“I’m going riding,” I announced one day, “on the beach”.  He scoffed, making comments about my inabilities to go it alone – not realizing how those seeds of doubt he’d planted over the years had grown into a virtual forest in my mind.  I’m going riding, I reaffirmed to myself, reaching back into the rarely visited corner of my closet and retrieving my cowboy boots.  They’d been standing there, in the darkness, waiting for me to grow up and take charge. I held them to my nose, smelling the leather, still a hint of horse sweat and sage brush from rides across the prairie – with my father right beside me for guidance, for instruction – for restraint.

I pulled them on, the supple leather hugging my feet and ankles, growing taller in my own mind just standing in my bedroom in the early morning hours.  They’d been a graduation present from my father.  He’d told me to pick them out then made remarks about them being “too damned expensive.”  It was just his way.  Still, he got them. He always wanted the best for me.

Clad in boots and jeans, I headed west toward Half Moon Bay, the only place I knew where you could ride directly on the beach.  I’d never driven there alone – he’d always been my escort.  Now, I had to find it all by myself, through heavy traffic, across freeways and odd streets and all the deterrents a child with doubts about her abilities would encounter.  “Stay in the middle lane,” I remember he’d said, and even now, fifteen years after his death, I still heed that tip when maneuvering through the maze of lanes across the Bay Bridge through San Francisco to the ocean. 

The stables came up quickly on the ocean side.  I pulled in, heart pounding, doubts clamoring to keep me from my dream – riding alone, on a fast horse, along the shore, with no one telling me I am sitting improperly or holding the reins wrong or anything else – just me, the horse and the sea. 

I sauntered up to the little shack where the HORSES FOR RENT sign hung, gathering my courage.  “Experience?” asked the attendant.   I stood firmly and answered as if I’d done this a million times.  I had in my own mind.  “I’m an average rider,” I said. “I’m not an expert, but I don’t want something I have to beat along either. (My father’s words again) I know how to ride.” 

Did I know how to ride?  Did I really?  What if? 

He walked me across the corral to a beautiful maple-colored quarter horse with a blonde mane.  She had spirit and a gleam in her eye.  Foot in the stirrup, up in the saddle I went, sweating under my jacket, hoping I wouldn’t get pitched into the surf or otherwise embarrass myself.      

And then, we were there on the sand, just me and my horse.  I could smell the salt air and the cool breeze coming in from the cold blue ocean, white caps the color of her mane.  Trotting at first, then moving a little faster, testing myself, feeling the scream coming up in my throat – that WHEEEEEEEE that little girls scream when they’re on a ride at the county fair or a bicycle going downhill too fast or a sled careening down a snowy slope – pure thrill with no imposed limits. 

And then, another rider approached.  Even from a distance, it was obvious this guy really knew horses.  He asked if I wanted to race and I thought, Oh, no, what had I gotten myself into?  Could I have actually looked as if I knew what I was doing?  He was riding with a girl who looked a little scared up there in the saddle, so I decided to show off a bit. 

Down the beach we galloped, hooves in the surf, cool salt water splashing their legs, my boots and calves, hair blowing back while the chilly air turned my cheeks bright pink.  I smiled so hard my face hurt.  I wanted to yell YEEE HAAA into the wind but kept it inside.  Yet the emotions were there, the freedom of it all, the doubt that had resided inside me all those years, the fear of failure, the unknowing, the, What if I didn’t do it right?  All of that.  Slowly, doubts evaporated into sea winds.  I envisioned myself from above, riding along in the waves, hooves pounding the sand, hat blown back and lying against my back, free and happier than I could ever remember being.

He’d taught me how, but couldn’t let me have the reins; he couldn’t let go of me, of his little girl, for whatever reason, but his love of horses and of riding and of Big Sky Country, out in Montana, was deep in my blood.  My father’s doubts and insecurities limited him in many ways.  Perhaps we were riding together, overcoming fears locked deep inside both of us.

Tears coursed down my cheeks, mingling with salty sea air.  I’d done it, all by myself.  The simple act of a ride along the beach released a hidden pool somewhere deep in my soul, a pool of pure joy, one that had been buried under insecurities and fears.  It came bubbling to the surface and those old feelings floated away like chaff on the wind.