It's interesting to document how our anxieties change and shift over the years.  As a young teenaged event rider, I was fearless at the Preliminary and Intermediate levels.  Even after two serious accidents, I still got right back on.  It didn't even occur to me not to get back on let alone to be nervous.  My anxieties then were around performance and success with ribbons and moving up through the levels.  In my early twenties, I was on a particularly challenging cross country course and was pulled up before a big ditch and bank combination.   The horse and rider before me has fallen and were both seriously hurt.  I was held in an area just in front of the jump, wathcing the paramedics and vets.  After the fallen pair were taken away, I was told that I had time to warm up and continue on the course.  At that monent, the horror of not only what had happened, but what could happen to me, hit me like a ton of bricks.  Someone could have lit an LED sign overhead flashing, "Welcome to Adulthood and the Realization of your Mortality."

I became a more careful rider after that experience.  I eventually went off to grad school and took a sabbatical from competition, and then from riding all together.  That lasted 16 years!  In 2004  my husband and I adopted a trio of wild Kiger mustangs.  I was 40.  I insisted that I would not ride again, just gentle and breed my Kigers.  Then along came the TB Johnny and on my 41st birthday I rode a horse for the first time since age 25. Ah, if my husband had only known....

Last year I started riding regularly again with eventing as a goal.  Riding has been limited due to snow, ice, flood and injuries (not riding related!).  But now Frosty and I are working at the Novice/Training level and Marcos is ready for saddle.  Recently we drove down to Ranier to the Northwest Equestrian Center to school cross country.  Being new to riding and eventing in WA, I had no idea how a drought dried, newly mown field could be like brown ice.  I hadn't yet gotten studs so Frosty's shoes may well have been skis.  As she balked at a new jump and slid, even though I knew she could make the jump from a standstill, I didn't insist and so she slid right into it.  It was her first refusal.  I was furious with myself.  How could I let my anxiety allow her to refuse?  I rode off on a shaded trail to process.  I realized that my anxiety was not about me getting hurt, but about my pony getting hurt.  And I recognized that the footing really was dangerous without gravel or studs and Frosty could easily get hurt.  We went back to the course and jumped fences with gravel and safe footing.  All was well again.

This story may be simplistic, but so often we get stuck in the blame cycle and frozen in our fears that keep us from moving on.  I will continue to train cross country but I will honor my need to be scrupulously safe with my ponies over any competitive drive that I may have.  Frosty is my baby - the first wild pony I ever touched and the first wild pony to ever touch me.  I plan a long, healthy and safe life both on and of the course with her.

The NWEC allows schooling daily.  Contact them at www.nw-equestrian.net