When the cow tried to get back to the herd,
I knew I would ride cutting horses for the rest of my life. With liquid
quickness, the mare countered every move that the cow made. Riding her on a
slack rein gave me a sense of controlled freefall. Centered between the ears of
my horse as if in the sites of a rifle, the cow faked and dodged. Much of the
time I didn't know where I was or where the cow was, and I was certainly no
help to the horse. By the time I picked up the reins to stop, I was addicted to
the thrilling shared movement of cutting, sometimes close to violence, which
was well beyond what the human body could ever discover on its own.
This short non-fiction piece by the fine writer, Tom
McGuane, can be found in his collection Some Horses.
It tells of the love affair with cutting horses that
he and his wife both engaged in.
It nails the feelings of a novice rider versus the experienced
rider. It takes us to competition and gets those details right, too; the missed
turn-offs, the annoyances of pulling a trailer in traffic, the jittery nerves
of competitive exposure, even the low-level “Me vs. You” between man and wife competing
in the same event.
This man loved horses, but he is no Dan “Buck”
Brannaman, and that makes the story all the more accessible for we lower-level
riders. We can feel what he feels where as what “Horse Whisperers” do is an ineffable
work of art, almost unrelatable beyond the beauty of witnessing the relationship.
A brief work but it does more to get “Man & Horse”
dynamics perfect than many a longer tale in a genre that always features horses
but seldom gets them right beyond the color.
Superlative!
