Location: AUBURN, California
It’s all Al’s fault. The blistering sun. The pitch dark. The sweltering heat, blinding dust, terrifying thunderstorms, and the stinging sleet. Deadly rattlesnakes, biting gnats, icy rivers, treacherous rocks, killer bogs, and perilous cliffs. Thirst, hunger, windburn, sunburn, frozen fingers. Sweat and tears and despair. The bruises, scrapes, sore muscles, and smashed toes.
Merri Melde on an endurance ride
Endurance riding is the Great Equalizer. It makes all people Normal. In real life, you can be rich or poor, old or young, short or tall, snooty or timid, a CEO, the king of a country, or a poop-shoveler, but you’re all equal.
© 2014 by Merri Melde
The shattered bones.
The awful rides that last forever. The crazy horses that pull your arms out of their sockets for 50 miles. The crotchety horses that buck and toss you on your shoulder. The horse that bolts. The horse that tries to die on you.
It’s all Al’s fault.
Laughs and cheers and joyful tears. Six thousand miles of the best trails ever. A Tevis buckle. A French riding license. Wide, wild open spaces. Deserts, forests, canyons, mountain ranges. Pioneer trails. Hoof beats and heart beats in 12 different countries. Splendid snow, rain, sunshine. Wildflowers, wild animals. Solitude. Companionship. Partnership. Soulmates. The best friendships, ever. The best horses, ever.
I walked into a local tack shop in north Texas one day, told the proprietor Al I wanted to find a job riding horses.
He didn’t hesitate. “Why don’t you try Shelley down the road? She does endurance.”
“What’s that?”
What is endurance, I had asked.
I went to see Shelley. She hired me. I never in a million years could have imagined the consequences of that fortuitous path.
I discovered I could not only ride horses, but I could ride them all day. Sometimes all night, too. Endurance riding, I discovered, is a long distance riding sport that anybody could do. Old people, young people, daredevils, and those who wanted to be daredevils one day. The competitive. The restrained. The cautious. And it wasn’t just a couple of miles that endurance riders rode, but 25 miles, 50 miles, 100 miles in one day. Or 250 miles over five days in a row. Pick your addictive bliss.
Another of the beauties of endurance riding was that I didn’t even have to have my own endurance horse. Shelley was an endurance trainer—she had over a dozen horses that needed regular riding. A lot of riding.
So I got to ride, a lot. You didn’t have to ride fast on a horse to learn how to handle one, how to understand him, how to control him with finesse—15 years later, I am still learning this. And so I learned to trot—and trot confidently. For miles. For hundreds of miles over the years. Thousands of miles. Not in confining arenas, but over trails in the great outdoors over every kind of terrain, in every kind of weather, in every kind of situation. I learned to listen to my horses. I learned how to ride, really ride, as we covered those miles.
I met the best people while endurance riding. I met the best horses endurance riding, although there were a couple that were a tad challenging. But even then, the companionship in doing something so physically and mentally challenging together forms a special bond that you don’t get when you go out for a short trail ride. It is like no other bond you will ever have with another living creature. It’s the closest thing to sacredness outside of religion. For some it is a religion.
Endurance riding is the Great Equalizer. It makes all people Normal. In real life, you can be rich or poor, old or young, short or tall, snooty or timid, a CEO, the king of a country, or a poop-shoveler, but you’re all equal for one day when you’re riding on the back of a horse for 50 or 100 miles.
It’s a mutual partnership that has nothing to do with your income or job or how honorably you live. Endurance riding is not just about you. Whoever you are or however insignificant or high and mighty you may be, you have the responsibility of getting your four-legged partner healthily and safely to the end of a 25-mile or 50-mile or 100-mile ride. You can’t fail to be astounded and humbled by the ability and the willingness of your most incredible partner. It is a privilege to ride an endurance horse that doesn’t stop giving, ride after ride.
It doesn’t matter how bent-over you walk, or how slowly you shuffle when you get off your endurance horse. It’s no big deal if you have to ask someone else to trot your horse out for you at a vet check. Walking like a cripple after an endurance ride is rather like wearing a badge of honor. “Can’t walk, but I just rode 100 miles!”
Endurance horses have ultimately carried me around the world. They’ve taken me to meet princes, sultans, a sheikha, and a king, and lots of commoners just like me. But that’s not what’s important.
The acute longing to wrap my fingers around the reins and look between the ears of my endurance horse to the trail beckoning ahead of us dominates my existence. I crave the adventures with a revered equine partner, effortlessly covering the ground, carrying me through wild spaces, cantering along the ridges, racing the thunderstorms, following the curve of the hills, dancing through the forests, skimming the deserts, and conquering the mountains.
Julie Suhr put it succinctly: “A horse makes me feel ten feet tall.”
Riding an endurance horse puts me on the top of the world.
It’s all Al’s fault, and if I ever run into him again, I’m going to thank him.
Excerpted from the newly published “Soul Deep in Horses: Memoir of an Equestrian Vagabond.” The book chronicles Merri’s eclectic adventures around the world in racing, packing, adventure riding, and, of course, endurance riding (foreword by Julie Suhr). Available in paperback ($14.99) and Kindle ($9.99) from Amazon.com.
For more information about endurance riding, or to request a free information packet, please contact the AERC office, located in Auburn, California, at 866-271-2372, email aerc@foothill.net, or visit www.aerc.org
by Merri Melde