Swimming Hole Shenanigans

Last weekend, my friends and I loaded up the horses and attended the local hunt’s annual Swimming Hole Day. They host this event every year, and it’s always fun. The day starts with a trail ride and is followed by a potluck lunch and dip in the swimming hole for horses and humans.

One of the hunt’s longtime fixtures is several hundred beautiful acres near the Oklahoma-Arkansas border. Your mental picture of Oklahoma is likely a flat, treeless plain covered in tall grass and scrubby bushes. That’s certainly the case for much of the state, but the eastern part (where I live) is known as Green Country for a reason. Hills dominate the landscape, trees are common, and there are more lakes than in any other part of the state. It’s lush and lovely. This particular fixture is part of the heavily wooded Ozark Mountain foothills and is full of winding trails and steep, rocky hills. My favorite feature of this fixture is the clear, wide waters of Flint Creek that flow through it. Flint Creek has a rocky bottom and is incredibly clear. The swimming hole is a wide part of the creek that’s deep enough for horses to swim.

It was miserably hot even at 9:30 AM when we set out for the trail ride. Story and I stayed with our friends in the walking-only group. She can get antsy in a group moving at speed, so I thought it prudent to keep things slow and lowkey. I didn’t want either of us to collapse from heat exhaustion either! We rode for just over an hour and she was pretty good. She was agitated for about five minutes after jumping a small stream and moving to catch up with the few horses ahead of us. All of us ended up turning around back toward the stream to catch up with some riders whose horses were having difficulty with the crossing, and Story didn’t like that at all. She crowhopped a little and sidled sideways down the trail before I planted her behind a friend’s very steady gelding. She was forced to walk or she’d run herself into the trees lining the trail. After a few minutes of vainly trying to pass her placid friend, she settled and resigned herself to a flat-footed walk.

After we got back to the trailer, I rinsed Story off, gave her a bucket of Gallagher’s Water (which has been a game changer for summer riding) and left her with a haynet and a buddy while I headed to lunch. Once lunch was over, I peeled off my riding clothes, wriggled into my swimsuit, put Story’s bridle back on, and clambered onto her bareback to swim. Have you ever tried to slither onto a damp, naked horse while you yourself are also damp and mostly naked? I don’t recommend it; everything is precarious and slippery.

Once Story saw a couple of other horses enter the water, she was happy to walk in. We’ve been swimming before at a local lake and she seemed to like it. (That’s been my experience with most horses I’ve taken out to the deep part of the lake – Madigan, Candy, and Moe all liked to swim. It was beneath Gina’s dignity.) I spent half the afternoon clinging to her mane while she alternated between standing in the shallower parts of the hole and submerging herself in the deep parts. Sometimes she plunged through the water, ducking her head under before pushing off the creek bed and bursting up through the surface like some kind of four-legged leviathan. I eventually jumped off to join her in the water, the two of us paddling side by side until we reached an underwater ledge where I could sit and she could stand. We watched kids riding double as their big draft cross patiently swam across to the far shore. One girl used her patient palomino as a diving board. One of my friends repeatedly tossed another friend’s young child from the back of her horse into the water where her mother caught her. A big group opted to enjoy the cool water without their horses and another large group sat in the shade of a tent set up on the shore. We spent about two hours splashing and playing in the creek before finally deciding we ought to start the long drive home.

I often wonder what Story thinks of her new life with me. I imagine almost everything about it is different from her previous life as a show hunter! Her lengthy USEF record tells the story of a horse who showed successfully at big venues up and down the East Coast for years. We’re a far cry from that life here in Oklahoma, where she most often travels to what must seem like the wilderness for long treks on trails. I like to think she’s happy. Maybe I’m ascribing emotions to a creature who doesn’t feel them very deeply, but sometimes she seems almost joyful. When she galloped, really truly galloped, with her legs flying and ears laid back, trying to catch the pony in front of us. When she neatly leaped over a fallen log at our first hunter pace. When she swims, making odd little grunts when the water gets deep. I hope she’s content to be owned by a person who will sit with her in the water while we watch our friends and relax.