So, I did come home last weekend--but it turned out that I was too tired (read: lazy) to update the blog, so you all (whoever you may be, dear readers) got gypped for a week. But... I'm back now.
These last couple of weeks have been demanding. Our second week of jr. high girls (week 6) weren't nearly as skilled riders as the week before, which made teaching them a little harder. Also, I got pretty beat up--probably got more injuries that week than from the rest of the summer combined. On Tuesday, I was saddling one of the horse and he turned around and bit me unexpectedly... it didn't hurt that much, but it did break the skin through my sweatshirt. On Wednesday I was bridling another horse, who decided to be a jerk and wandered around behind Tye (my wrangler horse) as I was bridling him; Tye kicked at Halo (the horse I was bridling) but hit my knee instead. OUCH. Surprisingly it didn't bruise much, but it did swell up a bit in the area under my kneecap, and the joint popped for 4 or 5 days afterward whenever I walked on it. Then on Thursday, we had some time in the afternoon for an English jumping lesson (as in riding horses over jumps in an English saddle). My knee was still sore so posting (rising up and down in the saddle as your horse trots) was a bit of a chore, but I was kind of looking forward to working on my jumping skills (I'm not too bad at it, but I don't do it often at all so it's good to practice while I can). Balut (our ranch hand and an amazing rider) was teaching us. My horse, Elska, was being a jerk and not going around the corner of the arena like I wanted her to, so I was getting a little jerky with the reins. To solve this problem (with my jerky hands, not my jerky horse) Balut decided it would be a good idea to give me a cup of water to hold in each hand. That way I would hold them still (so as not to splash the water) and have better equitation (posture on a horse) overall... right? Except he failed to tell me that my hands were going all over the place and just said "Stop your horse and take these. We're going to play a game of cups. Now go over the jump."
Well. As soon as we started trotting, the water started sloshing out of my cups (of course). Unless you are used to holding cups on horseback at the trot, and additionally have a superhuman ability to keep your arms/upper body still at the trot (which is very bouncy) you ARE going to have water slosh out of your cups, especially while posting. I'm a pretty good rider, even at English (which I'm not used to), and there wasn't a thing I could do to keep the water in. That wouldn't have been a problem, except that Elska was still being a jerk, wouldn't go around the corner like I wanted her to, and now was zig-zagging all over the place because she wasn't happy about the water splashing on her. I went over the first jump and was supposed to go over the second, but by that point I was frustrated about the cups and knew they were keeping me from having good control of Elska. I dumped out the remaining tiny bit of water that was in them, stacked them together, and handed them back to Balut with a scowl that should have told him not to bother.
He smiled at me, refilled the cups, told me to shorten my reins, and try again.
Cups newly in hand, I kicked Elska around the corner--she went around it this time--and went over the first of the two jumps, water sloshing all the way. However, because my hands were half-full of cups, I couldn't hold the reins very well, which kept me from being able to effectively keep Elska from zig-zagging all over the place between the two jumps, which made me focus more on straightening her out for the second jump with the two fingers that were holding the reins, which kept me from noticing immediately that my balance was getting off. My left stirrup (the thing your foot rests in) broke just as Elska prepared to go over the second jump--went over it--and I was busy holding the cups, holding the reins, and now holding on for dear life as I overcompensated for balance on the right side and started to slip off as Elska hit the ground on the other side of the jump. She took one more stride and I was halfway off, still clutching the reins, and realizing I wasn't going to be able to climb back on at this point. I let go and hit the ground hard, tailbone first. Elska, thankfully, headed the other direction and stayed clear of me.
There was silence in the arena for a few seconds. I rolled over and got to my feet almost immediately, uttering a heavily sarcastic, "There goes Ariat, hitting the ground" and then groaning as I straightened and felt the soreness. Balut was already on his way over and asked if I was alright. "Yes," I replied as grumpily as possible, "I'm fine." The cups were crushed on the sand, and he picked them up and threw them over the fence. I stalked over to Elska and snatched her reins, fixed the broken stirrup (it just had to be reattached to the saddle) and tried to get on a little too fast. The stirrup broke again. Thoroughly pissed now, I attached it one more time, shrugged off Balut's offer to hold the saddle in place so I could get up, and climbed up (this time successfully).
"Are you alright?" he asked again.
"I'm fine," I said crankily. "Just bruised."
"Okay." He patted Elska's neck and continued with the next person to go over the jumps. I went over two or three more rounds of jumps with minimal critique from him and plenty of sympathy from Indy and the other wranglers. I was seething on the inside, angrier than I'd been in a long time. The last time I fell off a horse was two years ago, which I don't really even count because it was an intentional bail (really. There were bees on a trail, lots of trees on either side of the path, I was slipping halfway off of a bucking horse, and if I'd stayed on any longer I would have gotten a nice dose of tree trunk to the face). I wouldn't have fallen off at all that afternoon if I hadn't been dealing with those stupid cups of water. Eventually I opted to leave the arena early while the others continued jumping so that I could do some piano practice before dinner--but also because my bruised tailbone (and pride) needed some rest.
Piano has been an emotional outlet for me for a long time, and that afternoon was no different. I was pounding out my Rachmaninoff etude from earlier this year (Op. 33 in C minor) with probably a little more force than was necessary. A few people had walked through the room, and I suspected someone was in there with me for a while, listening, but I couldn't see them and tuned them out while I played. I was mentally rehearsing how I was going to be furious with Balut for a while and refuse to forgive him, or give him the cold shoulder because he wouldn't apologize, when he walked up and tapped me on the shoulder.
"Ariat?"
"Yes?" My face was perfectly calm.
"I'm sorry for making you fall off today." He pulled up a chair and sat down next to my bench, completely serious.
I took a deep breath. Every last notion of being angry with him disintegrated. "It's okay," I said. "I'm fine. I'll be okay."
"Really? You're not going to hate me forever?"
"Yeah."
We talked for a little while longer about what had happened; he admitted that the cups were probably too much at once for me to handle, his own experience with them when he had been taking jumping lessons, how he used to ride a horse that would dump him off about every day. He asked if I was willing to jump again. "Yes," I told him. "But probably not on Elska," he suggested. I agreed.
So we are okay now, which is great. Balut is a really cool guy and I'm glad we get along.
Week 7 (middlers--5-7th graders, and all girls again) went better on the bumps-and-bruises front, but was exhausting because we had guest group trail rides every afternoon, which took out most of our free time. As a compensation for that, Indy let each wrangler have a whole afternoon off for one day of the week. I spent almost two hours of my afternoon on piano practice, which felt awesome.
I taught the 1's, which was challenging because most of them had never ridden a horse before, but also really rewarding because of how much they improved over the week. They went from making amoeba-shaped "circles" with their horses on the first day, to trotting as a group (however briefly) with good balance on the last day. A couple of them also got the concept of posting down, which was really cool to see, and as a group their confidence improved immensely.
It also rained for several days of the week, which was a welcome break from the heat but unwelcome on Thursday night, which is when everyone goes out to Frontier Village (a campsite in the woods where the kids get to sleep in tipis overnight). It rained all night and was pretty cold, but still somehow heavy on mosquitos. We had half-frozen Uncrustables instead of s'mores, and a wet morning as we got the horses ready for the trailride back to the ranch on Friday morning. I don't mind the rain that much, but more sunshine would be amazing this week. I've got my fingers crossed.
Heading into week 8, we've got Discovery kids again... the little ones... but more SALTs (6 of them) plus a couple of guys who used to be SALTs and are coming out to help this week--an added blessing because we're going to have a cabin of 10 boys, the most we've had all summer. I'm looking forward to it; a fresh start, a new chance to start the week off right, a new set of kids to bond with and teach.
It's still crazy to me that it's August already. Really? Less than two months before I head back to school, and if I was in school, we would be gearing up for finals right now. I've got mixed feelings about my etude. It's getting better with every practice session, but I'm going to start memorizing now and try to have it memorized by the end of this month (a month before I'll have to play it, exactly like I try to do it for juries). I have faith that God will make it work out. The etude was my main conflict with camp, but I came to camp anyway, so it seems inevitable that the etude will come along too.
Yes, "overachiever" is my middle name. That's the way I roll, folks.
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