Today I’m going horseback riding for the first time in nearly a year and a half. My friend, Suzanne, was one of the executive directors at a small not-for-profit that I used to volunteer at called the Equine Project. I became who I am today around the people and animals that I met there and through the experiences I had with the program. I stopped volunteering when the property that the Equine Project maintained their business on was bought from under them and the organization mostly disappeared. It was a shock and, at least for me, felt very sudden to not have this place to turn to that had been so reliably a part of my life for years.
I showed up at the ranch that Suzanne is currently working at with my dad and we spent an entire afternoon grooming the horses. Jillian, the horse I spent all of my time with, was the one I used to ride all of the time. I used to watch melodramatic teen dramas about horsepeople that would show their horses and dream of doing that with Jillian. Jillian is certainly a well-trained enough horse, but I’m certainly not skilled enough of a rider to think I’d ever win anything. Nevertheless, it’s fun to dream sometimes.