The highlight of my years at the "University Farm" came in an experience more fully poetic than any 600-year-old masterpiece I suffered through as an English major.
The day was cold and wet, and I was worried that my horseback riding lesson would be canceled. To my surprise, the instructor had decided to hold the class and "see how it went."
I was assigned to Chopped Liver, "C.L." for short, so-named because of his color. He was tall and leggy, and I had not ridden him before; he seemed an awfully long way up from the ground, and I was well beyond my preteen fantasy of riding an 18-hands-high stallion. I'm a small person, and I wanted a small horse. But of course I saddled him and followed the other three women who had braved the storm out to the riding arena.
We warmed up: some trotting, some cantering, a few figure eights, avoiding the big puddles in the middle of the sand. The rain stopped for a while, and our instructor set up one of the jumps, but put the bar very low so the horses could just step over it. The point was for us, the riders, to get comfortable with the jump position and to teach us about positioning before the fence.
The wind picked up, and my hands were frozen on the reins because I hadn't thought to buy gloves. I remember sitting on C.L., shivering but sweating, too, while one student's mount repeatedly refused the fence. She kept pushing the horse up to it, and he'd dance off to the side at the last minute. Finally, he popped over, but by then the rain had started again and I couldn't see much because of the water dripping off my hard hat into my eyes.
I was so afraid that the instructor would end the class early that I forgot to be nervous about the jump. All I had done before was trot over poles; this was to be my first experience actually leaving the ground. And I forgot my shivers, my wet hair, my cold hands, because C.L. was in perfect form that day, and after the first few times he stopped stepping over the pole and jumped it instead. The instructor moved it higher to coax the other horses into jumping, and the same student whose horse had refused now insisted on stepping over the pole instead of jumping. Finally the instructor put the pole so high that the animal could not step over it.
I think she meant to put the pole down after the troublesome horse went over it, but I did not learn that until later. C.L. and I were next in line, and after the other woman went over, I just naturally nudged C.L. into a trot and then a canter. It wasn't until too late that I saw exactly how high the pole was, and I almost panicked. I say almost, because at the same time I felt a thrill all through my body, and I wanted nothing more than to make it over that fence in perfect form; to throw my heart over it and catch up, as one ex-steeple-chaser-turned-mystery-novelist often writes.
English major that I was, I couldn't help but notice that I was in harmony with all the elements--air (wind), water (rain), earth (sand) and fire (horse). I felt timeless, as far away from papers and midterms and Norton anthologies and long-dead poets as it's possible to be in one's sophomore year of college. Despite the rain I was sweating, and I have two very distinct sensory memories of that first real jump: the taste of salt and the grit of sand between my teeth. That, and a feeling of being truly alive.
C.L. soared over that fence as if he were a professional hunter-jumper, landed lightly on his toes and moved immediately into a perfect, collected canter. I may have been less graceful or skilled, but it didn't matter, because my heart was huge in my chest and all I wanted in the world at that moment was to do it again. I looked behind me to see if my instructor had seen my flight, but she was bending over, adjusting the pole into a lower position. It wasn't long afterwards that the lesson came to an end, either due to weather or the clock, I'm not sure.
When I reflect upon what I achieved at Davis, neither my GPA nor the Dean's List leaps to mind. I don't usually think first of Shakespeare, or even of my favorite teacher, John Boe. It's that salt taste and the wet wind and, above all, flying.
-- Regina Lynn Preciado '93
