This is the first poem I’ve written in which the words go all the way to the edge of the page. I tip my helmet to Josh Pons. His family’s Thoroughbred stud farm and nursery, Country Life Farm, in the next county over, is famous to small-time horse people like me who can only dream and dread a farm on that scale. His book (Country Life Diary: Three Years in the Life of a Horse Farm. Eclipse Press, 1999) is a model for what follows in my own words and experiences as a three-day event rider.

I’d also like to give a nod to my children. Son John reacquainted me with Jack Kerouac. This journal could have just as easily been called On the Horse after On the Road, since for both of us movement equals ecstasy. Daughter Caitlin brought back a few things from her study abroad in Cuba — a little more swing and sway in her Samba and a delight in all things Che. Señor Guevara also kept his diaries of life on the road riding iron horses, and moreover I cannot look at that cigar-smoking, smiling mug under the black beret without also seeing my horse Redmond.

I came to the sport of three-day eventing later in life, at the age of thirty-eight, after having spent my childhood galloping bareback on ponies through the dense undergrowth of the Allegheny Forest in northwestern Pennsylvania. Though I’d been active and ridden horses all of my life, never had I engaged in a sport so vigorously, nor dared to call myself an athlete. Getting such a late start, I had to learn the countless rules of the sport quickly.

Eventing is like a triathlon for horses that combines the three phases of dressage, cross-country jumping, and show jumping. The event originated in the military where the horse needed to demonstrate obedience, boldness, accuracy, and endurance. In a traditional three-day event, each phase is held on a different day, which is how the sport got its name. Additionally, each horse and rider team must qualify for a three-day event by successfully completing various horse trials. The sport is also called “combined training.”

Day one, or dressage, is like ballet for horses, or yoga for horses, in that it requires of the horse strength, relaxation and flexibility. Dressage demonstrates the quality of the horse’s gaits, his suppleness and fluidity of movement, as well as his obedience and accuracy. In that the horse and rider must complete a series of movements in a test from memory, it can also be compared to the compulsory figures in ice skating. It is, to my mind, the most difficult of the three phrases, as well as the only subjective element of the sport, because the quality of each test is judged by a human being, who awards marks on the above criteria that are then subtracted from an overall score, based on the unattainable: perfection. The lowest score wins the Kewpie doll.

Day two, or endurance, is considered the heart of eventing, and is the most exciting of the three days. It involves four phases within itself, all over varied terrain. Phase A, or roads and tracks, requires a set time span and pattern of trotting; Phase B, or steeplechase; Phase C, more roads and tracks and more trotting; and finally Phase D, cross country, where the horse and rider team must run and jump up to thirty immovable obstacles. The pair is judged on the horse’s willingness to jump the jumps the first time, penalized if not, as well as on time. A horse trial leading up to a three-day has only the last phase of endurance, cross country, without steeplechase and roads and tracks. Cross-country jumping efforts involve ditches, banks, water, tables, pheasant feeders, narrow fences, fences in combination with other fences, and all kinds of spooky versions of wide fences, or oxers, and vertical fences, all meant to test a horse’s boldness and jumping ability. Because the horse runs by himself when he goes cross country, and because he is by nature a pack animal, running and jumping solo over such impressive, stubborn obstacles stacks the deck and requires bravery with a capital B.

My sport is in the process of changing as I write this. There are many supporters of a modified format for the three-day event that eliminates the roads and tracks and steeplechase aspects of the sport, in order to save the horse as well as money. Contenders, however, feel that subtracting the endurance phase detracts from one of the principal characteristics of a true event horse: his fitness and conditioning. The jury is still out on the sport’s design in the future. Increasingly, as well as in these pages, we see a modified endurance phase without roads and tracks and steeplechase, although there are hangers-on of the traditional three-day event, usually at the lower levels.

Day three, or show jumping, takes place within the confines of a ring, and offers the traditional oxers and verticals with poles that will fall if hit, and that are often set in combination with other jumps at fixed distances. Show jumping tests a horse’s athleticism, obedience and accuracy over fences. It is judged on whether or not the rails stay up, as well as on time.

In order to be a successful eventer, the horse has to be versatile at all three phases; he must be fluid and brave and fast, obedient and accurate. It is hard to train a horse to be a superior athlete in all three phases. As hard, if not harder, to train a woman who never competed in a competitive sport until she was in her mid-life. My hope is that this book is not just about the sport of eventing, or for people who love horses, although it is certainly largely for them, but also for all those who’ve taken up some endeavor with a passion, then committed themselves to becoming the best they could be at it, in the face of many obstacles, real and imagined, tangible and not.

I’m a poet by first trade, and so it makes a kind of sense that I start this chronicle at the end of a year and not at the beginning, cockeyed as poets tend to be. I’m also a bit of a workaholic and like to set impossible tasks for myself, and so decide to begin this project as we enter the Christmas season, a demanding time for everyone, but especially for horse people who are also parents. Life on the farm goes on, no matter what.