Learning to Free Ride

Since I was a small child I have wondered why we humans need so much hardware to control our horses. Bridles and halters, ropes and spurs. Why did grownups shudder at images of bits used in the mouths of slaves in the American South, while at every riding lesson I plopped one into a horse’s mouth with no second thought? Why would my horse follow me willingly when I clipped a lead rope to her halter, but ignore me completely when her head was free?

My secret day dream was to someday know what it was like to sit on a horse honestly… with no equipment of any kind. And to ride that way: to jump fences and canter on trails, ford streams and round up a stray calf or two. I wanted to feel safe, and have a fair amount of control over the speed and direction we travelled, yes. But I wanted to have earned that control honourably. I wanted to free ride.

I still do. In this web log I’ll tell some of the stories of adventures and catastrophes I’ve met on this quest of mine. And I’ll record some new ones as they happen. There was a time when I thought learning to communicate with animals was the answer. Not. There was a time when I thought some human in the burgeoning Natural Horsemanship movement might show me the way. Not. Shamanism? Not yet. But each of these ancient disciplines has furthered my education, and inspired me deeply, and given me invaluable tools. What started out as a child’s daydream has turned into a deeply personal, spiritual quest. If I’m right, the key to free riding (by my definition) is more likely to be found in the Tao Te Ching than in any clinic on Natural Horsemanship. But I’ve been wrong before, many hundreds of times over.

Please feel free to share your comments about this blog or about my website in general. I’d love to hear from you.

Calloway

“The door was open to let in the warm spring air. After breakfast Pa went out, whistling merrily. He was going to hitch Pet and Patty to the plow again. But his whistling suddenly stopped. He stood on the doorstep, looking toward the east, and he said, ‘Come here, Caroline. And you, Mary and Laura.’

Laura ran out first, and she was surprised. The Indians were coming.

They did not come on the creek road. They came riding up out of the creek bottoms far to the east.

First came the tall Indian who had gone riding by the house in the moonlight…. His black pony came trotting willingly, sniffing the wind that blew its mane and tail like fluttering banners. The pony’s nose and head were free; it wore no bridle. Not even one strap was on it anywhere. There was nothing to make it do anything it didn’t want to do. Willingly it came trotting along the old Indian trail as if it liked to carry the Indian on its back.” ~Little House on the Prairie, by Laura Ingalls Wilder

**Please note: disregard dates on these posts and read in the order they appear (This one: “Learning to Free Ride,” first, in other words). We’re having trouble persuading the blog to present the posts in chronological order. This seems easiest for now. ~Calloway

Let me be clear here: I don’t mean I just want to sit on a naked horse. That’s easy. Most of our horses will let us sit on their backs while they graze, or amble about a pasture. That’s not free riding, by my definition.

Being human, I want more control than that. I want to ride. I want to have some fairly consistent say over where the horse goes and at what speed. But I also and absolutely want her to WANT to go where I want her to go, I want her heart to be in the adventure, her eyes bright and her ears up an her heart softly trusting. I want her to be disappointed when I slide off, not relieved. I’ve sat on so many dull-eyed, submissive, frustrated, confused, desperate, desolate and/or furious horses over the years… at this point in my life I want the horse to want me on her back as much as I want to be there, or it’s just plain not worth it.

But I don’t want to train my way to that place. There are many good folks in this world who can ride their horses without bridles. Many people have taken a safe, responsive, trusting, well-trained horse and gradually weaned him off bridle cues. Some riders use a neckwire instead. Some use spurs. Most can only ride bridleless in a ring, but certainly some can trail ride or jump cross country or round up cattle on bridleless horses. It has been these good, dedicated, inspiring riders who have helped me understand that… well, that that’s just not what I mean by free riding either.

For starters, it’s inevitably the NOT safe, NOT responsive, NOT trusting, NOT trained horses I fall in most deeply in love with. I’m just dumb that way. But even so, I’m certainly experienced and enthusiastic and determined and sensitive enough to train even a “difficult” horse to carry me on her back unrestrained by any hardware. And yet I’m not doing it. Nor do I plan to.

Because what I mean by “free riding” is something else entirely. To me, free riding means being able to walk up to a strange, unrestrained, and untrained horse and get on her back, with her permission, and ride, and accomplish something important together (important to me, I guess I mean—like, say, taking a message from hither to yon). With awe and deep gratitude, but without any rope or coercive equipment. Without first chasing her round and round a small pen of any shape. Without any previous relationship between us at all. And then to be able to do so again—to forge an immediate, honest, working partnership based on mutual understanding, communication, respect and trust, as needed, with a different horse on a different day in a different context. That, to me, is free riding.

To be honest, I have spent the first 35 years of my life learning more about what this kind of free riding isn’t than what it is. I do not yet know a human who can free ride, by my definition (perhaps via this weblog I will meet one?). What I do know about free riding is… well, three small things. First, I know, as fiercely as I know anything, that it is possible and that it has been done. Second, I know that even were I to meet a person who can free ride by my definition, she’d not be able to teach me how to “do” it, other than to tell me to sink deeper into myself and be patient and humble and fiercely honest, and so grope my way into a wholeness that might honestly inspire an uncoerced horse. And, third, I know now, with utter certainty, that this is a deeply difficult pilgrimage I’m on—a path of certain suffering, many wrong turns, few human teachers and laughably little chance of any actual success in this lifetime.

But to me it’s a sacred and important path, all the same. One I’m proud to find myself still on, just barely, after 35 long years.

Free riding. Let me be up front about how much, exactly, I don’t know about this important subject.

To my mind, mastering the art of free riding is equivalent, roughly, in both feasibility and scope, to my learning to breathe comfortably under water. Out in the deep ocean. Far from shore. This mystical place of deep, spontaneous, friendly, working oneness with a horse I’m trying to reach seems to lie deep in some other realm of being. And so, if that is a fair comparison (free riding = breathing under water), then you might say I’ve just now reached the shore. Yup. I’ve just finally found the friggin’ ocean.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m amazed and thankful that the ocean I daydreamed about so long actually seems to exist (for many landlocked years now I confess I was beginning to wonder). I’m awe-struck by its size and its beauty. I see lots of other people splashing about in it and floating their boats on it. But I don’t see any gills growing on any of them. And, frankly, I haven’t a clue how to proceed.

I’m here. In up to my ankles. Lungs still doggedly gulping the same dry air they’ve always gulped. For me, with the launch of this website and this blog, the real journey is just beginning. And I have no doubt that the 35 years it has taken me to find the ocean will turn out, in the end, to have been the easy part.

Now I need to learn to breathe in the water… or at least to swim. I suspect that learning to work and live by donation will take me deeper, up to my knees in this ocean, perhaps… or perhaps if I’m lucky it will serve as some metaphysical version of a snorkle. After that… I have no idea. But—if I don’ t drown, I’ll do my best to keep you posted.

As you might have noticed, this blog will often not be about horses, or riding, at all.