Whispers From the Tent – Reflections from the Grand Dame of Endurance Riding, Julie Suhr

“With 37 years of endurance training and riding behind me, it is a time of reflection. I have been too cold, too hot, too hungry and too thirsty. And I have been scared. I am not a masochist, but really a hedonist because I have done what I wanted to do most. I have finished in the front at rides, in the middle and in the back. I have been humbled and I have stood 10 feet tall. I have greeted the dawn from the back of a horse, watched the sunset and the stars appear, and been guided by the moonlight. I have caressed the newborn foals as they drew their first breath and kissed the soft muzzles of old and tired companions as they drew their last.

What possesses a 40-year-old woman to want to sit upon horses’ backs for 37 years and 150,000 miles? 

“I do not know the answer. Perhaps it is hidden in the depths of a horse’s eye where untold secrets reside, secrets we cannot probe, or perhaps the die are cast the first time a young girl wraps her arms around a horse’s neck and smells the sweetness and feels the warmth.” 

–  Julie Suhr