The me of me is a “late in life rider” and freelance writer—with an edge. I learned to ride horses in my ‘40s when we left the wonders of California for sweet tea, okra, and equine “yard art” of Tennessee. Horses and writing mixed to create Horse Sluts. My political bent led me to craft an exposé on the brutal “training” of Big Lick TN Walking Horses. I still ride and explore the more humorous sides of aging and riding. A stickler for "writing worth reading,” I eschew self-conscious, wandering-lost writing. The books I recommended are well crafted.
Tory Bilski hooked me with her first line. I searched riding trips sites by the end of the paragraph. Wild Horses of the Summer Sunis a crafted odyssey. The book gifts us with Icelandic horses, foreign travel exploration, and the human (and herd) dynamic of a group of women who crave to “be Iceland.”
Tory is a writer in all that the craft implies. Her storytelling speaks to the explorer in us. She guides us around each mystical curve and through a physical (and emotional) blinding fog. She swims us across a (gulp) deep lake. We encounter “Tippi Hedren-esk” killer birds and truculent bulls. We hunger for the “gifts of the earth” meals and well-earned, decadent desserts. Ancient Nordic Sagas of trolls, ghosts and a fatal love affair spice the travelogue.
'Blame it or praise it, there is no denying the wild horse in us.' Virginia Woolf
What if you could steal time out just for yourself each year, a brief reprieve from ordinary life and its responsibilities? Wild Horses of the Summer Sun is author Tory Bilski's witty, sometimes poignant, account of her annual 'horse sabbaticals' to Iceland. She and her travelling companions exhilarate in their freedom, the spectacular scenery, the midnight sun energy and the Icelandic horses that connect deeply to the soul. Each year brings a new discovery about Iceland, about herself and about her relationships with the…
Bernice tells us a story. Her clean, quiet narrative rides us with her. Bernice was soft spoken, unpretentious, and steadily courageous. A long-time, long distance, trail boss told me he was humbled after sitting on an Adventure Riding panel with Bernice.
Bernice lived and wrote the partnership she had with her horses. Her book is a last gift to those of us who dream of horse adventure.
In her incredible memoir, Lady Long Rider: Alone Across America on Horseback we are introduced to Bernice Ende, a solitary figure with the daunting goal of traveling from Trego, Montana to New Mexico in a single ride. At the age of 50, Bernice turned south into the unknown and began her first voyage on the way to becoming a world-class long rider. Since that fateful decision she hasn't looked back. Accompanied by her horses and an exceptional dog named Claire, Ende has logged more than 29,000 miles in the saddle, crisscrossing North America and beyond.
I tend to flee from memoirs and “horse story” books. Then I read Half Broke by Ginger Gaffney.
Gingeris a schooled writer, horse trainer, clinician, rider-trainer and, in my opinion, a master observer. She was asked to help the tooth-bearing, ear-pinning, predatory gang of horses tended by the Livestock Team of resident “multiple offenders and felons” at an alternative-prison ranch in New Mexico. As a memoir, Half Broke is a “peeling off” of emotional bandages—for her, for the raw souls of the inmates and for the horses.
Ginger’s style is straightforward, non-judgmental, and thought challenging. No gooey anthropomorphizing.
At the start of this remarkable story of recovery, healing, and redemption, Ginger Gaffney answers a call to help retrain the troubled horses at an alternative prison ranch in New Mexico, a facility run entirely by the prisoners. The horses are scavenging through the dumpsters, kicking and running down the residents when they bring the trash out after meals. One horse is severely injured.
The horses and residents arrive at the ranch broken in one way or many: the horses are defensive and terrified, while the residents, some battling drug and alcohol addictions, are emotionally and physically shattered. With deep…
Horse People is an oldie but a goodie. It is a canter through Central Park... being thrown onto the hood of a taxi... his horse startled on Columbus and Ninth then trying to back through the door of the White Tower hamburger shop. It is riding lessons on Staten Island, and close-your-eyes-and-hope-for-the-best at the Break Your Neck Fox Hunt. Korda’s story is honest—an equestrian smile. My ego was salved when I read some activities on horseback scared Korda too. The quality writing takes us over each jump.
Bestselling author Michael Korda's Horse People is the story -- sometimes hilariously funny, sometimes sad and moving, always shrewdly observed -- of a lifetime love affair with horses, and of the bonds that have linked humans with horses for more than ten thousand years. It is filled with intimate portraits of the kind of people, rich or poor, Eastern or Western, famous or humble, whose lives continue to revolve around the horse.
Korda is a terrific storyteller, and his book is intensely personal and seductive, a joy for everyone who loves horses. Even those who have never ridden will be…
Timmons’s little treasure book is “Nuggets of truth for people who love horses... no matter what” (Bonnie Timmons quote).Hold Your Horses is a laugh at ourselves and the horses we love. We are exposed on her pages. Our goofs, gaffs, and trials are not easily explained to those who don’t kiss horse faces. Timmons’ book is a smile, a cringe, and an “I am not alone.” No arduous tome, each page of this little book is a quick elbow in our equine-loving ribs.
A swelling number of horse riders aren't nubile nymphs and don't start riding as toddlers. Horse Sluts: The Saga of Two Women on the Trail of Their Yeehaw winks at mid-life riders who relate to the feeling "when memories of who we were and what we used to do smash at our egos like bugs on a windshield." It's how to stand up to fears, how to challenge ourselves. Horse Slutsis for women who refuse to surrender to age, who embrace moving forward; it's for women open to the thrill of freedom, of movement, of power—okay, of controlling a large animal between her legs.
I have been to, and loved, North, Central, and especially East Africa for over fifty years. Only six times have I been to Africa on holiday; more often, perhaps twenty or more times, as a television producer. Working in Africa gains a perspective of reality that the glories of vacation do not. Each has its place, each its pitfalls like stalled plane rides with emergency landings in the bush or attacks by wildlife. But, in the end, the magic of the “otherness,” what an old friend called “primitava” captures one’s soul and changes your life.
Keen to rekindle their love of East African wildlife adventures after years of filming, extreme dangers, and rescues, producer Pero Baltazar, safari guide Mbuno Waliangulu, and Nancy Breiton, camerawoman, undertake a filming walking adventure north of Lake Rudolf, crossing from Kenya into Ethiopia along the Omo River, following a herd of elephant making their annual migration.
Stumbling onto an elephant poaching, the team become embroiled in true financing of terrorism for al Shabaab –ivory sales–and are determined to stop the slaughter at any cost. Ivory trade financing terrorism involves UN refugee camps with two hundred thousand displaced Somali persons, powerful…
A documentary team hiking through East Africa collides with a gang of deadly poachers, in this gripping adventure by the author of Kidnapped on Safari.
Years of filming, extreme dangers, and daring rescues have taken their toll on documentary producer Pero Baltazar and his team. To relax and reconnect with the East African wildlife they love, Pero organizes a walking safari for him, his camerawoman Nancy Breiton, and their elite guide Mbuno Waliangulu. Still, Pero has trouble truly disconnecting from work. When the team comes across a herd of elephants making their annual migration north of Lake Rudolf, Pero decides…
