While many people I have met are completely convinced that
at some point in my life I must have walked under a latter while breaking
mirrors with my open umbrella in doors, tipped over a salt shaker on Friday the 13th,
or tread on a Native American’s pet dog’s burial ground, the truth is that
throughout my entire life, I have remained extremely lucky when dealing with
animals. Though I have suffered from countless bites, scratches, and assorted injuries,
I have been fortunate enough to have never been stamped “cancelled”, let alone
seriously injured. I’ve been hospitalized by a venomous snake, I’ve been submerged
chest deep in alligator infested water, vaccinated by a brown recluse, and have
been stabbed, bitten, and poisoned by countless other animals. And through it
all, I’ve never come closer to death than the horse-back riding incident I’ve
chosen to recount in this article. Though this piece does not actually include
an animal “attack”, this was perhaps the only animal related incident I have
experienced where I was literally within inches of death. Here’s how I remember
every terrifying minute of it…
It wasn’t cold,
it was freezing. Winter was setting in and the temperature was dropping nearly as
fast as the sun, which was now barely visible over the horizon, heavily
obscured by the thick tree line directly behind the house. Sporting a pair of
jeans and thick denim jacket, I stood on the front porch, arms crossed in my best
Robert Redford impression. I had been suffering from a lot of anxiety related
stress lately and I figured that perhaps the best thing to calm my rattled
nerves would be a long horse-back ride. While never the type to don a Stetson,
I had always enjoyed the cowboy vibe I got from riding horses. Growing up on
John Wayne movies makes this inevitable, I suppose. The ground continued to
swallow the sun, as if it were sinking in quick sand. The orange and gold
lights that had filled the sky faded to a dull blue grey, and then plain grey. I
had been waiting a while now as several of my siblings had each taken turns
riding Penny, our five-year old quarter horse. We had only gotten her last
Christmas, the year it snowed a solid six inches, and we were all keen to
practice our riding skills.
At last, one of
my sisters walked her up to the porch and tied her off, wrapping one of the
reigns around the top rail. I walked stiffly down the steps and around the
horse, breathing deeply and rubbing my head as I tried hard to forget about the
anxieties I had been battling for so long. I slid my left foot through the stirrup
while grabbing ahold of the saddle horn. “Why does it have to be the left side
of the horse when mounting?” I wondered to myself. “Who made that rule? And why
does everyone obey it?”. “Was it the same guy who said women under the age of twenty-one
shouldn’t cross their legs during dinner?”. “Does it bother the horse if I
mount on the right side, and do horses even know the difference between right
and left?” I thought, as I eased up and swung my right leg over the saddle. It
took me a second to find the other stirrup with my boot. John Wayne had always made
it look so easy. Taking both reigns in one hand, I began walking the horse out
towards the three-hundred foot, gravel driveway. If I thought it was cold before,
being elevated on horse-back, completely exposed to the chilling wind certainly
didn’t do much to change my mind. It didn’t matter though because my mind was
being occupied by nature, which was the entire point. We kept walking.
Reaching the end
of the driveway, I turned her off onto the grassy path that followed the gravel
road nearly a quarter mile before reaching the asphalt paved public road. There
were pastures occupied by cattle on each side, allowing for ten feet or so of
grass between the pasture’s fence lines and the white gravel road. Continuing
to walk her in the same direction, the fence along my left angled off at ninety
degrees, just before we reached the first of three trailer houses that aligned
the remaining road. This provided one with a little extra riding area, though I
was careful to avoid veering off into someone’s yard. Forget whatever notions
you may have concerning country hospitality. The people living in my neck of
the woods are just as likely to call the police on you as say hello, assuming
they don’t shoot you first. Keep in mind that this is the South, where water is
only drunk after five o’clock and there are more shotguns than pretty women. I
stayed very close to the road.
Reaching the end
of the road, I turned Penny around and stared back towards my house, which I
could now barely make out through the imposing darkness. I don’t remember what
caused me to decide on my next course of action. Perhaps I wanted an adrenaline
rush. But more than likely, I had just always wanted to try this and now was as
good a time as any. You see, I had never galloped a horse before. I had walked
one, cantered, trotted, and even loped on a horse, but never once had I ridden
one at full gallop. Crossing over to the left side of the road, which would
have been the right side across the road from me on the way up, I took a deep
breath. Before I even knew it, I quickly tapped the horse’s flanks with my boot
heels and yelled “ha!” just the way Robert Redford would have done it. Penny
exploded. She started off fast, much faster than I had anticipated and with
each pounding step she quickened the pace. Within five seconds we must have
been totaling forty miles per hour. Just as we were nearing the last house on
the way back, my right foot slipped from the stirrup. Terror struck and panic
began to swell up inside me as I flailed my foot around trying to find the lost
stirrup, all the while, the horse began racing off course, veering across the
road straight through a neighbor’s yard. Holding on to the saddle horn with my
left, I grabbed ahold of the stirrup with my right and managed to slide it back
over my foot. To this day, I am still unsure whether or not that saved my
life or nearly ended it. Though my feet were now both in their propper place, we
were still racing wildly off course. I thought for sure we would crash into the
pasture fence. We never made it that far.
The moment I secured
the stirrup, I raised my body back to its vertical position and looked forward.
I will never forget what happened next. There was what sounded like a sonic
crack in both ears as the whole world before me flashed into a bright yellow
wall. I had just galloped my horse forty miles per hour into a trio of parallel
guidelines anchoring a telephone pole into the neighbor’s yard. For the next
second, though it actually seemed like three or four, I felt the strangest
sensation: no sensation at all. I felt nothing. I heard nothing. I saw nothing
but blackness as the yellow flash disappeared as quickly as it appeared.
Looking back on this moment, I do believe I might very well have been unconscious.
The next thirty seconds however, woke me up in a hurry and remain the scariest moment
of my life to date. I hit the ground chest first at forty miles per hour, my
right foot still caught in the stirrup. I vividly remember actually bouncing
off the ground like a tennis ball upon impact. The horse screamed exactly as
they do in ancient battle movies just before they die, actually flipping in a
complete circle through the air over me, while my foot was still caught in the
stirrup. Because I hit the ground chest first with one foot in the stirrup, and
the horse landed further from the wires than I did, this means that she
actually twisted through the air about two feet over my body and landed about
twelve inches away from my head. Strangely, as I recovered consciousness upon
impact, I was actually unaware of how serious the situation was. Noticing a
strange powdery substance in my mouth, I pulled myself up on hands and knees
and looked forward to see Penny flailing on her back, covered in blood. I tried
to stand. With one step I fell back down in agonizing pain, hitting the ground
next to Penny, who had managed by this point to roll over. She stood and
staggered, taking three steps in my direction, then collapsed. I was lying
prone, nearly unable to move. She stood again, taking several more steps
towards me, and collapsed again. I realized that she was about to walk right
over me and I began clawing at the dirt, desperately trying to move out of her
way. But I couldn’t. She stood back up and stepped right over me, her legs
wobbling uncontrollably as if she were a new born foal. Her hoof brushed my face
as I rolled over to avoid being stepped on. She staggered, and I began
screaming for help as I relentlessly fought to stay out from under her. I
looked towards the nearest trailer as I screamed “Is anyone there!? Help me!”
But no one emerged. As Penny continued to stagger forward, I managed to roll out from under her and after several additional seconds, she had stabilized somewhat and I had managed to
sit up. Suddenly I heard voices screaming my name, each one louder than the one before.
Thank the Lord, my sister had been sitting on the porch swing and had heard the
crash of the guidelines and the wailing of the horse! Somehow my brother made
it there too, the both of them running on foot as fast as they could. Showing enough good sense to
reserve all questions for after the tour, they helped me up to my feet.
Completely unable to walk, they helped me up over the saddle, where I laid
horizontally the entire way back.
Sprawled out
across the couch, there was very little I could do. Though the pain in my chest
was severe and the entire length of my rib cage had begun turning a lovely
black and blue, I concluded that nothing crucial was broken or ruptured. I was
not coughing blood and no bones appeared to be cleanly broken. I had severely
chipped two or three teeth though, which is what had caused the powdery sensation
in my mouth. I knew that Penny was likely in more trouble than I was. After
all, that wasn’t my blood I had seen. As it turns out, she had her neck cleanly
punctured within an inch of her carotid artery. The cavity in her neck was
filled with blood and there was a hole in the side of her neck as perfectly
round as if she had been attacked by a giant hole-punch. I have looked over the
area of the crash multiple times since the incident but have never found any
object that could have made an injury like that. To this day I have no idea
what punctured her neck. Luckily, we both survived the incident and are, even
to this day, quite healthy. Interestingly, Penny now only grows white hair in
the location of the healed neck wound. Even more interesting though are the
questions raised and answered after a thorough inspection of the crash site.
As it turns out,
the bright yellow flash was a wide, plastic yellow lining on the top two wires. It
seemed to be right in front of my face at the time of the flash. However, if
the wires had hit me directly in the face it more than likely would have killed
me as well as knocked me directly backwards rather than forwards over the wire,
where I actually landed. Perhaps I had gone just under the top wires but had
caught the bottom one. Maybe the horse’s legs had caught the bottom strand and
her neck had caught the top two. Perhaps the top strands had caught the saddle horn,
still flashing yellow in front of me as we were flipped over them. Who knows? The
ground surrounding the guidelines was covered in a very thick layer of soft
dirt, which more than likely saved my life. Had it been gravel or even hard
earth, I would very likely have suffered from broken ribs and possibly even ruptured
or punctured organs. What I find most interesting about the entire incident
though, was the way my foot was caught in the stirrup. This had directly
controlled the manner in which I landed. I had hit the ground on the left side
of my chest while being swung by my trapped leg in a downward, diagonal arch going
left to right. Had I failed to find the stirrup the instant before the crash,
there is no guarantee that I wouldn’t have landed on my head and broken my
neck. Perhaps it even kept me from landing underneath the horse, which would
also surely have killed me. The little details, it seems, are always the most
important.
Looking back on the incident, it’s hard to
find anything I did right. I was an emotionally taxed, un-experienced rider trying
to gallop a horse for the first time in my life, at
night. Does the situation really warrant further investigation? I clearly
made one mistake after another and they very nearly proved to be my last. One
positive outcome did come from that experience though. I completely forgot
about my anxiety for the next few days! Perhaps there is a market in this…
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