joy

Thinking vs Doing

Jess Filippi1 Comment

One of the symptoms of being cooped up in the indoor is that I have a lot more time to think about my jumping. Doing courses outside, I get into a rhythm with the jumps. I have space to feel the movement of my horse before, between, and after the fences and because of that my body is more attuned to what it needs to do; I can rely on instinct to feel the spots. In the indoor, everything is so stop-and-go. There’s a lot more downtime between fences because we are usually only doing a single jump or a line. It requires a lot of planning, like deciding whether I prefer to negotiate a clusterfuck of ponies on the approach or on the landing. On the approach it can make me so disorganized, often putting us off-center on the first jump because the turn has to be cut short to dodge all the other horses. That makes the whole line out of whack. I find that dealing with them on my landing is preferable, although only the lesser of two evils. It means that the whole way down the line I’m thinking about where I’m going to take the barreling 1,500 lbs underneath me so that it doesn’t crash into or run over anyone.

The remedy for this, I’ve found, is to take a lot of time to get set up. To circle, to plan, to wait. And all that time, I’m thinking about what I’m going to do. How my left leg is going to push my horse over to the center of the jump. How I’m going to hold him to the base, wait to find the closer spot. These are important things to think about. But thinking about them too much in previous weeks has, I think, gotten in the way of me doing them. In today’s lesson I focused a lot more on my bodywork on the flat and because of that was able to get back to more instinctual jumping.

I rode Jasper, who I believe is my favorite horse in the barn. He’s not the best mover or the best jumper. He doesn’t have the finesse of Max or the verve of Summer. But something just between us just gels and I tend to have my best jumping lessons on him. He was fresh when I got on him, making the flatwork energetic and fun. I worked a lot on lengthening and shortening his stride, making a game of weaving in and out of the other horses to keep our forward momentum. I also tried out the technique I used last week with Max to get him off the forehand. It was not as drastic a result with Jasper, but I certainly felt his head come up and his weight shift backward. With this balance, I was able to bend him a lot better than usual as well. As Hannah described it, he “turns like a motorcycle”, just chopping corners left and right. But today he was really responsive to my leg and more flexible than usual.

The main thing I wanted to focus on today was quieting my upper body–particularly on my transitions and over the jumps. Two things helped me do that. The first is a concept that I just recently re-read in Centered Riding, where Swift describes growing your upper body out of the saddle like a tree. The image in the book shows that below the waist are the roots, while above are the trunk (your spine) and branches (your arms, your jaw, everything that hangs). She suggests trying to stretch yourself up in the saddle to illustrate that “growing” is different.  When you stretch yourself up, your seat loses contact with the saddle. When “growing”, your body extends from your center upward as your legs reach down and around your horse. You have much more stable, and much less rigid, contact with the saddle and your horse. I’ve been practicing this growing with my upper body all week as I stand at my desk at work and as I walk around. I think what has contributed to being able to do that more easily is the second thing, which is that I’ve been swimming regularly. I finally have gotten on track with my workout schedule and have been swimming a few times now. I can already feel the difference it is making in my upper body, particularly in my chest and upper back. These are historically weak areas for me and have always been a problem spot in my riding position. But with this increased strength in my chest, the upper back is able to relax open, the shoulder blades moving down my back instead of my shoulders being forced open by my upper arms. The chest itself is more open as well. The area around my sternum pushes forward and upward, allowing room for my spine to extend naturally and my neck to lengthen, lifting my head.  With everything open like that, there’s so much more space for my muscles to do what they need to do. Instead of scrunching down and rounding my lower back to firm my upper, it feels like my muscles are free to stretch out and support the framework of my bones. There is simultaneously much more stillness and much less tension in my whole upper body.

So these things helped a great deal, and I was able to do what I set out to do. With my transitions, I took some extra time to set my horse up and with my tall and quiet upper body, had so much of an easier time using my legs to push Jasper into the canter. He picked it up smoothly and then once we were there, I didn’t have to take several strides to pull myself together as I usually would do when rocking my upper body to generate momentum; we were already collected.  And then when we were jumping, focusing on keeping my upper body still took my mind away from over-thinking my fences. I was much less hesitant than I have been in previous weeks. Jasper can always use some encouragement, even on an up day. We trotted into the cross-rail and cantered out over a low vertical. I know he can tend to hold back and go for the closer spot most of the time, but I wasn’t into “knowing” today. More connected than I have been in weeks, I could feel his rhythm, and without thought I closed my leg and went for it. He was right there with me and every time, we took off from a smooth, even, slightly big spot. And it felt great. The line felt like the exciting place it is, a place containing our inexorable and united movement toward the jump.

Heavy

Jess Filippi2 Comments

I’ve been fighting (and occasionally succumbing) to this cold/cough/flu thing that has been going around, so I didn’t make it to the gym once to carry out the fitness plan I decided on last week or really have any physical activity at all. But riding two weekends in row has helped, and I stretched really well before I left today so I felt much better than I expected to.

I’d like to take a second to note that I am writing this with a tiny kitten in my lap. A friend found her last weekend in a Christmas tree on the sidewalk and I decided to take her in as a companion to my first cat, Simon. Her name is Darby and right now her slightly-under-2 lbs frame is reverberating with her surprisingly loud purr.  I dream of the day that I can report that I’ve adopted a horse, but until then caring for tiny lives is just as satisfying in its own way as taking care of big ones.

The lesson this week was very productive; it felt like a good marriage of focus on training the horse and training myself. Normally Hannah chooses our mounts for us, but today she told my riding buddy and I just to look at the list of available horses and choose for ourselves. We rode later in the day so the options were limited to horses who hadn’t already been ridden twice. My riding buddy took her favorite mare and I had a choice between Jasper and Max. Jasper is one of my favorites, but I haven’t yet ridden Max, although I’ve seen my riding buddy have a few lessons on him. I was tempted to go with Jasper because he’s familiar, but after a moment’s pause and at my riding buddy’s urging, I chose Max and I’m glad that I did. I’ve always loved having the opportunity to ride different horses and learning to adapt to their different ways and personalities. I have to keep pushing myself to do that in my old age, instead of becoming too comfortable with one horse.

In some ways, Max isn’t too different from Jasper, and they are both very different from the horse I’ve had the last two times, little Summer. They are both tall and have quite long necks, which makes them both tend to be a bit heavy on the forehand. This means that the weight of the horse is more in his front legs instead of balanced or in his back legs. This is not ideal because the impulsion that moves the horse forward comes from the back legs. When a horse is heavy on the forehand, it can feel like you’re riding into the ground. It can be frustrating to constantly feel pulled down and like you’re not getting anywhere. Fortunately, it wasn’t difficult to pull Max out of this. Hannah suggested that as I was trotting around, I should occasionally give him some half halts, pulling upwards a little on the reins to get his head up. At the same time, I should squeeze him forward with my legs, letting him know that I didn’t want him to slow down or lose impulsion and in a way pushing his body and momentum up into my hands. These things together served to rock his balance backward; I could actually feel this as it was happening. Max’s movement immediately became more comfortable and forward.

The forehand issue is the same when cantering, but he was just as responsive to my hands and leg and once collected, he felt great. I felt very connected to him in a way that I hadn’t even really realized I’d been missing on so much of a smaller mount these last two times with Summer.

The interesting contrast came when we started jumping. The first few times over cross-rails and even over the lower verticals, he didn’t put in much effort. I rode him down into the ground right before the jump and then he barely picked his legs up going over it. I overcompensated, like I do, by sort of throwing my upper body at him over the jump. In retrospect I realize that when I do this it’s like I’m trying to take the jump for my horse, to pull us both over it with my body, which obviously doesn’t work. But once I was able to be patient and wait for my horse to rise up to meet me, the jumps were much smoother. When we cantered to the vertical, it was so easy to find the spot with Max; easier than with any other horse I’ve ridden in memory. Because despite his typical heaviness on the forehand, he had this incredible lightness on his feet right before the jump when we approached it with a collected canter. It’s hard to describe, and I was tempted at first to refer to it as scope, but that really refers to the over-the-jump ability. It’s analogous, though, and I’m not sure there’s a word that refers to what I’m talking about.  On the approach, he collected himself in a way beyond what I was doing to keep him off the forehand, it’s like in preparation for the jump all laziness or clumsiness left him and he became light as air. And in that state, becoming almost intangible, it was easier to meld with him, to be in perfect rhythm for finding the spot.

I can’t wait to go outside again and jump a proper course with Max. With anybody, really. I’m feeling very cooped up these days. But the work we’re doing on individual jumps in the indoor is going to show once we get outside again.

Anniversaries and Firsts

Jess Filippi1 Comment

It’s been a year since I’ve returned to riding and today was full of some great firsts for me.

My riding buddy and I brought our boys with us–her husband and my boyfriend–to the barn today so they could watch us ride and see what it’s like. Clarke had seen one of my (more frustrating) lessons at Kensington and has ridden with me twice on vacation trail rides, so it wasn’t his first time seeing me ride. But the difference in focus, organization, and athleticism in the lessons I take at Jamaica Bay as compared to Kensington is huge. He had also never seen me jump, which is of course a completely different level.

It was fun showing him around the barn. Seeing it again for the first time through his eyes, I was reminded of just how nice it is and how lucky I am to be able to ride there. The whole evolution of riding this past year from excitement and then disappointment with Kensington, to meeting my riding buddy and finding not only that we were on the same level with similar riding history but that we also have the exact same birthday, to deciding to try out Jamaica Bay and loving it and expanding so much as riders in the short time we’ve been there…has been intense, and wonderful.

Today was a nice day to have an audience as well, since I felt particularly “on.” I joined the Y this week and went for the second time last night. I think that the light workout limbered me up a bit for my lesson today. Also, last week I didn’t gel very easily with my mount. The opposite was true this time, riding Casper. My riding buddy rode him once before, the medium-build flea bitten grey of a couple weeks ago. Sometimes you sit on a horse and his body shape and your body shape are just not very compatible. Sometimes you get on and it feels like you click right into the saddle; you and your horse are just proportioned in ways that fit well together. That’s how it felt with Casper.

The interesting thing about him is that he rides with a bit-less bridle. Typically, horses have a metal bit in their mouths that the reins connect to; this is how you steer and stop the horse. Casper once had an abscess on a tooth that prevented him from accommodating the bit in his mouth, so he went without it for a while. By the time it was healed, it was apparent he was fine to ride without one and preferred it, so they just kept it that way. It is generally a more gentle and humane way of riding and some barns have all their horses fitted out this way, like the trail barn we rode at in Lake Placid. It’s a little less common to find on a jumping horse, as that requires a lot more control. But a well-trained, trustworthy mount can handle it.

Casper is very forward, wanting to go so much that even during walking rests, he tended to break into a trot like he was saying, “Ok, let’s go! I’m bored now!” But aside from the little extra effort it takes to convince him to stop, he was remarkably responsive. He was very flexible about contracting and expanding his stride as we rode over some poles on the ground (cavaletti) in preparation for jumping. He was very responsive to my leg for steering as well. What the bit-less bridle amounts to is basically like driving without power steering. It helped that I could move him over with my legs when tugging on the outside rein to pull him into the corners had less of an effect.

He was fun to jump with and we ended up doing a whole course. The first time through was slightly disorganized due to some sloppy turns and confusion over changing leads. When a horse canters around the ring, the leg on the interior of the ring should be first in order to maintain balance; that’s called being on the “correct lead.” When you do a course it often involves jumping through the diagonal of the ring and changing direction, which necessitates a changing of the lead. Some horses can do what is called a “flying change”, where mid-stride they pick up their feet and switch which one is going first. That’s the ideal. Some horses aren’t coordinated enough to do that and must do a simple change, where you slow them down to the trot for a couple of strides and then quickly go back into the canter, picking up the correct lead. Casper usually doesn’t do flying changes, but apparently sort of attempted one in our first course. He didn’t do it all the way though, only switching the front legs and not the back, which led to a cross-canter. That feels extremely awkward, but I was already so close to my next jump when I realized it, so we took that one a little badly. We left the ground not in accord about the rhythm and he knocked the jump slightly with his hoof. The second time we did the course, I was aware of his limitations and able to get him to do a simple change, so we were much more organized and smooth over all the fences. We ended with a long approach to an oxer up the middle that just felt like heaven.

This all brings me to another first for today: it was the first time I’ve ever gotten to see myself ride. I’ve been on horses since I was nine, but never had access to a video camera. Apart from the simple vanity of wanting to know what I look like, I have always felt this would be a great tool in understanding and correcting my position problems. Having your trainer tell you to sit up and open your shoulders is a lot different from seeing yourself do it the wrong way. So I was very excited to watch this footage. Clarke did a great job of iPhone videography and captured some of my flatwork and my entire course on film. It was amazing to watch it and to discover that I looked a lot better than I thought I did! When you’re expending so much effort to just keep everything together, to keep your horse going and aimed in the right direction and then also to remember to keep every part of your body in perfect position, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and sloppy. Especially since the goal of equitation is to not look like you’re doing all that much work. So that’s how I usually feel. But even the first course, which, as I described, wasn’t great, just looked a hell of a lot better than I’d imagined it to.  That feels great. It’s also good to have a better understanding of the effects of what I’m doing. When I ride, I’ll know that if I do X, then I will get Y results.

After we untacked the horses and hosed them down, we took the boys on a trail ride. Neither my riding buddy nor I have done the trails at Jamaica Bay before–another first–and neither of us had ever ridden in both an English and a Western saddle before within the same day. It’s an interesting transition because the stirrups are so much longer and steering is totally different. But the trail ride was fun. The trails go through Gateway National Recreation Area, which are lovely protected wetlands. Clarke got a smallish paint named Picasso and he did very well on him. I rode an even-tempered bay named Peter Pan who was a pleasure and just hung back, enjoying the breeze. The trails wound through marsh vegetation, like cattails grown high above our heads even on horseback, that swayed in the wind and made that perfect rustling sound. We came out onto the beach of the bay and rode around its curve, making horseshoe prints in the wet sand right next to quite large horseshoe crabs washed up on the shore. I’ve ridden on beaches before, but never on the beaches of my home. I grew up near the water on Long Island, so the salty smell of the water is, along with that of a horse, one of the dearest and most evocative smells there is. The combination of those two scents today, the salty tang of the water cutting through and mixing with the warm muskiness of sweat and horse, was wonderful to bask in. The sun warmed my back and the breeze cooled the sweaty tendrils of hair around my neck. It felt like a reward. A moment of complete pleasure and enjoyment to mark this first year’s anniversary. And hopefully the start of many, many more years of firsts.

Here’s the second (better) course: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqh7Bayd754&feature=youtu.be

Champs

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Today was awesome!

The first big piece of news is that my riding buddy got a car. So no more paying for Zipcars every week and no more fretting about returning them on time. This lets us be so much more relaxed during the lesson and then after it, while cooling down our horses. Walking them out after the lesson and then hosing them down is really relaxing and makes me feel so close to my horse. Being face to face with him and caring for him creates a much stronger bond than just riding him and handing him off to someone else.

The other good thing is that Hannah was back. We were both a little rattled after last week’s lesson with Omar, and Hannah’s calm energy soothed us immediately. We warmed up with flatwork like we usually do with her and that made us both able to jump at our normal level. It was a relief.

I rode a large bay gelding with a long neck named Jasper, and my riding buddy had a compact flea bitten grey (that’s grey with little flecks of darker colored hair throughout) named Casper. Both of them were new mounts for us and both were a pleasant surprise in their own ways. My poor man, Jasper, was really tormented by the flies today. We rode outside in the sunshine to escape the crowded indoor and despite the fly spray we had a swarm of them following us. It’s too bad I couldn’t explain to Jasper that standing still and biting the flies is a never-ending and futile battle and that if he would just keep moving they’d have less of an easy target to bite him. I could have very easily gotten extremely frustrated with his stop-and-go-and-swish-and-bite routine, because constantly squeezing him to walk forward gets tiring on the legs, but I just decided to let it go. We just walked slowly on our breaks with a lot of fidgeting; not the most tranquil way to rest between exercises but after fighting it in the beginning I kinda just had to let him have his little OCD fantasy of killing all the flies with his teeth.

Once we got moving and I told him that we needed to focus, I found him to be a very solid and comfortable ride. He is larger than the other horses I’ve mostly been riding, like Jubilee, and had a long fluidity to his stride. Especially at the canter, it was a joy. When you’re moving at a faster gait like the canter it can be hard to sit deep in the saddle and drive your horse forward if his stride is short and choppy. But I love when the stride is long and lope-y; it’s like sailing on waves that are smooth swells instead of chop. While jumping, this also makes it easier to maintain position in the saddle and use your seat and legs to guide your horse instead of frantically gripping to just hold on.

I could really feel the difference in Jasper’s jump as opposed to Jubilee’s as we did our first line. It was the one that she sped through in four strides a few lessons ago. Jasper took the line in a much slower pace but with his longer strides that just eat up the ground, we took the line in five.  I loved the solidity of his jump. When I was younger, I  loved riding bigger horses. I was like a tiny bug on the back of these 17-hand giants and I felt secure with all that horse under me, especially over jumps. As I have aged, my taste has turned toward smaller horses because I felt I had more control and frankly, less distance to fall from with them. But today I was reminded of that feeling of solidity and steadiness of a larger horse. I felt like I had more time to plan for the next jump this way. It is not as heady as the swoosh down the line where my muscles just throw themselves into jumping position from instinct, but it is in some ways more fun and interesting. This was very useful because today for the first time since returning to riding about a year ago, I got to jump a course.

There are several jumps scattered throughout the ring in different configurations; a course is simply a prescribed path through certain of those jumps. It takes a lot more control and a lot more planning than simply going over one jump or even over a line.  The one we did today really challenged us to do just that. We started out with the first jump in a line on the long side of the rectangular ring but turned away instead of doing the second element and instead made a rounded turn to take a jump that was placed on the diagonal in the center of the ring. Then we made a very sharp, very deep turn around to the right to take the second element of a line on the opposite long side of the ring. Then we came around and took the second element in the… Hahah. I just realized no one will be able to picture this like me and that I was getting carried away into real nerd territory here. Suffice to say that it was a challenging and fun course with a lot of unexpected twists and turns that kept us and our horses on our toes. And we did great! It felt awesome. My riding buddy looked so professional steadying her faster mount as he was having a tendency to charge some of the jumps. And she said that Jasper and I looked so collected just floating along and then popping over the jumps as they came. We were in much mutual admiration today and both feeling so good about our progress and abilities after last week’s setbacks. We felt like champs!

Another One Bites The Dust

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Today’s lesson was hands down the best and most fun I’ve had since I returned to riding nearly a year ago EVEN THOUGH I completely bit it while jumping. Funny though, I made my boyfriend listen to “Another One Bites The Dust” by Queen right before I left the house because I heard it recently on the radio and was struck by how amazing of a song it is. I think certain songs just end up residing in our blind spots because they are so familiar, but sometimes you hear them again after a long time or in a certain context and they surprise you. This song has an incredible tense energy, a very tightly restrained mania to it that makes it infectious and exciting and fun. This is what my lesson was like: the percussion and guitars hold everything into a springy steady rhythm like me holding my horse into a forward but even pace toward the first jump and THEN comes the exuberant outburst of Mr. Mercury’s chanting and the rush of a happy, excited horse taking a 4-stride line in 3, then galloping full-out around the ring after with a gigantic grin on my face.

Today I rode a small chestnut mare with a big jump named Jubilee and I am crazy in love with her. We started out indoors but my trainer asked us if we were all right with taking it outside where it was hot but less crowded and we agreed. The sun was beating down but being so close to the water down in Jamaica Bay provides a forgiving breeze that makes it more comfortable. Jubilee was being a little mare-y indoors, pissy about the other horses, but once we got outside she cut the sass and perked right up. Despite the heat, she was full of energy, cantering around and around with barely any leg encouragement from me. I was able to work on my position and breathing and to just enjoy the ride.

It was when we started jumping that Jubilee really started to shine. After a few passes at a crossrail to warm up, we started jumping a line that went diagonally across the center of the oval-shaped ring. My trainer said we should take it in 4 strides, but my girl was having none of that. Heading to the first jump, I sat up and restrained her with some half-halts, giving and taking on the reins strongly to slow and steady her. As we neared the base of the jump, her ears went up and I could feel her engine revving as we galloped through the line to take it in 3 strides instead of the 4. This can sometimes be a problem because if a horse goes too fast and cuts out a stride, the take off for the second fence can be too far  away, causing the jump to be kind of low and flat and potentially knocking it over, which would cost you in a show. Not so with Jubilee, who for a smallish horse (probably around 15.2 hands) had a nice big arc on her jump. Another problem with a long take off is that if you’re not ready for it, you can get left behind in the saddle, instead of getting up in jumping position with the right timing to flow with your horse. But I was right there with her today. Her energy was so infectious that even though I was trying for the more conservative 4, I couldn’t help but go with her on the 3. The 3 strides felt AMAZING, like flying, like I don’t even know what, I can’t describe it to you. Like the best feeling in the whole world.

After we did the line a couple of times, my trainer added another jump. It was an element of another part of the course and so was not directly in line with the first two jumps, but slightly on a left- bent course after the second jump. After enjoying the rush of the 3-stride line a couple of times, I was now trying to make a sincere effort to calm her down to the 4. We got it in but she was still moving so fast that it was kind of a tight fit, forcing us to take the second jump in the line a little awkwardly. Because of that, I made the decision to avoid the third jump in the bent line the first time around; I felt I was too disorganized to take it.

The next time around, we were a little slower coming in but I wasn’t sure I’d be able to slow her enough between the jumps for the 4 and so about halfway down the line gave her a big squeeze and she responded right away for the 3, but was in such a little maniabunny headspace that I think she was surprised when I turned her toward the third jump. We had a moment of miscommunication and indecision–she went left, I went right–as we missed the jump and I tried very hard to stay on her back. We were moving quite fast at a quick canter so I could have gone flying, but was able to fight it out long enough, using the reins to slow my momentum down so I took a decently soft landing on my right shoulder. I did thunk my head on the ground but with my helmet on, it just bounced. I didn’t then and still don’t feel any neck pain so I think I’m in the clear on injuries. After catching my breath and catching my mount, who calmly walked off a little ways, I got back on. This time my trainer suggested that we just take the third jump by itself; we did that with a calm, lovely jump. Then she said, “How about doing the whole line again?” I hesitated a moment, I have to admit. But then I was like “Fuck that!” and went for it and I’m so glad I did. It was beautiful. I also said “fuck it” to the 4 and just went for it with the 3. There was plenty of room to the third jump even at almost a full gallop and to try to add another stride was just working at cross purposes to my mount. Once that decision was made, everything just flowed. The world was perfect in those 30 seconds as we tore down that line, hitting our spot on all three jumps, in total euphoric unison.

Moving to this other barn has been the best thing for me. After only three lessons there, I’m almost right back to the level of jumping I was at before I stopped riding.  My riding buddy is on the exact same level as I am and within a couple more lessons, I feel confident that we will be doing full courses, which is the most fun. I feel challenged and excited here instead of anxious and down on myself like I did at the other barn. I feel like a real rider again.

Change of Scenery

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On Memorial Day weekend my riding buddy and I made the trip out to Jamaica Bay Riding Academy to try it out and to take a jumping lesson. Both of us have plenty of jumping experience, but it’s been almost a decade since we’ve done it and jumping is not available at Kensington. Now after several months of flatwork lessons and rebuilding our strength, we felt we were ready to make a go at it.

The problem with Jamaica Bay is getting there. It’s not that far, just down on the southern coast of Brooklyn, but it is not easily accessible without a car. It is possible to take the subway to nearby, but since the barn is located off the Belt Parkway, one would need to get a taxi from the train station. We chose to go this weekend because my riding buddy’s friends went out of town, leaving her with their car for the week. She planned to pick me up and drive out there, but at the last minute the car wouldn’t start. We hopped in a car service and made it in time for our lesson anyway. It worked out fine today, but taking a car service every time wouldn’t really be sustainable money-wise.

But oh man…I really, really wish I had a car because this place is so nice. It was  a little shell-shocking to be confronted with an actual working lesson barn like that after so many months of craziness at Kensington. When you walk in, there is a huge room with a snack bar and tables and observation windows looking into the  sizable indoor ring. Off to the side of that is an office where a friendly and efficient woman with a microphone announced our arrival to our trainer. The stables are sprawling and well-organized with several large outdoor rings in addition to the indoor. Everything is clean and the horses look not only remarkably well cared for, but like very nice stock.

The lesson itself was great. Unsure in new surroundings and still lacking a little bit of confidence from the stressful situation at Kensington, I mentioned I like to ride smaller, calmer horses. I was paired with a funny little chestnut with a slightly strange gait named Homer. We rode in the gigantic indoor arena with about three or four other lessons going on around us. When I first entered the ring, I was nervous, thinking it would be very difficult to maneuver with so many other horses in the ring. But it wasn’t a problem at all. Everyone riding in there was very aware, responsible, and vocal and we all managed to stay out of each other’s way. I soon realized that even when crowded, being in an enclosed ring made all the difference for my stress level. I was far less tight on my horse’s mouth, far less tense in my entire upper body, and so much more able to enjoy myself.  I will certainly feel confident enough to push myself with more challenging mounts going forward. I would have no problem handling a horse like Max from Kensington in a closed ring like this; the problem is merely that at the ring in the park (and in the damn traffic circle) there is nothing preventing him from running totally wild if he gets spooked or simply doesn’t want to listen.

Best of all: there was jumping! We warmed up by cantering over some cavaletti, which are just jump poles placed on the ground; the horse doesn’t actually need to jump them but it sets the horse and rider up for the timing and movement of jumping. Then we moved onto some crossrails, which are two poles crossed like an x, the center point of which is usually less than a foot off the ground.  After so long, the feel of it all came right back to me. It’s like I immediately picked up right where I left off so many years ago, right down to having the same bad habits. The first couple of times we jumped a single crossrail, but we soon moved onto a line of two crossrails placed a certain distance apart. The idea is to get a certain number of strides in between these jumps in order to take off from a good spot for the second jump; this number of strides varies depending on your horse’s size and stride length as well as the speed at which you enter the line. I have always had a tendency to stare down at the second jump, getting myself too deep for a clean take off. I felt myself do it the first time and shook my head with a smile all the way around the ring. By the end of the lesson, I had forced myself to look up and through the whole line instead of staring down and we were able to get in a couple of perfect take-offs.

Jumping in general feels pretty incredible because you are briefly flying on the back of a thousand-pound animal. But when you hit the right spot and take a jump with a flowing, forward momentum and you stand up in your stirrups to get in jumping position, leaning over your horse’s neck as he arches through the air and the two of you are flying in perfect unison, there’s nothing like it. The only thing that I can think of that gives me anything like the same kind of pleasure is when I’m singing with someone in harmony and it’s so right on that you actually feel a “buzz” in the air. But this is far more intense, given the adrenaline that the physical thrill elicits. The first time I ever jumped, a tiny ten year old on the back of a fat little bitchy white pony named Delilah, I was hooked for life. After this lesson, I feel just as I did then. I want to jump, and I don’t ever want to stop.

Wild Horse

Jess Filippi4 Comments

I didn’t have a riding lesson last weekend because the weather finally caught up with me. It’s been a pretty mild winter so far, but snow on the ground and temperatures in the 20s is beyond the pale. Growing up, I never rode outside in the wintertime, instead moving into my barn’s large indoor arena in late fall. It’s a reversal that seems funny to me: in the city, where the majority of our lives is lived indoors, I am riding outside all winter. Indoor space is simply at too much at a premium here; we’ve penned it all up to rent it out for millions of dollars. The horses have their small barn to live in, but we’ve gotta ride them outside in the park.

To make up for the horse deficit that a week without riding creates in my heart, I rented this movie called “Wild Horse, Wild Ride” from Netflix. I discovered it during one of my periodic binges on the Apple Movie Trailers site and was immediately taken by the description:

Each year thousands of wild horses are rounded up and removed from public lands by the U.S. Government. All will need permanent homes. None has ever been touched by a human hand.

Wild Horse, Wild Ride tells the story of the Extreme Mustang Makeover Challenge, an annual contest that dares 100 people to each tame a totally wild mustang in order to get it adopted into a better life beyond federal corrals.

The movie follows a handful of contestants in the Challenge from when they take their horses home on Day 1 all the way to the competition on Day 100 as they do what has quite simply been my lifelong dream: train a horse from scratch.  The horses are completely wild at the start; confused, restless in a paddock, shy to human presence, let alone touch. Wild horses have personalities as distinct as the schoolies I know; some are congenitally calm and take to training very easily, some are more aggressive and recalcitrant. The trainers take small steps every day, forming bonds of trust that cut both ways–the horses must learn to trust trainers, but also the trainers must trust the horses enough to push them forward. Some of the best moments in the film are when the trainers are able to get on their horses for the first time, in their own time–one as early as Day 3, and one as late as Day 90.

Watching the movie reminded me of my dream to undertake this crazy mission of training my own horse. Not that I’d forgotten it, exactly, I just had sort of let it shrink away. As I’ve become more entrenched in my life here, the possibility of ever being able to do it has simply become more remote. But lately I’ve been re-examining my priorities. I think it began with my decision to start riding again after such a long time away from it. I realized that I never stopped wanting to ride and that if that was true, I just had to do it. It’s not perfect, it’s not even close to ideal, but for now I am riding and I am getting stronger and more confident and more in touch with my horse instincts every time I go.

I have been thinking, however, that it isn’t enough. I have this dream to train a horse, and it is not a dream that I can achieve here. In fact, most of what I want to do is not something to be done here. I want to ride horses every day. I want to hike in the woods and I want to watch birds. I want to drive a car and sing out loud with the music. I want to be able to play my bass guitar without worrying about disturbing my neighbors, who live 18 inches away from me. New York City is an amazing place to live, with a zillion incredible things in it. But they are not the things I want. So why am I paying a gargantuan rent to be near all these things? Additionally, it is inconvenient and expensive to do the things I like to do here because they are not city things, but elsewhere they are a regular part of life. It’s hard to see beyond the city sometimes, to imagine a life elsewhere. It’s a very special kind of tunnel vision wherein the awareness of the rest of the world recedes, and all you can see is concrete and stores and throngs and throngs of people…

For now, these are just thoughts. But they are gaining traction. I am tired and worn down from this city life, and ready to stop putting all my time, energy, and money into it while neglecting my true goals and dreams. All of this is to say, I guess, that perhaps I won’t be an urban equestrian for too much longer.

Starting Over

Jess Filippi2 Comments

I started riding horses when I was nine years old. I took lessons and then went to an equestrian day camp. Later, I worked at the day camp, teaching little kids how to ride and everything else there was to know about horses: their care, their anatomy, their habits, their markings and colors. I chose my college based on two criteria: having a good English department (thinking that I should be an English major because I liked to read. Derp.) and having an equestrian team. In college I went out partying until 3 am but still got on the van at 5 am to travel to horse shows at other colleges in our IHSA zone.

All in all, I rode for about thirteen years. And then I stopped.

After college, for a variety of reasons that were only slightly more thoughtful than those I used to pick a college, I moved to Brooklyn. I started my career in the publishing industry. I struggled to acclimate to city life, separated from the things that centered me, like spending non-public time outdoors and driving around and listening to the radio. I felt like I had been put in a zoo. I couldn’t sense the weather anymore, the millions of tiny nuanced scents and temperatures and moisture levels and pressures in the air that had greeted me upon going outside throughout my childhood growing up in the woods near the water on Long Island. But worst of all, I stopped riding. I was too poor and too distracted. Horseback riding is not very accessible in the city. I made excuses, and I didn’t do the thing I love doing most for nine years.

I started riding again about two months ago. Some cash got freed up by moving in with my boyfriend and finally paying off my student loans. I now live only a fifteen-minute walk from the barn. My former excuses didn’t make sense anymore. But most of all, I got sick of not doing the things I love and decided that now is the time to do them.

This blog is about the challenges, the strangeness, and the awesomeness of riding in the city. It’s about the process of going back to something with all of the mental aspects intact–the knowledge and instincts built up over years–yet having to start over physically, rebuilding strength and stamina and muscles that you don’t use for anything else. It’s about returning to something that I mainly experienced in an immature frame of mind and seeing what it’s like to do it as an adult. It’s about horses and how much I love them, about how I can’t believe I let myself go so long without them in my life and about the joy of having them in it again.