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on board a borrowed pony, age 13 or 14
I have a thousand photos of myself on horses, but this is one of my favorites.
I was clearly outgrowing my jacket. It may have been my last green jacket; I wore green for luck until I was fifteen, when a trainer insisted I switch to blue like everyone else. My knee straps were a totally inappropriate unfinished color, I wasn't wearing gloves, my helmet was a pointlessly flimsy shell. And my hair was, as usual, in braids. I was so chic.
The pony was a sweet Arabian cross called Tina. She belonged to a friend of my sister who had no time for her. She was boarded at a little barn near Rock Creek Park. The place had, at one point, many more horses; entire sections of the barn were unused by the time I arrived, including a bunch of pony stalls that hadn't been touched in twenty years. One of the stalls still had a brass nameplate for a long-forgotten pony, and when the barn was finally slated for demolition, I went back with a claw hammer and pulled it off the door.
My teenage self would be astonished to learn that at 38, I still don't have a horse. Someday.
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My 16-year-old self would not be shocked, however, to hear that I finally had the nervous breakdown that helped mitigate the loss.
Tina's got a sweet little face.
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Mine were going to be named Jesse and Morgan. I still don't have them, those horses in my dreams.
on horseback