Riding Again After Twenty Years

I’ve been riding again after a long absence. Horses are large, unpredictable creatures that seem to have a soul that resonates with mine. I know that spending even a short time around them makes me forget everything else. The smell is something we used to dream of distilling as adolescents. Basically, you either love it or hate it.

Like riding a bicycle, riding a horse is a skill remembered mostly in muscles that don’t necessarily work as well as they used to. But the old instincts are still there: I can still tell when a horse, frisky in the north wind, is about to bolt. Not that this will necessarily save me!

The UC Davis Equestrian Center is adjacent to Highway 113. There are about 60 lesson horses and many others that are owned privately. It’s time for it to move on. There’s a ranch out on Russell Boulevard which has been earmarked for the new Equestrian Center and which is being celebrated this coming week. I hope there will be an indoor arena: riding in the mud in winter and searing heat in summer is no fun. If Davis is successful in its bid to get the new Biosafety Level 4 Lab from NIH, it will sit on the current site of the Equestrian Center.