An Essay...

I had to write a personal essay about an important memory in my life and I chose to write about a clear cross country round with Onyx. Here it is, let me know what you think!

The butterflies from the night before had vanished; replaced with cold heavy iron. I tightened up the girth, checked my helmet and started towards warm up. Eight horses and riders galloped around the three jumps set up for warm up, a sort of organized frenzy. Though it was hardly my first cross country course, it included one of my greatest demons. Seventeen jumps completed the Training level course in Louisiana, but jump fifteen was all that mattered to me - the trakehner. All of my demons hid in the grave like ditch below the suspended log; they always waited until Onyx and I were forty feet away to rear their ugly heads.

I completed my quick warm up with a stern face, nearly everyone at the show stayed out my way - they knew it was one of my last chances to prove myself. The night before, two hundred miles north, my high school friends had danced the night away in formal dresses, tuxedos, and limos, one of the last rites of passage of a graduating senior. This course, this jump, was more important than that, it represented more than senior year, more than caps and gowns; it was the key to my future and happiness. This was my rite of passage.

As I waited for the starter to count down from ten, everything around me dissolved, all that was left was my horse and me. We sprung from the start box straight to a gallop. Fences one, two and three came and went quickly and easily. The first real question wasn’t until the bending line at jump four. Several riders had issues here but we bounced through it as though they were x-rails. Launching into the second field I felt Onyx question a large table. SMACK with the whip. We were over it. Even over the preceding jumps I only had eyes for number fifteen. Over the combinations at jump seven and eight; through the water complex at eleven and we were on our way.

Well ahead of the clock we flew over the last couple of barriers before the trakehner. As we hit the long gallop stretch leading up to my boogey jump everything slowed down. It seemed that time went backwards; back to four months prior, the last time I faced this fence. The fence had won that time, the ditch eating me whole. White hot panic seized my stomach and I thought about turning out. Instead I pulled Onyx into a circle. In the circle I saw my parents, their faces both hopeful and scared; my trainer, she knew I was panicking; all of my friends and teammates, their faces frozen in anticipation.

In the last quarter of the circle I turned my head away from the friends and family present to watch the personal battle; I turned and focused on the two flags of the monster. Red on right, white on left. That was all I had to do: get between those two flags. Seven strides out I froze. Onyx’s strides shortened at five strides out, the demons were starting to stir. At four strides I could see the demons’ fiery eyes and sharp fangs. Three strides out Onyx and I both felt their hot breath and Onyx started to balk; then I snapped back into the ride. My leg closed, my throat growled – or was that the demons? Strides two and one were a complete fog. I saw flashes of my horrible fall a few months before: ambulances, my father running and yelling, my mom’s tears, Onyx galloping away, leaving me for the demons.

Squeals and screams haunted me as we landed on the other side, later my parents told me it was the spectators’ cheers, not the demons chasing us away. The last two jumps were poles on the ground we skipped over mockingly with our eyes on the prize: the finish flags.

As I slowed my proud steed to a trot my vision blurred. The steward, the same one from the show before, gave me a thumb up and a grin. The same friends and family that had surrounded jump fifteen came running off the course yelling, laughing and cheering as Onyx gave his trademark bit shake and stomped his front legs, proud of himself. The tears on my mom’s face mirrored those on my own and even my trainer, who claimed to have no emotions, had a telling glisten to her eyes. Cloud nine was well below where we all stood then.

After everybody left the barn to go watch the rest of cross country, after my tack and equipment had been put away I sat in Onyx’s stall while the ice melted on his legs. His head was dropped down to sniff my lap, looking for the treats he knew I had and hoping for an ear rub. He got both, of course. In the distance I could hear the announcer commentating on the rides, birds calling in the trees and a disappointed dog left behind in a stall. The Louisiana breeze was heavy and laden with the tang of sweet hay and manure. My large, black horse sighed in my face, warm and moist, and nibbled my hair. Outside of that stall a bigger world was continuing on without us, and we were perfectly okay with that.