My parents separated when I was five-years old and during my childhood my siblings and I spent the school year with our mother in a Boston suburb and summers with our father on Cape Cod. Dad owned a big company so he wasn’t home much. In the early years he would hire one of my older cousins to keep an eye on us. Once we were teenagers we pretty much ran free.
I took lessons at a local riding stable for a few summers and one year my father leased a horse for me. My friend, Nancy, had her own horse, an Arabian gelding named El Ternay (El T for short) and every summer we would ride together every chance we got. We hardly ever used saddles, would ride anywhere there was a strip of grass or dirt, and were often barefoot and in shorts. If we had only one horse between us, we would ride double. More than once I got swept off El T’s back as we careened around a corner at a fast trot or canter and met up with a low-hanging branch.
Our favorite ride was through the salt marsh to the beach. We would ride half a mile along a paved road, then a mile down a private dirt road (which we probably were not technically allowed on). The road skirted the marsh and finally spilled out onto a remote half-mile long beach, which was bisected by a channel that funneled seawater into the marsh on the rising tide and drained it on the ebbing tide. Because all access roads to the beach were private, there would never be more than a handful of people swimming or sunning themselves so we didn’t have to worry about crashing into people. It was there that I first experienced swimming with a horse. The feeling of floating over my horse’s back as he glided through the water was absolutely magical.
We would gallop the horses along the water’s edge where the sand was firmest, starting at one end of the beach and across the shallow channel to the other end. If we had two horses they would take their heads in a race and we would have absolutely no control over them. It was very exciting. The only problem was that the horses knew that at the far end of the beach there was a trail through the sand dunes leading home. They would be galloping at breakneck speed and, upon coming abreast the trail, take a sharp left and gallop up into the dunes, whether or not we were still on their backs. Some days we would stay on, some days we would fall off and find the horses a few hundred feet away, and some days we would fall off and have to walk the mile home, the sharp marsh grass stinging our bare feet.
Photo courtesy of Google Earth
When I think back to those days I marvel at how carefree we were. We didn’t wear helmets, didn’t worry about falling off, never considered wearing shoes even after getting our bare feet stepped on, and didn’t expect to have full control over our horses. It’s amazing we lived through it. Today I am concerned about safety and do expect my horse to stay under control (after learning how to get control), but I credit being a scrappy, fearless trail rider in my youth with my ability – to this day, in my 50s – to get on just about any horse, ride on any trail, and ride bareback in the ring or on the trail.
←That’s me on El T.
Here is a link to a video my brother, Vaun, made of the beach a few years ago. Although not taken from the back of a horse, parts of it look as if they could have been – if you watch from minute marker 1:40 to 2:11 you can get a feel for what it was like to ride the beach: Click for video
Leave a comment about the crazy stuff you did on horseback when you were a kid (or now if you are still a kid, by age or at heart).
~Monica
[…] If you rode horses as a teenager, you probably could tell stories about the crazy things you did and wonder how you survived. If you are a teenager now, you probably do crazy things on horses and – one day – you will wonder how you survived. For me it was working around horses barefoot, riding horses that I could not control, and galloping bareback in a horse race down the beach that had an abrupt end (which you can read about here). […]
This sounds like a wonderful dream!