It Takes The Time It Takes, And Other Lessons From The Horsewoman

When my husband, Jason, and I were in the wee small hours of our honeymoon phase, we dreamed of owning a country house with horses; you know, the kind of dreaming couples do before the real nitty gritty shit starts to surface.

One night, as he was researching places to ride not too far from the city, he stumbled upon a website advertising “Adventure Horseriding, NYS”. I looked at it and laughed. It might have been 2005, but this site was basic with a capital “B”: one page with a bright yellow background, the info all jumbled-up and crossing over each other, and the only sign of a horse was a picto-graphic-esque mustang-y thing rearing up on it’s hind legs…also bright yellow. I didn’t give it a second glance and went back to reading American Psycho.

But Jason kept staring at it for some reason and said, “I think I’m gonna call.” Now, this was soooooooOOOOooo unlike something my husband would associate himself with in every way. I mean, this was a man whose entire identity hung on appearances and here he was, fascinated by an advertisement that said, “Learn to ride in three days…no kiddin’, no foolin’.” But there was something about it that moved him to make that call and the next day I found myself planning our trip.

For weeks I researched what I was going to wear; debating whether or not to go full-chaps, half-chaps or no chaps. I finally went with no chaps as it all felt a bit too West Village leather daddy for my taste. But I did find some cute boots, some gloves and riding pants that didn’t make me look too fat. I think everything makes me look too fat, btw. Jason already had a few things to wear from his bachelor days. (With whom he’d been riding with in the past I didn’t care to know, but he fancied himself a well-seasoned horseman nonetheless.)

A month later we found ourselves in the middle of abso-fucking-lutely Nowheresville, New York. Have you ever heard of Boonville? Didn’t think so. We drove, and drove…and drove, the five hours up; past Hudson, then New Paltz and Albany…even past Utica for chrissake! But we found it, and as we pulled into the dusty driveway leading down to the barn, I had a feeling of my own about it all; this place was just as unremarkable as the website. I mean COME ON!! No grand entrance, no beautiful fencing, no thoroughbreds running up to greet you with braided manes like Black Beauty?! As we stepped out of the car, we were greeted with a, “Well, hello! You must be the city slickers!”

Mary was a force of nature, barely contained in a 4’10 body. Her hair looked like she had been sucked into the turbofan engine of a 747 and spit out the other end into a haystack. She had on a pair of worn-out stretch pants from WalMart and boots encrusted with mud two inches deep.  Glad I didn’t invest in that pair of assless chaps. But as my eyes met hers, I was instantly struck by something familiar; a kindness that stemmed from hardship. Now, THIS I could work with. Must’ve been the midwestern salt-of-the-earth stuff in me that related to those eyes, but they did. The spell was broken by, “Grab a shovel, you’re gonna muck the barn.”

We mucked, ie shoveled shit, we organized the tack room, we brushed down the horses, we walked with the horses and we listened to an hour-long lecture on the etiquette of a relationship between you and your horse. By the time she assigned us which horse we would be spending our three days with, day one was already over. We hadn’t even ridden yet! Jason was visibly frustrated. This man did NOT like paying for nothing and neither did I. But to be honest, I was slightly terrified of Mary. Maybe it was her rough and tumble exterior or maybe it was the pistol she carried, but one thing’s for sure; I wasn’t gonna be the one to piss her off. Jason was a bit braver than I and finally mustered-up the courage to ask when we would be doing some actual riding. Mary’s response was, “It takes the time it takes.” And that was it. We stopped by the only decent restaurant in town for dinner, Burger King, and rode back to the hotel pondering whether or not we would be returning the next day. After realizing that we had already paid in-full, we wallowed in our flame-broiled Whoppers and called it a night.

That first ride.

The next morning we rolled-into the driveway with a new determination. We were ready to ride and we were going prove it to Mary. When we entered the barn, Mary was already there and said, “Jason, you’re gonna ride Tiffany, Lisa, you get Pozo. Now saddle-up.” Well, well, well…I guess “the time it took” was one day? The answer was a resounding “NO.” She showed us how to blanket, saddle, bridle and fix the reins on the horses. We had to “get to know each other” by walking slowly in circles, then in opposite circles, then over to the playground where we would walk over logs, shimmy our hips to move them backwards, then forwards, then walk three steps then stop then how to one-rein stop if things ever got out of hand while riding. It was frustrating, it was annoying and what it wasn’t, was riding. Each time I would take a break from the monotony, I would peer across the country road into the thousand acres of forest that seemed to be laughing at us like the bully in middle school, “Nanny, nanny, boo, boo, you can’t leave the parking lot!”

Enough of this horseshit! (pardon the pun) If I wanted to “wax on, wax off” with Mr. Miyagi I would have signed-up for some karate classes on the Upper West Side. Just as I was about to throw in the towel, Mary said, “You ready to go?” And go we did.

The three of us crossed the road into the great unknown. Our fearless leader looked like she’d rolled out of the womb riding a horse; cigarette dangling out her mouth, crop in one hand, water bottle of spiked lemonade in the other…you didn’t see that everyday in New York City. But any image that I was writing in my head about who she was or where she came from was replaced by surprise after pleasant surprise. Mary was a former school teacher who grew up in a middle-class suburb; a daddy’s girl who got her nails painted on the regular and her hair blown out. She was divorced, had a fabulous, gay son who lived in Atlanta who was, ironically, a hairdresser, and confessed that she didn’t start seriously riding until the age of 40. Mic drop. Oh wait, let me pick the mic up again to add that she taught herself how to code and built her own website to advertise her new love in life: horsemanship. Mic drop for real this time. Also, shame on me for judging that website.

Through all the talk about ourselves along the trail, I barely noticed that I was steering, trotting, stopping, turning, navigating steep inclines and descending with ease down slippery slopes, always trusting Pozo to land on his feet. Day two ended with my new appreciation for the time it took on day one to communicate with this beast who carried my life on its back and who trusted me to guide him to safety. All that fresh air and all that riding left us exhausted, but content. We’d leveled up and couldn’t wait for day three.

On our final morning there would be no horsing around; we were heading straight for the woods. We followed Mary down a new trail, one that had some unexpected twists and turns and maybe, an occasional ground wasps’ nest. As long as there were no bears I felt pretty good about it all, but Mary had a pistol for that too…just incase.

The weather was the perfect amount of crispy cool mixed with the comforting warmth of the sun that would peek-a-poo through the trees as we sauntered past the woodchucks chucking below and the birds conversing above. This was it; the final frontier of our ‘adventure’ in horse riding in Nowheresville, NY. We had graduated to cantering; an in-between pace of trotting and galloping, and when the horses got a little too riled-up we practiced that one rein stop a.k.a., the emergency brake. 

Exhilarating was a mild way to put what it felt like to find your “seat” and become one with the movement of your horse. It’s primal. Like you are melting into one another moving swiftly through time and space, but also in slow-motion. Like you hacked yourself into a scene from The Matrix, but with no bad guys or dark, apocolyptic a.i.-generated set.

I was sighing into that bittersweet feeling of a good thing coming to an end until we rounded the corner to the final stretch towards home when Mary’s horse stepped on a wasps’ nest. The horse reared-up just like that bright yellow, pictographic-esque mustang-y thing she had blasted on the website. Holy shit?! Wtf was happening???? Then my horse followed suit and all three horses bolted like bats out of fucking hell. To top it off, that one rein stop wasn’t working. The emergency brake was broke. All three of us were just hanging on for dear life and had to literally ride it out. The only thing I could hear besides the thunder of twelve hooves tearing up the ground beneath them was Mary’s wild laughter bellowing through the forest broken up by the occasional, “Hang on!”. Thank God we were only about a quarter of a mile away from home which was the only thing that could stop these fuckers from running into an oblivion. We finally made it back to the barn, supremely thankful to have made it back at all.

Afterwards, the three of us sat around and drank a couple bottles of Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill, which I hadn’t drunk since high school, and Jason and I smoked a few too many of her cigarettes for being non-smokers. When it was time to pack up and head back to “reality”, I asked Mary why she always said, “It takes the time it takes.” She said she learned it from Pat Parelli, the famed natural horseman who proselytized working with your horse with mutual respect and admiration vs. beating it into submission. “The whole quote goes, ‘It takes the time it takes, so it takes less time”, she said. Another Mary mic drop.

It all hit me. We probably wouldn’t have survived that ride if we hadn’t done all the ground work; all the boring shit, all the seemingly unnecessary motions to get to the good stuff. When you do a thing the “right” way, you don’t have to waste more time later correcting the things you didn’t do right by rushing to the finish line. It’s something that keeps me motivated as a woman who is galloping towards fifty and navigating the overwhelming feelings that come with NOT having become the literal rockstar I thought I’d be by now; trusting in each and every perfect moment as your own perfect timing in your own perfectly imperfect life.

Sidebar: Another surprise during that trip was finding out I was pregnant with my first child who we later named “Colton”; partly because the name had a connection to horses but also, because Jason liked to drink Colt 45. We usually don’t tell the second part of his origin story but I guess I just did so, there it is.

The boys & Mary.

Since then, we returned to Mary’s every year as a couple and I continued the tradition with my sons, even after their father and I divorced. Time spares no one, including Mary, who, dare I say, is in her mid-seventies by now. Colton is eighteen and about to head off to college and his younger brother is sixteen and about to head off to a study abroad. It breaks my heart to think this tradition might be coming to an end after our trip in June, but the teachings of this woman and her horses will live-on in our hearts and minds until we all end up “riding off into the sunset.” 

In Laughter,

Lisa

p.s. If you are ever WAY upstate, or are looking for something more than just a boring-ass trail ride for an hour, you can still book rides with Mary , “No kiddin’, no foolin’!”Here: Adventure Horse Riding NYS

p.p.s. This post was NOT sponsored by Mary.