[dropcap]I[/dropcap]t’s barely 32 degrees on a Saturday morning in December. Frost crunches under our boots, and our breath turns the air in front of us to steam. While our classmates snuggle deeper under their comforters at home, my little sister, Jessica, and I stamp our boots against the ground to try to regain feeling in our frozen toes and ignore the tingling sensation in our hands while we fumble with the leather straps on our horses’ saddles.
Most people can’t fathom why we would give up our Saturday mornings to trudge around in frozen pastures or the open-faced areas of the stable. On mornings like this, there are times I feel the same way. Between the biting cold, the unwelcome alarm ringing at 6:30 a.m. and the studying and homework that awaits my return home, it’s sometimes difficult to pull myself out of bed in the winter months.
Yet, as long as the roads aren’t frozen over and the wind chill doesn’t dip below freezing, Jessica and I will be at the barn at 9 a.m. every Saturday, looking at the ride list posted on the bulletin board before heading off to collect our horses for lessons at Walnut Slope Riding School.
Our teacher affectionately calls us “die-hards,” as we are some of the few horseback riders who continue with lessons past the summer months and the annual horse show. Aside from a few other girls in the nine a.m. Saturday class and the advanced riders in the 7:30 a.m. class, we are the only ones who are less likely to cancel a class ourselves than our teacher is to cancel the lessons for everyone that day.
In the winter months when the weather is bad, it’s the unconditional love of the horses and these six other “die-hard” girls that encourage me to return every week. Together, we have little in common — one girl is a freshman at Battle High School, another a junior at Hickman High School and yet another a Moberly Area Community College student. One of the advanced riders isn’t even out of middle school.
In fact, looking at the eight of us, it’s hard to imagine us spending time together in any other circumstance. We’re all so different from one another, except for one thing — we share the same passion for horses. With our arrival at the barn every Saturday morning and the sound of our boots tromping through the long grass in the pasture, we’re suddenly as similar to one another as if we’d grown up alongside one another.
In some ways we have, spending years side by side as we learned how to find our diagonals (the rhythm of the rider’s movement when trotting) and take the hunter hack jumps, as we grew to be better equestrians and matured as young women.
In those two hours a week that we have together, the “die-hards” and I have all grown closer to one another than we would’ve ever thought possible. I’ve confided in them about problems in school and they’ve done the same with me, building a unique trust among all of us that’s hard to replicate in other groups. Riding around in the fields after class or huddling together before entering the ring at shows, we’ve kept each other calm and relaxed in environments that used to stress each of us out yet now bring only smiles and laughter to our small circle of friends.
There are times I’ve wondered how each of us can be so different yet find such strong friendships in our time together every Saturday. In each of our differences, however, our passion for horseback riding brings us together more than anything else. It’s this passion that makes the barn like a second home to me — somewhere I can open up about almost anything without a second thought.
Sharing a passion with others can’t guarantee friendships, but the joyful memories that come with experiencing those passions together is often hard to match. I might have only known the girls at the barn for two or three years — some even less time than that. Yet in that time I’ve grown closer to them than I ever would’ve thought possible, all thanks to our shared love of horses and the sport that brought us together.
So even though the winter weather and the looming reminder of finals make it hard to drag myself out of bed Saturday mornings, I can at least be sure my friends will all be there, too, making the barn my own safe haven and reminding me why every chilly morning I spend with them is all worthwhile. And as I begin to consider college and the daunting reality of the many beginnings I will face in the years to come, I am content in knowing friends aren’t hard to find, especially when sharing in the joys of doing what we love most.
What hobby has brought you together with your friends?