D  e  s  e  r  t   E  x  p  o  s  u  r  e        January 2008

Back in the Saddle Again

Going along for the horseback ride.

They say that "the outside of a horse is good for the inside of a man." Presumably, the ubiquitously quotable "they" aren't referring to benefits to the "inside" of your thighs or your butt. Even after dismounting from a short horseback ride, as I was recently reminded, those muscles can feel as though somebody's been going at them with a meat-tenderizing mallet. As long as I'm still on the horse, I'm fine; then my legs have to be re-taught how to walk.

View from the lobby at the Sheraton Wild Horse Pass Resort near Phoenix. (Photo by Lisa D. Fryxell)

No, the benefits of horseback riding are supposed to be more spiritual, I guess, though not in any kind of woo-woo, head-in-the-clouds sort of way. Think of Ronald Reagan on horseback at his ranch, and that all-American glow of confidence he exuded. (Come to think of it, although our current president is also a rancher, he's hardly ever pictured on horseback. Perhaps this should have been a tip-off?) Or Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, riding off on happy trails. You just knew that they had a special bond with Trigger and Buttermilk, respectively — the sort of connection Gabby Hayes could never have formed with his dusty old Jeep.

I've had to take most of the benefits of horseback riding on faith, experiencing the outside of a horse vicariously while sitting inside watching television. While I rode the occasional broomstick bronco as a kid, I hardly ever got astride a horse whose body couldn't be rapidly repurposed to sweeping floors. All the girls I knew wanted ponies, of course, but I can't recall any — even growing up in wide-open South Dakota — who actually got one; their desires were sort of like mine for a rocketship or super powers, except requiring more hay.

(Keep in mind that my only pets growing up were those teensy turtles that we now know carry salmonella or the Black Death or rabies or somesuch. No pet that could not be confined to an aquarium atop my bedroom dresser would be welcome in the fastidious Fryxell household — nary a cat or dog, much less a whinnying, randomly pooping horse.)

Once or twice, on family vacations at resorts in northern Minnesota, my mom and I went horseback riding while my dad played golf. (I can never remember seeing my dad on horseback, cutting a Ronald Reagan-esque pose — just as well, as his omnipresent cigarette would probably have set the poor thing's mane on fire.) These would have been quite tame "trail rides," I'm sure, but it was the closest I came to emulating my Wild West idols — and closer than I got to, say, flying co-pilot with John Glenn or having the proportionate strength of a spider. (That lucky Peter Parker! Where the heck was I supposed to find a radioactive spider in South Dakota?)

In recent years, however, I've occasionally had the opportunity to catch up on my horseback riding on various trips. I confess, I've approached each of these excursions with trepidation; the possibility of falling, broken bones, severe head trauma and trampling looms large in my febrile imagination. Nonetheless, despite secretly praying for rain or earthquake to cancel our horseback-riding plans, each experience — once actually undertaken and survived — has been richly memorable. I can begin to see why Ronald Reagan always looked so happy up there on his horse, especially compared to meeting the White House press corps.

Before we moved to New Mexico, a trip to Amelia Island, Florida, near Jacksonville, brought the chance to go horseback riding on the beach. It was irresistible, despite my near-certainty the ride would end in fractures and concussion: It would be like stepping into some gauzy TV commercial! I could picture my Fabio-like locks whipping dramatically in the breeze as my steed pounded into the surf, the spray glistening upon my rippling chest muscles. Even lacking romance-novel hair and pectorals, I found the ride exceeded my expectations. The moment when our little band of trail riders burst from the green canopy of forest out onto the open beach — well, let me just say that if we'd been advertising a product, I would have bought it.

This spring, on the trip to Mayan ruins I've already chronicled in this space, we enjoyed a second chance at riding along the beach, on an island off Honduras. This ride was longer and involved less actual beach time — fewer Fabio fantasies — but I came away again thinking of that saying about the outside of a horse. Once I could walk again without wincing, I felt positively spiritual about my encounter with sand, surf and horseflesh.

Then, last month, we got a tour of the Sheraton Wild Horse Pass Resort and Spa in Chandler, Arizona, south of Phoenix on the Pima-Maricopa tribes' Gila River Indian Community reservation. It's a gorgeous property, built with $170 million — cash — of casino revenues and designed to celebrate the tribes' culture, even at the expense of hotel management company Starwood's standard way of doing business; the tribe likes to boast that it broke 117 Starwood "rules," down to replacing the Sheraton "S" on pillows with authentic native designs. From the panoramic sweep of multistory windows in the lobby, you look out over a water feature re-creating the nearby Gila River (yes, "our" Gila River, part of the 52 percent of Arizona's water the tribes now command) and, beyond, against the backdrop of purpled mountains, the resort's namesake pass. Some 10,000 California-bound "49ers" found safe passage through Wild Horse Pass in the mid-1800s; the tribe likes to joke that they've been in the hospitality business for hundreds of years, but now they're charging by the night.

Squint at this vista with the help of an eagle-eyed resort staff member and you might make out the wild horses that give the pass its moniker — some 1,500 of them, untamed specks flitting at the edge of vision. In a surprise bonus to our tour, we got to see the wild horses much closer up — from horseback.

After a jouncing hayride to the resort's equestrian center, we signed a waiver whose fine print I was too nervous to read, anyway, and got outfitted with helmets. One of our party opted not to wear protective headgear — another line on the waiver to initial — and I cheerily promised to visit him in the hospital. It was a promise I had no intention of keeping — heck, I hardly knew the guy — but I figured if he took it on the head he wouldn't remember me or my promise, anyway, much less his own name.

Much similar teasing about death and dismemberment accompanied our assignment to horses suiting our riding experience. Fresh from my successful Honduras ride, I boldly placed myself in the "not utterly inexperienced" category, even though I knew this might mean being placed atop a steed nicknamed, say, "the widowmaker." My horse turned out to be a compliant critter named Jesse (as in "Jesse James" — a killer? — I briefly wondered). After a bit of stirrup adjustment and some advice from my wife that I was listing to starboard on my saddle, Jesse and I set off with the group across the desert.

The horses' footing proved still muddy and mucky from the previous night's unusual downpour. On the bright side, I figured this soft, squishy surface reduced my odds of spending my golden years as a vegetable should Jesse suddenly turn into the Bronco from Hell. On the downside, I now began to fret about winding up covered from head to sneakers in mud.

But Jesse and her peers proved remarkably cooperative, even for us near-novices, and our little band fanned out across the expanse of mud and creosote bushes like a posse from one of the TV shows I watched as a kid. The creosote gave the air a sweet, witch-hazel tang of recent rain. The clouds scurried away over the mountains. The soggy clop of our horses' hooves harmonized with the swish of powerful legs through scrubby underbrush.

In the ever-shrinking distance, we spotted a colt and its mother and then a wild stallion, which moved closer to its family as we drew near. Cutting sideways across the trail to give them personal space, we soon found ourselves riding straight toward another wild horse. White and mud-streaked, it stared impassively at us until we gave up this game of "chicken" and veered again. Our own horses seemed uninterested in their wild cousins, as if so many generations had passed since their own wilding days that they might as well be different species.

Other than saddle-sore, I can't describe how I felt when we returned to the stables and were helped to dismount. I just know that, since then, my thoughts keep swirling back to that ride, the open desert and open sky, and the watchful gaze of those wild horses.

I'm not exactly ready to stable a horse out back and start signing over my 401(k) to keep it in hay. But I'd go riding again, given the chance. And I think I'm starting to understand something of what horses do to your insides, and why all those Western heroes of mine were always smiling.