I've been addicted to horses for as long as I can remember – not that I'm complaining. Reading The Black Stallion books as a youngster started me down the path of a life with equines. Everything fell into place, one step after another, as I became a racetrack groom, horse photographer, writer, traveler, Endurance rider, and author. I write and photograph for numerous magazines, and I’ve authored five books and several short e-stories on horses. My long-time love was my off-the-track Thoroughbred Stormy, who lived to be 30, and I currently own Hillbillie Willie, an off-the-track Standardbred who loves Endurance riding.
I wrote
Soul Deep in Horses: Memoir of an Equestrian Vagabond
When I grow up, I want to be Julie Suhr. She has lived an incredible life, from childhood to old age, of adventure with horses. The sport of Endurance riding took her around the world, and horses have carried her on breathtaking unforgettable rides. Her evocative and poignant writing style will grab your heart and have you reading some of the chapters again and again. I found myself in my tent, the night before I rode the Tevis Cup, again reading her magical chapter about that ride.
Julie's book (and Julie herself) inspired me to write my first book. I've been lucky enough to emulate her life just a little bit in my world Endurance riding adventures with horses. Now in her 90's, Julie's still a horsewoman and still an inspiration to me.
This engaging story is not for horse lovers alone, but for all ages and all walks of life who have ever had dreams. It take you on one woman's journey from childhood to old age in a life of joy and passion. You will find her failures and her successes full of laughter and tears. Julie Suhr never wavered in the ardor she felt for riding horses and, with delight, she shares the experiences. Between the ears of good horses, she and her husband, Bob, have seen the world from the Siberian border and Outer Mongolia, to the Alaskan tundra,…
Back in the day when you could ride across the country, an inexperienced young John Egenes and his young gelding Gizmo left a broken home in California, looking toward the Atlantic Ocean. Over the seven months of their exploit, they learned to depend on each other and become true partners as they found their way eastward.
I loved this story as a journey, both as a long horseback ride and a personal journey. John has a candid and humorous way of looking at life and describing the people and adventures along the way – the good and the bad. It's an up close and personal adventure across the country, shared with man's best friend, one that I wish I could have done.
In 1974 a disillusioned young man from a broken home set out to do the impossible. With a hundred dollars in his pocket, a beat up cavalry saddle, and a faraway look in his eye, John Egenes saddled his horse Gizmo and started down the trail on an adventure across the North American continent. Their seven month journey took them across 11 states from California to Virginia, ocean to ocean.. As they left the pressing confinement of the city behind them, the pair experienced the isolation and loneliness of the southwestern deserts, the vastness of the prairie, and the great…
When I find myself thinking, “I can't do that,” I think of Isabella Bird, living a brave and intrepid solo life on horseback in the 1870s, long before it was considered an acceptable thing for women to do.
I can imagine the extraordinary bond she had with her mare, Birdie, and the extreme confidence she had in herself, as she shared trails with hunters and trappers, miners and ranchers, enjoying and appreciating nature, the wildlife, and the wild lands. She must have felt so free and self-assured.
Her humorous and astute observation of the colorful characters paint a picture of life in the West before it was settled, a West I wish still existed and that I could ride into.
A cosmopolitan, middle-aged Englishwoman touring the Rocky Mountains in 1873, Isabella Bird had embarked upon a trip that called for as much stamina as would have been expected of an explorer or anthropologist — and she was neither! Possessing a prodigious amount of curiosity and a huge appetite for traveling, she journeyed later in life to India, Tibet, China, Japan, Korea, and Canada and wrote eight successful books about her adventures. In this volume, she paints an intimate picture of the "Wild West," writing eloquently of flora and fauna, isolated settlers and assorted refugees from civilization, vigilance committees and lynchings,…
This is the kind of ride I'd love to do if I had the horse and the time: a thousand-mile exploration across the desert Southwest over some of the most rugged and remote country I'd never get to see otherwise.
Preston and a partner retrace as best they can the journey of the 1540s Spanish explorer Coronado in his search for the mythical Seven Cities of Gold, experiencing some of the same misadventures and encountering some of the same Pueblo tribes.
I learned much about the history that is seldom told – how tribes were invaded and subjugated by Coronado in his bloody quest for gold, but also about the stoicism and ultimate triumph of some of the tribes who still live there today.
Every horse Endurance ride has its challenges and difficulties, but the Tevis Cup has 100 miles of it. It's extreme, challenging, relentless, frantic, exhilarating, heart-breaking, exhausting, exasperating, beautiful, treacherous, insane, exciting. I know first-hand, because I experienced it!
Even though most Endurance riders consider the 100-mile Tevis Cup the Holy Grail of Endurance rides, it was never on my radar, as I never owned my own Endurance horse.
It was pure luck that a friend offered me her spare horse to ride at the last minute, a gallant gray gelding who knew the trail. And so I sat astride Quinn at the starting line of the Tevis Cup and set my gaze 100 miles down the trail toward Auburn.
Winner of Best Book at the 2016 American Horse Publications Equine Media Awards
Every endurance ride has its challenges and difficulties, but the Tevis Cup has 100 miles of it. It's extreme, challenging, relentless, frantic, exhilarating, heart-breaking, exhausting, exasperating, beautiful, treacherous, insane, exciting.
Merri Melde's dramatic story of her unplanned and unforeseen attempt at the Tevis Cup, the world's toughest 100 mile endurance ride, will put you in the saddle, gripping the reins, eating dust, racing the clock on the trail across the Sierra Nevada mountains to cross the finish line in the 24 hour time limit, on a beautiful,…
Clinging to a four-legged rocket ship among the Pyramids in Egypt. Riding a racehorse on the Curragh in Ireland. Winning a first endurance ride in Texas. Flipping a packhorse down a cliff in California. Flying on a Lord of the Rings horse in New Zealand. Cowgirling it in Idaho.
Capturing the beauty, the humor, the thrills, the fun, the fear, and above all, the love of the equine that goes deep down into the soul, these serendipitous equine adventures are the fabric of an eclectic, adventurous lifestyle with magnificent horses.
I once saw a play at the renowned Oregon Shakespeare Theatre. A play about Sor Juana. It was a good play, but it felt like something was missing like jalapenos left out of enchiladas. The play kept nudging me to look further to find Sor Juana, and so for the next five years, I did so. I read and read more. I listened for her voice, and that is where I heard her life come alive. This isn’t the only possibility for Sor Juana’s life; it is just the one I heard.
Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, this brilliant 17th century nunm flew through Mexico City on the breeze of poetry and philosophy. She met with princes of the Church, and with the royalty of Spain and Mexico. Then she met a stunning, powerful woman with lavender eyes, la Vicereine Maria Louisa, and her life changed forever. As her fame grew, she dared to challenge the diabolical Archbishop once too often, and he threw her in front of the Inquisition, where she stood, alone.
Sor Juana's work is studied still today, and justifiably so. Scholars study her months on end; mystics…
This astonishingly brilliant 17th century poet and dramatist, this nun, flew through Mexico City on wings of inspiration. Having no dowry, she chose the life of a nun so that she might learn, so that she might write, so that she might meet the most fascinating people of the western world. She accomplished all of that, and more.
One day a woman with violet eyes, eyes the color of passion flowers, entered her life. It was the new Vicereine, Maria Luisa. As the two most powerful women in Mexico City, the bond between them crossed politics and wound them in…
