mattie, Ruth, Verina, Oliver: why yes, our barn is actually a Montessori preschool in Pacific Heights.) They’re much more difficult than Dudley and harder even than Louie and Bella to get moving off my leg. Dez is right: it takes WAY more leg than you think, and slightly more leg than I actually have. My thighs shake after a serious session at this.

But even with Archie, and more so with Jackson who started the ride completely inverted and did a 180, I managed a few steps of fluid softness. I itch to ride more. The feeling is so extraordinary. The resistance goes away. Freely forward.

When I’ve had enough to drink, I talk about godshatter, an idea I have stolen from Vernor Vinge. I think consciousness is a shard of a mirror, and that our chosen family, our jati (an idea I stole from Kim Stanley Robinson, who stole it from Hindu), is composed of the pieces near us in the jigsaw, so that together we make up a bigger piece of what for the sake of argument let’s call God. (Getting this far takes several drinks.) Obviously I think horses are conscious too. When I ride well, I am part of a bigger and more splendid thing.

Taken all together, that’s what we are. That’s why we love. The idea that we are not all on the same team is the first and most pernicious illusion, but it can be dispelled. (Of course the idea that we ARE all on the same team is another illusion, exploited by the oligarchy for political gain, but that is another ranty for another time.)

Last Friday I rode Dudley, sweet Dudley, beautiful Dudley. He’s a thoroughbred-ish bay with a chewed-off half a tail (Jeremy: “Which half?”) and I have come to love him with a pure love. I have called him “Bella, only uphill” and “my favourite now.” It was a cold morning and he came out of the stall very short in front and stiff in the shoulder. He’s in his teens and arthritic – he was a perfect child’s hunter for years – so he’s entitled to be a little ouchy, but I am not yet a soft and giving enough rider to warm him up out of it properly, so Dez said “Let me get on him for a second.”

I love watching the trainers ride, and I had never seen Dudley under saddle before, and it was an eye-opener. I saw how still Dez kept her lower leg and how tactful but firm she was. Most of all I saw that when she asked Dudley to move off her leg and use his back and flex at the poll, he did it, and then she rode him around with almost no pressure on the reins, but his nose stayed down because he was working correctly. And behold, he was not sore. Behold, in fact, he was incredibly beautiful.

“He takes way more leg than you think,” said Dez when she gave him back, and this turned out to be the key insight.

I got back on determined to do better, and put my lower leg on and kept it on, and asked him for deep and round and low, and he gave it to me and was far happier. Dez was thrilled with me. Getting a horse on the bit is a vexed topic – look! I have written about it at absurd length already – but the critical point is to ask and not demand, to use tact and not force. If you pull the horse’s head in, it doesn’t count. On that ride on Dudley I felt how I could use that strong leg to move him forward into a steady contact from behind. (One of the things I like best about Dudley is that he lets me feel that I am in charge of where his hind legs go.)

And then I tried it with Louie, on Sunday morning, and he was a different horse, more responsive, less spooky. And then I tried it again on Bella this morning. You can’t haul Bella’s nose in when you first get on her anyway. She has too much self-esteem. That mare has nineteen dozen different ways of expressing the concept “Fuck you” with her back hooves. But when we came back from a canter I kept my leg on and held the outside rein and squeezed the inside rein. She did that “Seriously, screw you” thing she does with her neck and shoulders, and then, and then, she settled into a sweet round frame.

I kept asking and kept asking and we did two or three big circles, and for three or four strides on the last one I felt her move up into a little self-carriage, bending her whole body on the arc of the circle, arch-necked, so perfect, so beautiful.

(Dudley’s adorable and divine, but my favourite? Bella’s my favourite. Who else?)

I feel like I have taken myself apart – putting my heels down, strengthening my calves, unpinning my knees, rolling my thighs forward, sitting on my seatbones, keeping my hips elastic, half-halting from my abs, opening my shoulders, keeping my eyes tracking ahead, making my elbows soft, doing less and less and less with my hands. Concentrating on one of those things for two or three or four lessons at a time. Now, finally, I am strong and balanced enough to put it all together.

Because riding a horse is actually very easy. You think about all of those things all the time, and work really really hard to make your body relaxed and supple, and then you apply exquisitely correct aids.

Works every time!

I’ve been riding at McIntosh long enough now to have a sense of the changing seasons. In summer, the poplars sparkle in the sunshine and we jump vast fences, laughing at danger. Then one day in October someone flips the switch and it’s winter. The horses have the wind under their tails and riders faceplant in the mud.

By November the outdoor arenas are knee-deep in wet and lessons are in the indoor, where the insane horse-traffic is punctuated by ponies having hysterics on the longe line, and where I cannot ride for toffee.

I’ve had three consecutive Tuesday evenings in the indoor on Louie, who it appears I have not introduced. Louie! Where to begin. He is a black Arabian gelding of extreme typiness. His head is very dished, his ears are small and point together, his eyes are like liquid planetoids melting with expression, his muzzle would fit in a teacup, his coat is velvet, his hoofs are porcelain, his tail is a silken black banner.

He’s the very incarnation of Walter Farley’s The Black Stallion, and when I was a child (and very pro-Arabian horse) I thought that kind of beauty would be an ALL SHALL LOVE HIM AND DESPAIR sort of experience. In fact, hunter/jumper barns consider exquisite black Arabian horses to be pretty much hilarious, and the standard reaction when people see him is more in the OOGLE WOOGLE OO IS AN ICKLE WICKLE PONY end of the spectrum.

I must say Louie doesn’t do much to undermine hunter/jumper stereotypes with respect to the Arabian horse. For the first few weeks he was here, every time he jumped a fence he would duck his head between his front legs so that he could glare at it as he went over to make sure that it didn’t move. He’s gained confidence since then, and his big schtick now is Being Alarmed By The Shadows, Being Alarmed By Creaky Sounds In The Roof, Being Alarmed By Those Fence Poles Stacked Over There, and Just Generally Being Alarmed. He bucks, he stands on his hind legs, he twirls. It’s not as scary as it sounds, because he’s probably only 15hh or 15.2 at most, and even my little short legs can wrap around him and stay on.

He makes me appreciate Bella and Dudley (who it appears I have not introduced.) Those guys are experts. When I give inexpert aids, they fill in the gaps. Louie’s not dumb (probably? A bit hard to tell. Excitable! Filled with glee!) but he was a parade horse; he has no very deep understanding of what it is we are trying to do. Bella and Dudley have theory. They can slice up courses and nail distances better than I can. Louie is always being surprised by poles. He hasn’t figured out yet that the poles are the point, the poles are part of a pattern, the pattern is the way people and horses play games and solve puzzles together. So I have to tell him more, explain things to him.

What’s really lovely about Louie is how responsive he is, how light my aids can be, how he does exactly what I tell him to do. What’s endlessly funny and humbling about him is that when he slams on all four brakes, snorting fire like a young and intemperate dragonlet, then Harrier Jump Jet vertically takes-off over A SINGLE POLE ON THE GROUND it’s because, oh God the shame, that’s exactly what I told him to do.

The way I know I love riding is that even when I am terrible, even when the horse is going backwards and sideways, even when I need three days of Ibuprofen to iron out the consequent kinks in my back, I still had more fun that I would have had doing almost anything else.

Bella was fresh on Sunday morning. Maybe… maybe too fresh. We rode a bending line from a crossrail to a vertical, then we were supposed to roll back to an oxer. But I was over-focused on the vertical and forgot about the rollback until we had landed, at which point I asked Bella for a canter pirouette in front of the sunken lane and she responded with three sharp bucks. I have a distinct memory of hovering above her at the top of the parabola, still holding the reins, saying in conversational tones: “Oh. Shit,” before gravity took over and I plummeted to earth.

I landed on the broad plane of my pelvis and knocked the wind out of myself. I have spent the week with a cowboyish hitch in my gait and a large bottle of Ibuprofen to hand.

Sometimes I worry this blog will turn into Interesting Falls From My Horse.

Claire: Mama, what is your favourite flavour of sorbet?

Me: I will eat any kind of sorbet.

Claire: Really?

Jeremy: Even poo-flavoured?

Claire: Even snot-flavoured?

Jan: What if we served you horse-flavoured sorbet? What would you say then?

Me: Ciao, Bella.

The night before last I dreamed that I was minding a store and couldn’t make change because the cash register was neatly filled with empty tubes of toothpaste.

Last night I dreamed that Alfie and Sugar were alive, and that they and Bebe were my animal friends and we and the girls were out having adventures. We went to a beautiful island like Kirrin Island, except that it was in Sydney Harbour. I parked Hedwig on the tidal flats and she was flooded, but we floated her to shore and there was magically no damage.

The dreams of Alfie are often especially vivid and concrete. In this one, he was occupied with business of his own but came, obligingly, when I called. I had to adjust his saddle because it had slipped back, and I saw and remembered how the blonde and chestnut hairs grew all crazy and hedgehog at the top of his tail. His red mane was almost a foot long and tangled in the salt spray. I lifted Julia onto him and she wound her hands in its strands.

Me: “It’s amazing what you can get used to.”

Optimal Husband: “Yes?”

Me: “Today I went riding with my daughter. And tonight I had an all-time top-three meal. I should be euphoric! Instead I am merely very happy.”

(Special commendations to the beet meringue. And the heirloom tomatoes with a tomato water on the side. And the sucking pig. But it was all just beautiful and delicious.)

Me: “This is a lovely book! The nice lady’s Thoroughbred trampled her and dislocated her shoulder and put a hoof through her shin so that her leg was hanging off by a flap of muscle and skin. And then she had adventures!”

Optimal Husband: “Adventures?”

Me: “Well, surgeries.”

Claire and Bounder, a photo by yatima on Flickr.

What with one thing and another.

(There’s a cameo from Robert Redford in which he is supremely annoying. But otherwise, this is a film that you can safely take your non-horsy significant other to, in the happy expectation of having a long talk about horses afterwards.)

I liked the handsome cowboy fine, and his half-passes on his pretty bay 6yo were good. But I didn’t love him until the terrible, terrible woman who raised her orphan colt with no respect and no boundaries, keeping it IN HER HOUSE, had finally agreed that it was too psychotic to live.

She thought of herself as a kind person but she is not.

We owe horses. We take away their agency, and in return, we are required to look after them. Kind and physically intuitive as they are (and they are kinder and more physically intuitive than you can imagine), domestic horses have to be taught how not to hurt people. An adult horse weighs a thousand pounds, give or take. Neglecting to train horses to be safe around people is morally equivalent to leaving loaded guns around the house.

The cowboy had to get the poor violent horse back onto the truck. The horse knew that it wasn’t going anywhere good. It hated all people. It had every reason. Its owner kept bugging the horse and bugging it, and the cowboy told her to leave it alone.

He stood there in the pen with the mad colt. He didn’t get angry. He didn’t get impatient. He waited until the horse was ready to walk onto the truck. He waited as if there were all the time in the world.

It was one of the few kindnesses anyone had ever shown that colt, and quite possibly the last.

I was up late and woke early and XO was out of chocolate croissants, so that although it was a glorious day I felt a bit frail and mostly glad that I would be riding Bella.

But also just a tiny, secret bit bummed, because she’s little and has an upside down neck and doesn’t really come on the bit like the BIG horses.

MOAR FULE ME.

“Dez,” I said to Dez, our lovely trainer: “should I be using a driving seat with Bella?” This is the sort of rubbish I get out of books.

“You already use too much driving seat,” said Dez, who is lovely. “I want her to move off your legs.”

So off we go, and I am pushing her and pushing her and also messing with the bit, because for heaven’s sake Bella you are a grown horse, do not be ponying around with your nose in the air.

“Leave the bit alone,” said Dez, fountain of loveliness. “It’s more important to get her moving forward.”

Okay, so, this isn’t working, why don’t I do a crazy thing and try what the trainer says. Leave Bella’s ridiculous head in the clouds and ride her off my leg into a light, consistent contact.

Trot without stirrups, counterflexion, circles at counterflexion, true flexion, canter, drop stirrups, flying change. Lots of work at the canter, me trying to sink into the saddle, hold my legs soft and still at her side. Not use a driving seat.

I started to feel her finding her own cadence. I tried to sit still and soft and supple, and actually felt my hips creaking, too stiff to move with her. Dez has always told me I do this, but I never felt it before. I tried to soften, and tried to soften, and tried and tried and tried.

And Bella reached her neck down into the contact.

Well, I thought. I’ll be damned.

She wasn’t arch-necked and picture-perfect like Archie and Dillon and Omni. Her little neck is too short for that. But she was moving off my leg and accepting the contact, and I had done it without my hands, just with patience and my seat.

Next we did a distance exercise and I threw away the reins and she ran out on me in front of a six-inch log, the little brat. But later again we jumped a course most of which was 2’9″ and half of which was oxers and all of which felt enormous to me. And we rode it in that same forward gleeful canter, united in a single purpose, counting strides and hitting good distances and taking off and landing like Fred and Ginger. I eased her into a trot with the biggest grin my face is capable of.

But the biggest happiness didn’t wash over me until later, when we were walking back to the barn, and I looked at the sun shining on her iridescent orange withers and her strawberry blonde mane. She may be little on the outside but don’t be fooled. Bella is large, she contains multitudes; she has infinitely more to teach me.

Showjumping is in and of itself a pointless pastime, I know that. On the drive down, Katie and I were chuckling about our habit of driving thirty miles to ride horses round and round in a small arena, and how we might explain this to our great-grandparents. But equitation is also an art, and like any respectably pointless human activity it contains both nothing and the everything that that tiny point of nothing is connected to. It is teaching me history and psychology and anatomy and genetics. It’s teaching me how to learn.

I propose a third domain of study, beside the sciences and the humanities. I shall call it, the equanimities. The queue forms to the left.